dagger wrote:YogurtProducer wrote:Jeremy Lin 7 wrote:Anyone suggesting to trade for Wiggins needs to actually watch basketball.
2022 Wiggs is nothing more than a fluke. What you see right now is what you're getting. He's 29 on the decline and simply does not care about basketball enough to improve his game. Add on to his disgusting contract anyone GM needs to be fired on the spot if they trade for him.
Anyone who thinks trading for Wiggins is actually about Wiggins needs to actually follow how roster and cap management works.
You get some future assets (Moody, a first, whatever) - and then you have the ability to later parlay Wiggins + other salaries (GTJ maybe?) if you want to make a bigger splash down the road. You also cant ignore the possibility a move revitalizes Wiggins career - he is is overpaid but he is far from a bad player. A guy who is a solid defender who is shooting 38% from 3 the last 4 years.
IQ/RJ/Wiggins/Barnes/Poeltl is far from a bad lineup to have as we transition as a franchise.
Not to mention that eventually Wiggins is an expiring, and having a $24M expiring in the current NBA client where teams need to get off money could be extremely valuable to have.
All of this Wiggins stuff is off-the-charts unlikely. There is only so much dead money a team will take on to get a middling talent like Moody or another (likely to be lottery protected pick). Moody is extension eligible this summer, so add an MLE-type contract for him on top of the Wiggins money. That becomes enormously expensive for a bunch of bench guys.
The same pressures created by the new CBA ton tax teams also are formulating the thinking of currently non-tax teams. Every team looks at all of its downstream cost pressures - notably extensions or new contracts with their own players to be negotiated, future draft pick salaries, etc. The Raptors will be adding a new contract for IQ. They will have a couple of draft pick salaries to add, and one fairly significant one if they keep their own pick and even jump up in this draft.
For Toronto, the Wiggins thing sailed when GSW didn't become a Siakam bidder.
Not necessarily. The team will have enough room after RJ ($26M), Yak ($20M), IQ ($26-30M) and Scottie ($10M next season, probably followed by $36M the following) to absorb a contract like Wiggins ($26M), and still fill out the rest of the roster.
The choice on Wiggins, is whether there is a better trade candidate for Bruce Brown's contract that could become available next season, and whether the team wants to resign GTJ. If they are fine letting both Brown and GTJ walk this offseason, they could probably easily absorb Wiggins deal into that space (could tack on McDaniels' deal in the trade to free up $5M, and even Boucher's deal, almost $11M if it is required to make the trade work).
The good thing about Wiggins deal is it ends the same year as RJ, Yak and Gradey's deals. So when RJ and Gradey's deal need to be renegotiated, the team has just freed up space from Wiggins and Yak's expiring deals.
But that means then the core is probably set for the next 3 years: Barnes, RJ, IQ, Yak, Wiggins, Dick, plus whatever players they acquire through draft picks. And there are complimentary pieces like KO and OA.
The question on Wiggins is whether he is the best asset the Raps could acquire with that additional cap space room, as teams look to dump salaries with the new CBA restrictions kicking in.