u/BlockedByMobley

Trade becomes possible in October once Carter’s Recently Traded restriction expires.

Carter and Peavy could be swapped for any minimum players so long as Orlando is sending out more money than it is receiving.

The Orlando series was a decent answer but what else was he supposed to do with those teammates? The aborted PG13-Kyrie trade would have been pointless (albeit better than the Celtics package) because no team was beating the Warriors and there’s no sliver of LeBron’s mind that regrets choosing Miami over Phil Jackson and triangle in New York.

The Russ trade broke apart a title contender and the fact that they somehow made a conference Finals the next season after picking up the scraps of the failed trade shows they would have been very good had the trade never happened. LeBron and the front office both deserve blame for panicking about the KD-Kyrie-Harden trio and feeling the need to get a third star for themselves.

Tried to strike a balance of vets on short/expiring contracts and young players with some upside.

I would not do this personally if I was Denver, but if my owner was demanding strongly encouraging me to cut money to re-sign Paid-Ton Watson, this could be a way their front office thinks, especially considering they have a history of panic trading slightly-overpaid contributing wings coming off a season where they underperformed due to gutting out an injury.

When Denver re-signs Peyton Watson to a contract that is likely to be over $20M per year, the window is effectively shut. Watson has had numerous opportunities in the playoffs and has yet to score 10 points, play 20 minutes, and is a career -150. He had one good month of play against tanking teams, most notably a 35 point game against the Wizards, who they played twice in that span. That contract will be worse than the already disastrous Christian Braun contract, which is immovable due to their lack of draft capital.

Jokic is a free agent next offseason and will not re-sign.

All of these could be 2 team trades with minimal salary-matching. This is all 3 together as one transaction.

I see two players with All Star/All-NBA upside. Castle is pretty self-explanatory based on his contributions to a Finals team. As for Edey, I think the Finals and West Finals were very insightful into how he can make a major impact and was doing so in his limited minutes last season. The NBA pendulum has swung too far towards scrawny centers who are bothered by size and Edey is the most skilled giant big man since Towns. I view Edey’s median outcome being something like what Zubac did 2 years ago with more offensive production, which resulted in him nearly making All-NBA. I don’t think a better development could have occurred for Edey than the departure of Ja Morant, who was a terrible fit.