05-13-2025, 02:48 PM
(This post was last modified: 05-13-2025, 02:59 PM by KillerLeft.)
(05-13-2025, 02:43 PM)cow Wrote: It's not about thinking Nico will screw this up or doom and gloom, it's just looking at realities and wanting to build for the future instead of investing more in a core that will age out in three years time. We could move players and invest assets to trying and get a chip with AD/Kyrie and certainly be competitive, but I don't that's the correct road to go down. My entire focus would be on the long term development of Cooper Flagg and the team we need to put around him and since we haven't seen him play in the NBA, that's a lot of unknowns and shortcutting the process always blew up in our face with our last star.
I think a very good argument can be made for that, only they'd have to sell a LOT of talent because they don't control their own draft capital during the time you're thinking of. MAYBE you can turn like every good player they have into draft capital that matters (the majority of draft capital that moves in deals like that doesn't), but I think that would be really difficult - more difficult than we realize.
I think that, as long as the efforts to maximize the next 2-3 window don't involve sending too much youth out for age or putting obstacles in Flagg's path to development, it might actually be EASIER to stay relevant as you develop him. If they hadn't mortgaged the entire next 5-7 years to build around Luka BEFORE deciding they didn't want to build around Luka, I'd probably be right there with you.