Pattycakes wrote:
The Blazers get back two future two way starters in DA and Camara along with potl 3 Bucks lottery picks to add in the mix during prime years for our current future. I don’t see how the Dame trade was possible a net negative considering he’s declining and the trade was 5 years too late. I really don’t get any logical pessimism on that trade or even this last offseason, alone. Blazers are executing incredibly lately for an actual serious rebuild. Not a retool, a multi year rebuild.
good job painting the situation in the most wishful thinking manner you could. The reality isn't all sunshine and rainbows like you imply
* calling Ayton a 2 way player is only fair if you acknowledge that Portland traded a 2-way player in Nurkic for him. Ayton is a much better shooter than Nurkic and is 4 years younger. But Nurkic is a better rebounder, a much better passer, better at screens, a better rim protector, and a better paint defender. And Nurkic costs half as much
* Camara is a 2-way player, but calling him a starter seems to ignore he's just a default starter at this point. Kind of similar to the way Aminu and Harkless were default starters. I like Camara and have some optimism about him but that optimism is tempered by the reality that Camara wasn't a 19-20 year old starter at SF. He was 23 and he turns 24 in two weeks. He has already progressed thru those significant 19-22 year old development years
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as to the "
potential 3 Bucks lottery picks", two of those are not picks they are swaps and the reality is historically, swaps aren't valuable at all and people around here pointing to those swaps in defending the Dame trade are deflecting, IMO:
"
But how valuable is a pick swap? To answer that question, we surveyed every first-round swap in NBA history, according to the Pro Sports Transactions archives. We recorded whether the swap was exercised, and if so, how much value the exercising team gained by exchanging picks, using Kevin Pelton’s calculations of pick values as a benchmark.
The results suggest that pick swaps aren’t anywhere near as important as they might seem. Historically, a first-round pick swap has been only about as valuable as the no. 36 overall pick. That’s worth repeating: The average first-round pick swap returns second-round value!
Out of 31 times through the 2022 draft that a team could have swapped a first-rounder, it did so on only 12 occasions. That means in 61 percent of the league’s possible swaps to date, the swap ended up being worth nothing
What about those 12 exercised swaps? Many provided only a smidgeon of value for the team that was able to jump to a better pick, like a move from 20th to 18th, or 17th to 15th, or 26th to 18th. Some swaps—the Celtics-Nets exchange most of all—were much more valuable. But those were few and far between.
So overall, accounting for the swaps that weren’t exercised and the boosts in draft position for those that were, we can calculate that the average pick swap yields about as much value as the average no. 36 pick in the draft. That’s 20 percent the value of an average first-rounder—a massive difference in trade price between swap rights and an unprotected pick."
https://www.theringer.com/nba/2022/10/12/23399637/nba-draft-swap-picksand of course, extracting value from that 2028 swap might be impossible because that pick could belong to Chicago (thanks Olshey)
and the wishful thinking notion that those 2029 picks will be a great adjunct to what the Blazers are 'building' right now ignores just how far away 2029 is in NBA terms. That 2029 draft when the Blazers have Milwaukee and Boston picks, and the 2029-30, are 3 years
AFTER Ayton, Ant, and Thybulle will be unrestricted free agents. That 2029 draft could be 2 weeks before Sharpe is UFA. And the 2030 pick swap could be 2 weeks before Scoot is UFA
let's also be further realistic about those questionable 2028-2030 picks and swaps. We saw how far Scoot has to go to be a credible starter this year. And we saw that Sharpe has a long way to go as well. Honestly, most rookies who are not generational talents need to progress into their 3rd or 4th or 5th seasons before they really start impacting the trajectory of a team. See Anthony Edwards. So forget the 2029-30 season and think 2032 or 2033 before there's a real potential payoff in team trajectory for trading Dame