Trade & FA 2024-25:

[KillerLeft]

I’m thinking of the Russell Westbrook situation for years. When you have three hall of famers who are also your three highest paid players, they will want to start and close games.

You can theorize all you want about staggering their minutes but that almost always leads to discontent and drama.

You can only make this move if you believe Luka, Kai, Klay, PJ, Lively/Gafford is a lineup you’re comfortable playing in the most important situations.

I agree, to an extent. I really do. 

But, this is also my argument against rebuttals like Bogdanovic, Kennard, etc. For me, those moves do very little, even if they're improvements on paper. The elephant in the room, as you've identified, is improving your TOP 5-man lineup, which needs to function on both ends of the floor. This is TOUGH to do. More accurately, it's probably to add a player who can function in a few different lineups consisting of players from your top 6-7 guys. 

If they don't think Thompson can do that, and their actions are screaming to me that have a good sense of these things, they won't do what we're all worried about them doing. If you're right about that being the only set of circumstances Klay will accept, he won't end up here. 

If I'm wrong about that, we go scorched earth and turn victory plaza into Portland.