The Heat are on the discussing trading him for Dwight Howard, they're potentially turning a D-League pick up into Dwight Howard.Is there any first round pick that could get that return?
Seeing as Dwight's value has plummeted, and Miami doesn't seem to want to re-sign Whiteside, and Houston is broken... I actually think Houston would gladly take a first rounder for Dwight.
Also, you misrepresent my point here and jump to hyperbole fam. My point "Mid to late first rounders are being overvalued" is far from "middle rounders don't really matter that much." Middle rounders production is replaceable and many of those players will be approaching their second contract before they have true value, that's my assertion. Nothing more and nothing less.
My thing is, saying first rounders production is "replaceable" MEANS they don't matter. You are literally saying that they don't matter, because you can get their same production from some unsigned dude in the D-league.
And that completely eliminates the massive savings you get from having somebody giving you that production when you get them as a first rounder, because of the long term control. You don't get that when you sign a free agent from the D-League for a one or two year deal. You don't get NEAR that.
Mid to late firsts removes the lottery guys from the equation so 16 and later are the main picks I'm looking at (ie: likely the only sorts of picks Boston was willing to give up for Melo. Turner (10), Lyles (11), Booker (13) and Oubre (15) would fall out of that discussion and you'd be sitting on 5 picks out of 15...or a 1 in 3 hit rate. But to be fair it's a bunch of rookies, they could progress plenty in the course of their contracts. I'd point more to a draft class like 2012 where we can see players with years of development and only a handful are starting quality. To be fair, 2013 was a pretty deep draft with a lot of capable players going later, but that draft was also extremely weak at the top. So guys like Bennett and Len went top five
I used this year as a reference on how quickly those guys are contributing. If you start using guys that have been in the league 2-3 years, you get even bigger value.
Plus this year is another draft where there's one or two "sure-fire stars" and then a deep pool of guys that could be useful. Outside the lottery could you land Valentine, Zimmerman, Diallo, Luwawu or Korkmaz, Sabonis, LeVert, Cordinier, Hernangomez, newman or monte morris
To which my response was "the deal absolutely has to include that first and it's still shaky because the rest of the picks are mid to late picks." My stance, which hasn't shifted, is that there will be more offers for Melo in the offseason when teams have added cap space which eases the salary matching implications.
Two things:
1) If we got offered Brooklyn's pick, you take it, no hesitations. You'd be crazy to argue otherwise.
2) That assumes Melo doesn't spend the rest of the year in and out of the trainer's room... which right now, doesn't look great. If he continues to look like he's breaking down, nobody will want him at all. AND he'll be not much help to us. On the court, or attracting free agents.
Draft picks is just the most obvious way to keep costs low and has the added bonus of hope. But signing players to smart contracts can be just as impactful.
CAN be, the difference is when you draft a player, you a GUARANTEED to get that player. When you go into free agency HOPING TO FIND a player, you run the risk of NOT getting that player.
A scenario which the knicks have become QUITE accustomed.
Obviously if the team is going to miss the playoffs next season, dumping Melo makes sense...but the team has cap space to see what it can pick up before forcing him out and condemning itself to a rebuild that is guaranteed to take a few years, plus the return on trade could be better.
This is where your hopeful optimism seems to disconnect from reality. You are hoping that as melo ages, he's going to get more valuable. Which just simply doesn't happen all that often. A year and a half ago, we could have had Jimmy Butler, Mirotic or Taj and picks... now we're talking about late firsts, maybe... the trendline is DOWN not UP.
The team is short on talent, the rotation has clear holes. However, if you're thinking in a 5 year increment, then the 20 million dollars in cap space coupled with another big increase next off season should help seal up some of those holes. Youth development should also help with talent. Then having our picks going past this season means shots at adding youth too. Again, none of that is to say that you don't trade Melo for the right package. But trading Melo just for Mozgov and a couple of 50/50 (which I think is overly optimistic oddsmaking even) shots at cheap starters isn't the right deal to move him in. You can afford to be greedy with Melo on a five year plan unless you're more worried about his happiness than your franchise's long term success...but last time we did a favor for an overpaid superstar, the Ewing trade ruined our cap situation for half a decade.
