u/Humblerbee

Blazers have Jerami Grant or Jrue Holiday as vet big money to send out, likely attached to one of Shaedon Sharpe or Scoot Henderson as a young asset with some upside, and then a plethora of picks that would likely be the main conversation of how much is fair to both sides. Blazers would probably prefer to send Jerami Grant+Shaedon Sharpe to keep their better perimeter defenders, attaching Kris Murray or Yang Hansen or Blake Wesley or whatever to make the money match, and then the specific picks that it takes to get the Clippers on board.

From the Blazers perspective, their new owner has said he would like to make a splashy trade and is very much “win-now” and has an appetite for risky big swings, but the GM Joe Cronin has been an incredibly measured presence who advocates patience, like with the Dame trade he’s not someone whose hand is quick to be forced. They have a two-year window while Deni is still on a far below market contract and the twilight years of Dame’s career, plus they have a number of vets they lean on, so while their “core” is young, their window isn’t as far out as might be thought.

Kawhi would instantly be their best player, with Deni able to carry a lot of the regular season workload, plus with Camara to handle the hardest defensive matchups, that trio of forwards would be an elite chassis to play around. Jrue/Dame/Scoot at guard, Kawhi/Deni/Camara at forwards, Clingan/Rob as your bigs, and Thybulle/Krejci as wings deeper in the rotation, with options to fill out those back of the roster spots.

What do you think it would take for the Clippers to say yes to a Grant+Sharpe+picks package, in terms of fair value?

Optimistically let’s say DC grinds it out hard over the offseason, comes back next year and can handle smallball lineups. Do you think it will be through doing what he does best, even better? Or by working on where he gets exposed so he is no longer exploitable?

Option 1- DC develops as a putback finisher and efficient scorer at the rim through improved physical strength and working on his touch and footwork around the basket, while continuing to distinguish himself as the best offensive rebounder in the league. End result is him crushing the glass and presenting a problem opponents must solve- that is, he demands opponents play a traditional big because smaller guys simply get eaten alive and he kills them too hard on the boards. Here the thought is he simply leans into his strengths to the degree that it abuses the weaknesses of trying to go small against him. He makes opponents struggle to go five-out or small against him because he simply bludgeons his way through them and uses his size to dominate the paint, if opponents can’t keep him off the glass and he’s able to convert that to points, that was basically how the young Rockets team excelled with limited spacing for the last couple years, because they dominated the rebound battle so hard.

Option 2- DC improves as a defender in space and with an additional offseason of dedicated conditioning and agility work, he continues to lean into his body transformation in an attempt to be able to step out and recover, working to be more like Gobert who has managed to develop to a fairly effective perimeter defender while still being as elite a rim protector as they get. While he will always have physical limitations, better judgement for how to position himself in terms of what type of cushion he can afford and still challenge, how to step up and being better about when he needs to move pre-emptively, part of it would have to being a little quicker on his feet and part of it would have to be developing better decision making and playing coverages as perfectly as he can within what his body will allow. Essentially the idea is that he improves at his weakness such that he is no longer as much of a matchup specific big, but is able to better defend against a variety of schemes and still be effective.

Today’s Locked on Blazers episode was a season review on Clingan, and I thought it was mostly fair, but one thing that stuck in my craw a bit was that Mike kept mentioning that Clingan wasn’t able to guard the most elite centers in the league in single coverage, and that the Blazers don’t assign him to cover the best bigs in the league.

That’s by design y’all, look at the Spurs and Thunder matchup, Wemby isn’t guarding Chet or iHart, he’s in zone coverage locking down the paint, and Chet wasn’t guarding Wemby either, they were throwing Caruso and other smaller guys at him most effectively.

Elite defensive centers aren’t elite because they can body up a big and take them out of the game, it’s because they collectively shut off one of the primary avenues of attack by being extremely difficult to challenge down low. Clingan isn’t unique in being used by floating him off the oppositions worst shooter and parking him in the paint, that’s a relatively common choice amongst teams with strong rim protecting bigs, and their mobility merely dictates the range they play free-safety within.

I also think Mike overrated Clingan’s blocks in year one by saying he was a better defender as a rookie, he undersold how valuable scaling up his role and minutes while reducing foul rate was despite retaining elite rim deterrence, efficiency impact, and rebound rate- basically Clingan has a much bigger four factor imprint now even though blocks went down, and blocks have basically zero predictive value for defense being good or bad, I fall much more on the Tim Duncan side of the coin in terms of playing fundamentally sound contests where blocks are a low priority compared to positioning and contesting without fouling.

I think Clingan should be considered inarguably a better defender today than he was as a rookie, he was much more fit and it impacted his game very positively, he played smarter, had learned better about what to engage on, how to play coverages, individual matchups, I don’t think it should be seen as “because our defense wasn’t as good as expectations preseason, Clingan regressed.”

Blazers fans eyes have been bleeding all season from watching our team with bottom of the league 3PT efficiency coupled with near top of the league 3PT attempt volume, which persisted into the playoffs where the offense was ice cold against the Spurs, and when they walled off the paint, we had no answer.

Heck we even traded midseason for Vit Krejci, who had several previous seasons of being an elite shooter, then promptly forgot how to shoot as soon as he arrived in Portland. So forget about going star hunting, Giannis-schmannis, how the hell can we solve our spacing issues???

Kawhi Leonard, Kevin Durant, Anthony Davis - With this trio, you’re dealing with superstars in the twilight of their careers, in descending order of impact and cost.

Kawhi is still playing at an All-NBA level and is an elite player, and in terms of fit he’s pretty ideal, but is still injury hampered and has limited miles left in the tank, but you’d have to break the bank for his level of talent and he’d only be available in a situation where the Clippers no longer think Kawhi can help their championship Aspirations.

KD meanwhile, is again, a great fit in terms of shooting talent and creation capital helping with their issues, and can be part of a good defense, but he would only be available if the locker room cancer tag makes him untenable to keep for Houston’s young core. He’s the oldest of the listed names, dude loves hooping but he’ll have to hang it up in the next few years, which is baked into the price we’d be paying.

AD is Mr Street Clothes with all his injuries and has fallen off, but he used to be so good, maybe Jrue and Rob can show him how to turn back the clock? Hey man, we’re already hoping thirty-six year old post Achilles Dame will be able to be a key contributor, AD would be the cheapest flier to take in terms of gambling on the short two year window coming up, but it’s a long shot because it’s much more likely he’s just washed at this point unfortunately.

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The flip side of the coin is the younger “overpay to complete the core” type moves, where we try to target a player more aligned with Deni’s timeline, so we cash-in our assets to have bird-in-the-hand blue chip young star talent to pair alongside him. Jaylen Brown, Evan Mobley, and Trey Murphy III have been the most popular names on the subreddit in terms of targets, though their actual availability is much more of a question mark.

Jaylen Brown is coming off a career year where he carried the Celtics without Tatum and proved he’s more than just the Robin to Tatum’s Batman. Stylistically he plays very similar to Deni as an on-ball drive and kick engine with dominant right hand preferences, he is just the older more refined version of it at twenty-nine. Boston isn’t likely to trade JB, he’s core to their team and I think they’d rather run back what they’ve got than roll the dice on Giannis, but if they want in on the Giannis sweepstakes, we might benefit from it by unloading every asset we’ve got to get the most current talent possible.

Speaking of potentially sneaking an extremely talented young player away from a contender in a Giannis trade, Evan Mobley is the other prime target that is most often mentioned in that context. Mobley would be the cost of doing business if Cleveland really wants Giannis to push the chips in on, though again, I’d say I don’t think they will, but if they do, it’d be a rare opportunity to snag a DPoY guy in Mobley who is still improving as a player to complement our young core.

Trey Murphy III meanwhile would have to be a Desmond Bane style overpay to pry him away from New Orleans, the teams appetite for such a move might not be there, but he answers the teams needs very well in terms of adding the shooting they desperately need, without hurting the defense as Murphy as shown he can be part of the team defense, and is young enough to scale with the teams core. At the right price I’d love Murphy, but I think NO is happy to keep him unless someone overpays.

Essentially, where do you think we are over or undervaluing the impact of guys on our roster? Could be our vets, our young guns, our bench, our starters you think have untapped potential, whatever or whoever you are higher or lower on, why? What do you think people are missing?

This year due to the plethora of injuries, for most of the time we saw Sharpe play, he was forced to step into a much larger, on-ball creator role, and for many it exposed issues with his weaker handle, lack of passing, and shaky shooting. Many fans, who were hoping for a star breakout season for Sharpe, were sorely disappointed- he took on that huge thirty percent usage and maintained his efficiency, it just is volume scoring on middling efficiency and not much else.

However, Sharpe remains elite when it comes to efficiency at the rim and on the fast break, as a guard he grades out like a seven footer in terms of how well he converts in the restricted area or in the open court. Christian Braun had a very disappointing playoffs this year, but previously, he was an extremely important cog in the Nuggets system as evidenced by his massive contract, and it was because he ran the court relentlessly, so he was a deadly target for Jokic on the fast break, and in the half court he would cut and be an incredible play finishing complementary piece.

I’m not saying Sharpe has to be a role player, but it is clear that Deni is THE guy on this team now, and if Sharpe is going to play off of him, rather than standing idly on the weak side waiting to play “your turn, my turn” as a secondary creator who just wants to create off the dribble from behind the arc and eventually get forced into a midrange stepback, let’s get Sharpe running! Have him do cardio like Camara, Camara led the league in miles run this season, if Sharpe pulled that off it’d be an incredibly positive indicator of commitment to playing within the offense rather than playing for himself.

IDK I think the best case scenario for Sharpe is he just gets better at all the things he has been bad at and turns into late blooming Anthony Edwards, but the “realistic” best case scenario is he realizes his strengths and weaknesses and is self-aware enough to tailor his game to maximize the impact of his strengths and miminize how much his weaknesses are brought to bear. I remember the Heatles and how Wade played off of LeBron as an off-ball cutter and threat with his athleticism as a guard still applying rim pressure and the incredible wink-wink chemistry those two had in the open court and going downhill, if Deni is already Temu LeBron, could Sharpe be the Great Value Wade of those Heatles in terms of in that secondary role?

TL;DR - Sharpe no dribble good, make him run off ball, Sharpe catching with an open lane=good offense

There has been a lot of discussion about how we can make upgrades to make us more immediately competitive and what kind of “big splashes” might be available, as Dundon put it, in terms of chasing success while we have Deni on his cheap deal and the vet talent on the tail end of their career. However in that same presser, Dundon mentioned that if the right deals didn’t materialize, they would be just as open to building for continued growth and longer term success. Basically they said they were keeping their options open, they want to win-now, but won’t force the issue if the right value isn’t there.

So if we can’t find that right deal, what does planning for the future look like, assuming the “splash” trades are off the table, what is the path to success if you assume the window isn’t now, but coming up?

The team does have some picks and draft assets like the swaps, but won’t be much of FA players, at least as currently constructed because as the vet money comes off the books, they’ll need to turn around and give that money to our young guys for their new deals, obviously we can rely on bird rights to keep them as we run up the tax bill, but Deni is gonna need a fat paycheck, and no way you can convince Scoot or Clingan to take less than Sharpe & Camara got, they’ll all be north of twenty mil a year.

Obviously the best path to future contention is just if our young core improves and outperforms expectations, so on some level the path is just “we need our guys to pop”, but assuming current trajectories and given that you’ve been able to watch all of their careers thus far, what in your eyes are choices the team could make to improve the odds of our future success?

What would you do, if given total GM control and told that we want to focus on our future timeline rather than push in the chips, how would you build for long term success off the base we have now?

Are there any particular targets you want the team to kick the tires on, at the right price?

Thinking of some names that might potentially be available- not an exhaustive list at all, just coming up with random guys off the top of the dome, if you have any suggestions please throw them in the comments:

Giannis
Mobley
Kawhi
MPJ
Murphy
Zion
Gordon
Anunoby
KAT
Randle
Herro
Bridges
AD
DeRozan
Sabonis

Secondly, what is the “right price” where you wouldn’t LOVE it, but would stomach the deal? Essentially as fans we always tend to overvalue our own assets and undervalue others, but for a trade to happen both teams have to say yes- what is the price you’d be willing to offer that you think they might say yes to?

[[Erinis, Gloom Stalker]] + [[Street Urchin]] is the commander pair I’m referring to, and the quality I’m seeking is commanders that can be interactive on-demand; that is, I don’t want Toxrill or High Perfect Morcant style “nobody gets to keep a board” or Vren style removal tribal, my goal isn’t to make interaction my primary gameplan or something that I’m automatically jamming, but rather a political tool I reliably have on my belt to pull out when the situation calls for it.

That is, the threat of Erinis being able to pull the trigger in response to opponents action acts as a tremendous deterrent and bargaining tool. The way Magda can pull out a silver bullet as the situation demands, and often good pilots use that to their advantage through table talk to situationally problem solve and bargain to be allowed to keep their board state and allow their activation through to get answers to an opponent threatening a win, etc. Erinis has less of a toolbox and instead is just a gat in the command zone ready to turn every game into a Mexican standoff, but it has a similar level of reactivity, and that’s my goal, is finding commanders that are highly interactive without mandating that interaction and becoming untenable for opponents to play the game, à la Tergrid decks et al.

What commanders would you recommend that are reactively or politically interactive without being miserable to play into?