2025-26 Team Developments: Trades / Free Agents / News / Rumors / Ideas

Yep. We're not doing anything of significance until that gets resolved this summer.

Likely a marginal move at the trade deadline, a 2nd round exit, Luka being great & more Austin glazing.

 

NBA midseason lessons

Los Angeles Lakers

https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id...warriors-C Bags-pistons-knicks-every-team#lal

 

Give me two moves: Bey and then anyone for Gabe who is a plus contributor and with how things are going, I'll call that a successful deadline.

 

But your guy Walter who you’ve committed to riding with and who’s even tasked his FO people to working with Rob so he can better be in synch with how Mark wants this roster build around Luka to proceed …. WILL be be signing off on any deals from here on. Oh yeah you’re committed with the new ownership now calling the shots, LOL! Backsliding on that too already.

 

we'd be like terrorists for the league

they'd be terrified

 

I hate the idea of waiting on Giannis because we're only going to have the three firsts on draft day, after which one of those picks turns into an actual player that some teams will like and some won't. So unless we trade for Giannis on draft day, which would be really hard to do given Austin is probably in that trade and his contract is up in the air (idk if we even could trade him on draft day), this whole waiting on Giannis thing is all for naught.

 

Yeah, I've got zero interest in him. I hate the process and hostage situation for the league.

If we wait, best case for me is we're the 3rd team and pry away a legit piece from team 3.

So I'm pulling for NY because...

 

Yeah Bridges would be great, but I don't think Giannis is ending up in NY. There was some rumor the other day about the Knicks exploring KAT for AD or JJJ, which I think is the smarter path for them. Brunson is obviously the best player, but I think the greatest strength of their team is the Bridges/Hart/OG wing trio. Kind of like how Kobe was obviously our best guy, but the identity of the 09 and 10 teams was more so the Pau/Odom/Bynum frontcourt rotation that overwhelmed a lot of teams. If they swapped KAT for AD, and AD actually plays, that's a pretty damn good 5.

 

would knecht/top-5 protected first for ellis/2nd be fair? do that and kleber/gabe for kcp?

ellis/smart
reaves/kcp
luka/vando
lebron/rui
ayton/hayes

ellis's cap hold is only 190% of his current salary, so about 4 million-ish. so while kcp's 23 million cuts into space, it leaves enough to do some stuff with, and reaves and ellis's low (compared to their likely re-signed salary) cap holds allow us to go over on top of the room exception. not sure of exact numbers, but it could be that we'd have ~20m to spend in FA (so we can outbid the mle market or absorb a salary in that range). i also believe that the ~9m room exception doesn't trigger a hard cap at the first apron. this means that even if we signed ellis to over the mle, reaves to a max, hayes to a raise, we could still use it. so next year, you could bring back the same team with one of lebron or rui at about 20 per (rui's not worth that on the open market, imo, so that would open up more money for a secondary acquisition).

anyway, lots of unknowns, but it's a long way of saying i think i could move a 1st for ellis and not feel too bad about it.

 

You’re right, Reaves cap hold is $21m, his player option is $14.9m. By my calculations, we’d have in that 28-32m range in cap space.

So I think we should offer roughly 30m for Watson. That means the nuggets have to get rid of Cam Johnson and one more player. It damages them even if they match our offer.

As for Claxton, I’m not really married to the idea, it’s just that we should start building now and he’s a player that fits with Luka extremely well. I wouldn’t care about Ayton in this scenario, he’s played well and out performed his contract but he doesn’t fit so well with Luka.

The simple methodology to get a team around Luka is: bring a piece in now, one in the summer via cap space, one in the summer by MLE and hope a veteran lands with us to ring chase while retaining who we want from the current team.

 

The NBA announced the postponement of a game between the Minnesota Timberwolves and Golden State Warriors scheduled for Saturday night at Target Center in Minneapolis following the fatal shooting of a city resident by federal agents in the city.

 

What the f*** is going on?

 

I'd do it. Ellis, Smart and KCP provide us with championship level defense. Probably still need a bigger wing defensively but Bron in these recent games has shown he can still level up to that caliber for stretches.

Listening to Buha and Irwin, sounds like we hold that pick in really high regard though and won't move it unless we get a star/ high end starter. My hope is we split it up into multiple lesser 1st round picks and then can trade one of those lesser 1sts for an Ellis. I was glad to hear we are at least entertaining that kind of forward thinking approach.

 

Shirley you must know?

 

Maybe some one smarter than me could enlighten me on why anyone would spend a first round pick on Keon Ellis? He can’t get off the bench on a bad team,is a terrible shooter and has a -2 BPM. Because you like his defense?????

 

Lol right.. I can understand some of the Watson buzz, but Ellis has " disappointment " written all over him IMO. A potential "elite perimeter stopper" that dies on damn near every screen he runs into? Then we are talking about him and KCP too? Neither are close to where Max is now, for the cost of around 40M? That s*** is ridiculous

I actually hope Rob makes this deal myself..so we can fire his a**, after getting bounced early in the playoffs again.

 

Trading for Ellis is interesting because of his cap hold next year being around 2.5m. AR also has a beneficial cap hold in 21m. These two guys let us fill out our team and then go into the tax to pay them.

The issue with trading for Ellis and KCP is the following; Lebron is probably gone next year, and as is Ayton most likely. So is a team of Luka, Reaves, Rui, Ellis, KCP, Hayes and a middle of the pack free agent good enough to compete? I'm fairly sure it is not. So I'm not keen for KCP, I think we need to aim higher.

From a numbers point of view, this would be the cap situation if we nab Ellis:

Luka: 49.8m
Reaves: 21m CAPHOLD
Vando: 12.4m
Jake: 6m
Smart: 5.4m PLAYER OPTION
Hayes: 4.5m CAPHOLD
Ellis: 2.5m CAPHOLD
Bronny: 2.3m
Adou: 2.1m
5x Vet Min Capholds: 11.5m
----
Total: 117.5m

That leaves 48.5m of cap space (note: as you replace a vet min cap hold with a player going into cap space, you free up one of the 2.3m cap holds per person). The order of events is important in the summer, because you sign Ellis, Reaves & the TPMLE at the end.

That team needs one more high quality starter as a 3rd option, and then most likely a starting quality big and a 6th man level player.

We could outright sign Quentin Grimes to a 4 year 120m contract starting at 26m to be a 3&D player. We'd then be pretty desperate for a starting quality big - we could bring back Ayton, sign someone to the TPMLE or try to trade for someone like Claxton in the offseason with a S&T for Rui?

Ellis (12m) / Smart (5.4m) / Bronny (2.3m)
Reaves (40m) / LaRavia (6m) / Vet Min (2.5m)
Grimes (26m) / Vando (12.4m)
Luka (49.8m) / TPMLE (6.1m) / Adou (2.1)
Claxton (23.1m) / Hayes (8m) / Vet Min (2.5m)

This would work if we traded for Claxton first, then signed Grimes to the left over cap space before bringing in the vet mins, the TPMLE and resigning Ellis & Reaves. We'd hope to hit on the TPMLE to really make us a contender.

 

yeah, i've said many times we should make the offer to watson in any case, as it's a win/win. just sucks that we can't pat riley them--when he signed brand to an RFA deal then used the clippers's matching and cheapness to get odom, who was probably his real target. but they were both FAs. denver would just dump johnson into someone else's cap space and pick up an asset is my guess. they still get weaker, but we don't get stronger.

because sacramento's a total mess. people are glad to pay watson 30 million, but his advanced metrics are basically where ellis's were last year (actually worse, tbh). there's been no major injury; just sacramento continuing its utter incompetence, year after year. playing russell westbrook big minutes and--QUITE UNDERSTANDABLY--losing a metric ton of games. i don't think ellis forgot how to play; i think sacramento is a terrible organization that makes poor decisions at basically every single turn.

as for not being able to shoot...he's shooting a career-worst 36% from three this year, after 40% his first two years. he continues to rate as a very good defensive guard, despite the recent pearl-clutching about screen navigation.

so yeah, i'll bet against sacramento, no problem. take my first round pick and waste it like you do the rest, i'll take a guy who fits one of our gaping holes with a tiny cap hold in the one year we'll have cap space in the next half decade. sign me up.

thought of this right after my kcp idea. i keep forgetting that grimes is a UFA, not an RFA. i would love it.

that room mle (not tpmle) could buy a good backup forward, too.

edit: also just realized i left laravia off my depth chart earlier, which was dumb. that exception could get the next laravia type if we use it wisely again.