Early (but not too early) 2023 off-season wishlist

[ShooterSays]

1 hour ago, NBASupes said:

The problem is any trade for a star or top 50 player will cost us another one like Murray. Ideally, would we love to do a deal with Boston where we keep Murray as well but that's not gonna be easy at all.

Brown is tough especially if it happens this off-season. For salary match, I think JC gets it done but I doubt they go for that…I wouldn’t.

More than likely it costs you DJ + Hunter. That’s who I would ask for if I was Boston.

But it all depends on how Boston’s playoff run goes. If they win it all or lose a really competitive series in the finals, I think he stays. 

[ShooterSays]

2 hours ago, NBASupes said:

The problem is any trade for a star or top 50 player will cost us another one like Murray. Ideally, would we love to do a deal with Boston where we keep Murray as well but that's not gonna be easy at all.

This is another reason why I throw out Porzingis over someone like KAT. Minny has to try and compete now after the Gobert trade. They HAVE to get someone like DJ who can help them win now.

Washington? Let’s be honest…they should have started the tank years ago. I think they start this off-season and instead of trying to get a player who can help them compete, they want assets.

[JayBirdHawk]

Thoughts?

 

 

[Spud2nique]

2 minutes ago, JayBirdHawk said:

Thoughts?

 

 

Jevon been my boy for a minute since the draft. He’s tough but not ALL that but very tough. 
 

And ya, any perimeter defender, forward, guard, center we need it all.

[Wretch]

23 hours ago, JTB said:

Other than Ayton….I wouldn’t mind the possibility of getting Portzingis.

im sure I’m misspelled his name but you guys know who I’m referring to. Kristaps had his best nba season this year and was actually good defensively around the goal.

Porzingis blipped on my radar at the beginning of the season.  He hasn't moved up or down my list because of his injury history (obviously) and because for a guy with that much in his bag, he's been bounced a couple of times for modest returns. 

He seemed healthy this season though. I wouldn't be opposed if we did our due diligence on him.

[JTB]

3 hours ago, JayBirdHawk said:

Thoughts?

 

 

Lawd I’m old….ok Who is DFS? 

[JTB]

34 minutes ago, Wretch said:

Porzingis blipped on my radar at the beginning of the season.  He hasn't moved up or down my list because of his injury history (obviously) and because for a guy with that much in his bag, he's been bounced a couple of times for modest returns. 

He seemed healthy this season though. I wouldn't be opposed if we did our due diligence on him.

My biggest issue isn’t his health. I think he could actually stay healthy more often now than them. I’m sure he learned his body by now and when you know your body you approach things differently.

my biggest issue is his rebounding. If we brought him in….OO would really have to be ready to attack the boards. Hunters rebounding would need to improve too and stay consistent.

[JayBirdHawk]

22 minutes ago, JTB said:

Lawd I’m old….ok Who is DFS? 

Dorian Finney-Smith.

[JustSomeGuy]

This is off topic but watching this Nuggets-Suns game Aaron Gordon has carved out a nice role for himself. 

[JustSomeGuy]

I also definitely want absolutely nothing to do with Ayton. My God he would be a disaster here. 

[JayBirdHawk]

Below are the Hawks available trade exceptions they can use to acquire a player:

We have 2 that are useful: $2.5 and $6.2 million. Any players interesting for these amounts? (They cannot be combined).

[Phunkabilly]

On 5/1/2023 at 11:03 PM, Wretch said:

Porzingis blipped on my radar at the beginning of the season.  He hasn't moved up or down my list because of his injury history (obviously) and because for a guy with that much in his bag, he's been bounced a couple of times for modest returns. 

He seemed healthy this season though. I wouldn't be opposed if we did our due diligence on him.

I seem to recall Quin gushing on Porzingis during a post-game press conference after we played the Wizards towards the end of the year.  I might be reading too much into that, but it sure seemed like Quin is a big fan.

[REHawksFan]

On 5/1/2023 at 8:24 PM, JayBirdHawk said:

Thoughts?

 

 

Along those lines, saw this today.....apparently could be had with the MLE.  Just sayin...

 

Hollinger: Dillon Brooks can still help almost anyone … if he can manage The Line

John Hollinger

May 4, 2023

10

It is impossible to discuss Dillon Brooks without discussing The Line, the razor-thin one between competitive and crazy that he must straddle to succeed as an NBA player.

All players must do so, to a certain extent, but in Brooks’s case it’s a non-negotiable term of his NBA survival.

Every significant player in the league got here because he has at least one freakish talent, one superpower. That goes for even the role players who you don’t often think about. Brooks’s superpower is “insane competitiveness,” and without it he’s probably playing in Grand Rapids or Gran Canaria right now. It got him in trouble sometimes as a younger player, especially. If somebody scored on him, he had to resist the urge to immediately score on that guy at the other end, no matter what kind of Kobe shot he had to take.

And it got him in trouble more recently, obviously, when he played a wrestling heel a little too well at the start of the Grizzlies’ first-round series against the Lakers and couldn’t back up his words.

Nonetheless, that fire is how he became an elite defensive player despite physical tools that would seemingly make such an achievement unlikely – including one of the few wingspans in recent league annals that measure shorter than his height, and a pudgy teenage body he transformed into its current chiseled state. To make it work, though, he has to play right on the edge, where it periodically spills over into techs, flagrants and forced shots. It’s a tricky balance.

This isn’t exactly new information, of course. I was with the Grizzlies front office when we selected Brooks with the 45th pick in 2017, as most readers already know, and the intel then was similar. At some point in his three years at Oregon, he ticked off every opposing team in the Pac-12 with his incessant trash talk. He also was the best player on a Ducks team that went to the Final Four. Behind that wasn’t just bluster, either: There was a rare drive, work ethic and intelligence to how he played the game itself and the mind games against his opposition.

That isn’t to excuse anything he’s done in the past two weeks, when he clearly careened out of control and over The Line in ways that likely secured his exit from Memphis. It is merely to point out its existence, and the difficulty of balancing atop it rather than tumbling off either side.

It’s an amusement park ride that feels fraught with potential disaster at every turn. On the other hand, the ride stayed on the rails for years up until the last two weeks, as Brooks thrived as a starter on one of the league’s best teams. That takes us to the second part of the discussion: If you think Dillon Brooks can’t help your team, I hope you have some outstanding alternatives lined up.

Brooks may no longer be right for the exact role he had in Memphis, where the team evolved to needing him to do three things he couldn’t: Space a floor that already had two other non-shooters on it most of the time, not really look for his offense that much otherwise, and tone down the yapping on a squad already feeling itself a little too much.

But as far as contributing to a good team’s success? I think we’re well beyond the point where he has proven he can do that. Brooks started for a playoff team for three straight years, averaged 26 points a game on 60 percent True Shooting in the 2021 first round and had favorable on-off numbers in each of the last three seasons – hugely so in 2020-21 and 2021-22.

Of late, his offensive imperfections have stood out. He’s still wired to score, and that can be a negative depending on the surrounding offensive talent. More problematic is that the “3” part of his 3-and-D game has gone AWOL. Brooks’s declining 3-point accuracy was an issue in the current playoffs in particular, as the Lakers grew increasingly rude about ignoring him on the perimeter. However, that’s also the most high-variance part of any player’s performance history. If he just gets back to shooting in the mid-30s from 3, as he did in his first four NBA seasons, he’s a plus 3-and-D weapon.

Beyond that, look at the free-agent market. Puff your chest out and say, “We don’t want that guy on our team,” but if it’s for midlevel exception money and you need a small forward, it will be extremely difficult to do any better. (This, indeed, is the challenge Memphis will face this offseason. Both parties are at a point where it’s better to move on, but there’s a reason the Grizzlies rode it out this far.)

Once again, the key thing that everyone forgets about free agency is the “free” part. Of the small forwards who are truly gettable in this year’s market and not fantasyland targets who will re-sign with their own teams, Brooks and Denver’s Bruce Brown might be the only ones capable of starting on a playoff team. Yes, the postseason showed the limitations of having Brooks in the lineup in that role against elite teams, but you also need to make the playoffs first. For teams with a hole at the position and no cap space, getting him with the non-taxpayer midlevel exception (MLE) looks mighty tempting.

In fact, listing potential suitors really isn’t hard. Virtually every team needs wing defenders, so virtually every team projected below the tax line qualifies. (Except, ironically, Brooks’s hometown Toronto Raptors, who are already overweight in wing defenders with iffy shots.)

In particular, one can see how Brooks might be tempting for Chicago, which found its footing toward the end of last season despite a paucity of trustworthy forwards.

… or Charlotte, which lacks wing defenders but otherwise looks primed for a resurgence next year.

… or Dallas, which needs a bulldog defender and might allow Brooks to spread his wings a bit offensively in non-Luka Dončić minutes.

… or Sacramento, which might be squeamish about the offensive rope he’d have in its system, but is hankering for at least one more defensive wing.

… or Portland, which is over-indexed on small guards and only has the limited Matisse Thybulle as a defensive ace.

… or my hometown Hawks, who are thirsty for a true wing stopper and will have room below the tax line as soon as they trade John Collins. Which surely will happen any day now, right?

I mentioned the MLE, but Brooks could end up doing significantly better. If you’re looking at cap-room teams who might view him as a strong Plan B if they miss on big fish, Detroit, Houston, Indiana and Utah all have ample space and clear motivation to add a defensive stopper. Yes, those are younger, rebuilding teams, but at 27, Brooks isn’t some fossil. Detroit and Houston, in particular, are itching to turn the corner next year: the Pistons love junkyard dogs, while the Rockets wouldn’t mind adding some attitude and toughness to usher in the Ime Udoka era.

All that, ironically, could play against Memphis’s interests. Having teams that can sign him outright with cap space hurts the Grizzlies’ ability to package him in a sign-and-trade that either upgrades the roster or preserves a large trade exception for later.

On the other hand, what started as a negative could end as a positive. Right now, Brooks is the best wing every team knows for sure it can sign this summer with no competition from his former team. That information alone could help create a market, even with the bad press that came along the way. As a Grizzlies minority owner once said, what comes around goes around and goes around and comes all the way back around.

Fittingly, we can also end this story back at the beginning. The answer to the conundrum of where Brooks best fits is that he belongs in the spot where it’s easiest for him to straddle The Line – where he can be an aggressive bulldog defender without needlessly poking bears (or GOATs), where he can be a secondary offensive weapon without getting overly thirsty and where his edge and work ethic help inspire an overachieving team as it did in Memphis in 2020-21 and 2021-22.

It’s an uneasy ride at times, straddling that line, but it can be hugely profitable for the right team if it works out. Depending on the night, Brooks will take bad shots, rack up technical fouls and rile up opposing benches. He’s also an elite wing defender in the prime of his career, with the work ethic to address his recent offensive slump and a past history of respectable shooting.

Finding the right situation for him to manage The Line will be important, but turn your nose up at him at your own risk. In a market that’s not exactly teeming with wing talent, he could end up as one of the best value free agents this year.

[Guest]

Regarding the merits of Dillon Brooks...
My father used to tell me "If a one sentence question takes fives times as many sentences to answer it, then the answer is probably bullshit."
That applies here, IMHO.  Hollinger needs a small novella-like explanation of the merits of signing Dillion Brooks.  That checks the bullshit box for me.  I think he's mainly trying to justify his own drafting of Brooks back when he was in the front office.  
Overrated asshat (both of them). 

[JayBirdHawk]

9 minutes ago, LongTimeFan said:

I think he's mainly trying to justify his own drafting of Brooks back when he was in the front office.  
Overrated asshat (both of them). 

[AHF]

I do think there is a very viable scenario where Brooks ends up being a steal in FA.  If he sees that teams don't really value him, it could be something of a reality check (bringing him closer to reality for his offensive role) and could be a big motivator for him to prove the other teams wrong.  That scenario also comes with him signing a relatively low $$ contract which both reduces the downside for the team signing him (easy to cut or give away a low $ player if his attitude is bad) and increases the chances for him to outperform that contract.  I think the fundamental premise of Hollinger's article has some merit to it for that reason - especially in an NBA where defensive wings have maybe more value than they've ever had.

[REHawksFan]

32 minutes ago, AHF said:

I do think there is a very viable scenario where Brooks ends up being a steal in FA.  If he sees that teams don't really value him, it could be something of a reality check (bringing him closer to reality for his offensive role) and could be a big motivator for him to prove the other teams wrong.  That scenario also comes with him signing a relatively low $$ contract which both reduces the downside for the team signing him (easy to cut or give away a low $ player if his attitude is bad) and increases the chances for him to outperform that contract.  I think the fundamental premise of Hollinger's article has some merit to it for that reason - especially in an NBA where defensive wings have maybe more value than they've ever had.

So the taxpayer MLE is about $7,000,000/year.  Would that be a low enough salary to be worth the risk?  He made $11,400,000 this year I think.  

[JayBirdHawk]

13 minutes ago, REHawksFan said:

So the taxpayer MLE is about $7,000,000/year.  Would that be a low enough salary to be worth the risk?  He made $11,400,000 this year I think.  

Mid-Level Exception

Year	Standard MLE	Taxpayer MLE	Room MLE
2023/24	$11,368,000	$7,021,000	$5,853,000
2024/25	$11,936,400	$7,372,050	$6,145,650
2025/26	$12,504,800	$7,723,100	–
2026/27	$13,073,200	–	–
Total	$48,882,400	$22,116,150	$11,998,650

The standard mid-level exception is available to over-the-cap teams that haven’t dipped below the cap to use room and don’t go over the tax apron. It can run for up to four years, with 5% annual raises. Once a team uses the standard/non-taxpayer MLE, that team is hard-capped at the tax apron for the rest of the league year. 

The taxpayer mid-level exception is for in-the-tax teams, or teams that want the flexibility to surpass the tax apron later. It can run for up to three years, with 5% annual raises.

The room exception is for teams that go under the cap and use their space. Once they’ve used all their cap room, they can use this version of the mid-level exception, which runs for up to two years with 5% annual raises.

[REHawksFan]

46 minutes ago, JayBirdHawk said:

Mid-Level Exception

Year	Standard MLE	Taxpayer MLE	Room MLE
2023/24	$11,368,000	$7,021,000	$5,853,000
2024/25	$11,936,400	$7,372,050	$6,145,650
2025/26	$12,504,800	$7,723,100	–
2026/27	$13,073,200	–	–
Total	$48,882,400	$22,116,150	$11,998,650

The standard mid-level exception is available to over-the-cap teams that haven’t dipped below the cap to use room and don’t go over the tax apron. It can run for up to four years, with 5% annual raises. Once a team uses the standard/non-taxpayer MLE, that team is hard-capped at the tax apron for the rest of the league year. 

The taxpayer mid-level exception is for in-the-tax teams, or teams that want the flexibility to surpass the tax apron later. It can run for up to three years, with 5% annual raises.

The room exception is for teams that go under the cap and use their space. Once they’ve used all their cap room, they can use this version of the mid-level exception, which runs for up to two years with 5% annual raises.

You said NO to a trade for Brooks, would you still say NO to signing him as a FA?  Was it the cost or the player that you were against?  Just curious. I think the Hawks would benefit from that type of player.  Ya know, like these dudes....

 

 

 

 

[JayBirdHawk]

7 minutes ago, REHawksFan said:

You said NO to a trade for Brooks, would you still say NO to signing him as a FA? 

Me?  I think you meant AHF.