davesilver wrote:Elite player route:
Either acquire via trade or FA.
Elite role players route:
Either acquire via trade or FA.
We have two assets, draft capital and cap space. It wouldn't make sense imo to use both draft capital AND cap space for an elite player, unless you're getting a tier A superstar. The only guy here is Lebron imo.
Given the landscape of FA, I do actually believe signing PG is the best option. He's still 98th percentile in EPM. Even a 10% regression would give us an elite 3+D / secondary playmaker that fits like a glove next to Embiid/Maxey.
This would give us ~20M (could be off here) for our role players. The best part about using strictly cap space to sign PG would be that we'd retain our assets for trading pieces later on.
5-6 4-8M/year guys:
S+T Buddy + LAC first + 2RP for Caruso
1 year / 4M deal for Batum
Bruce Brown at 7M?
Oubre at 7M MLE
Lowry at min
Maxey Caruso PG Batum Embiid
Lowry Brown Oubre RC4 Reed
I agree with this. Probably one of the least bad outcomes is signing Paul George for pure cap. That way at least we keep our draft assets for future upgrades via trade.
The worst outcome will be trading away many picks for a similar impact guy like Jimmy Butler. Then we're as stuck as the Suns and Clippers are with almost no way to improve going forward.
You're right that Paul George's impact metrics this year were insanely good, so I think we can expect at least 2 years of all-star play from him at age 34 and 35. After that I don't expect much but at least his contract would probably be tradable.