Dion Waiters Traded

roozy said:

We desperately needed length, the team looks so damn small out there.

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This I agree with. I really question Shumpert tho. He is more injury prone than Kyrie and worse injuries. He is not what he was, and he was never that good.

We are hoping both of these players bounce back, and we are hoping Smith is on his best behavior. Big gamble.

Also they are both currently injured to add to our already strong core of injured players.

Cavatt said:

This I agree with. I really question shympert tho. He is not injury prone than Kyrie and worse injuries. He is not what he was, and he was never that good.

We are going both of these players bounce back, and we are hoping Smith is in his best behavior. Big gamble.

Also they are both currently injured to add to our already strong core of injured players.

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Read your post and then think about what that means the value of Dion Waiters is around the league.

We were willing to take a risk on an oft-injured Shumpert AND take on JR (im cancer) Smith just to get rid of Dion.

You know this move wouldn't have been done without Lebron's blessing. That means in a few short months Dion went from being supported by Lebron to the exact opposite. I think his attitude behind the scenes really wears his teammates thin and Lloyd spoke to that last year.

Zen said:

Read your post and then think about what that means the value of Dion Waiters is around the league.

We were willing to take a risk on an oft-injured Shumpert AND take on JR (im cancer) Smith just to get rid of Dion.

You know this move wouldn't have been done without Lebron's blessing. That means in a few short months Dion went from being supported by Lebron to the exact opposite. I think his attitude behind the scenes really wears his teammates thin and Lloyd spoke to that last year.

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If you think I like all the moves we have made in the name of our lord and savior Lebron, then you are mistaken. He wants Mike Miller to start! He is happy to clear or assets or for us. I do not approve of Lebron as our gm. Misstep after misstep since his return.

There is almost 0 upside to this team. No young players developing. A strength is now a weakness because we tried to build a contender in one year. No flexibility.

The argument was that the heat had no assets to improve and we did. That's us now. We better pray for perfect health.

We overspent and are now panicking.

Cavatt said:

If you think I like all the moves we have made in the name of our lord and savior Lebron, then you are mistaken. He wants Mike Miller to start! He is happy to clear or assets or for us. I do not approve of Lebron as our gm. Misstep after misstep since his return.

There is almost 0 upside to this team. No young players developing. A strength is now a weakness because we tried to build a contender in one year. No flexibility.

The argument was that the heat had no assets to improve and we did. That's us now. We better pray for perfect health.

We overspent and are now panicking.

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All the trades that were made weren't from a position of power. LBJ said he would come back and teams knew we had to dump salary, overpaid to do so. The love trade didn't have to be done at that very minute but they seem to want to get him right away, could of waited and see how it played out. Waiters traded because we needed return of wing players and an asset to get big because varejao is hurt and we don't have 3 bigs to play minutes.

Cavatt said:

If you think I like all the moves we have made in the name of our lord and savior Lebron, then you are mistaken. He wants Mike Miller to start! He is happy to clear or assets or for us. I do not approve of Lebron as our gm. Misstep after misstep since his return.

There is almost 0 upside to this team. No young players developing. A strength is now a weakness because we tried to build a contender in one year. No flexibility.

The argument was that the heat had no assets to improve and we did. That's us now. We better pray for perfect health.

We overspent and are now panicking.

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Kyrie Irving - 22
Tristan Thompson - 23
Kevin Love - 26
Iman Shumpert - 24
Matthew Dellavedova - 24
Joe Harris - 23

The idea that we have no young players is ridiculous. Four out of the five players in our healthy starting line-up (I am assuming Shumpert will start when he's back) are 26 and under. We also have two first round picks from other teams to dangle in potential trades in addition to our own this year (which can't be traded), along with Haywood's non-guaranteed contract we can trade this summer.

We are nowhere near in the position that the Heat were in. The Heat had no draft picks. We have (most likely) two this summer, along with the Grizzlies pick which will vest sometime in the next two years. We have all our own draft picks except the 2016 pick too.

I liked Dion, but he wasn't the only young player on our team, and I think we ultimately got a pretty good value in return for dealing him. We turned one rotation guy (albeit with a reasonably high ceiling) into two rotation guys and a first round pick. It would have been awesome if Dion had embraced his role and played the way some of us were hoping he would, but that just didn't happen. Given the circumstances, the deal we made was pretty solid.

IM not getting into @inliner311 being emotional about Dion Waiters being traded. Best move for the team. Glad its done. Looking forward to seeing how Shump compliments Bron and Irving, AND what the OKC pick brings... anything from JR Smith will be bonus.

But I will say that its in the best interest of the ORG if Tristan is either moved or retained for less than market value. Simply irresponsible for LeBron to push to have Andy paid like he was, when he was. CANNOT make the same mistake twice and be a responsible FO.

Irregardless of how this season plays out (outside of TT being turned into a Dion like return on future asset/flexibility and a true rim protector) that will be the next move that I watch in regard to LeBron's input on how this team is constructed.

SIMPLY cannot hamstring this team with TT and Andy at similar pay rates.

RchfldCavRaised said:

But I will say that its in the best interest of the ORG if Tristan is either moved or retained for less than market value. Simply irresponsible for LeBron to push to have Andy paid like he was, when he was. CANNOT make the same mistake twice and be a responsible FO.

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Personally, I think the team needs to let Tristan explore the market and find out that power forwards are a dime a dozen and that no one is giving him ten million a year.

@red.

Fair warning. I am "disagreeing" with every single post you make on this site as long as the feature exists. That is like 35 from you with absolutely no debate to follow. Nothing wrong with a "disagree" and healthy debate. However, you contribute nothing.

Cheers, and...

RchfldCavRaised said:

But I will say that its in the best interest of the ORG if Tristan is either moved or retained for less than market value. Simply irresponsible for LeBron to push to have Andy paid like he was, when he was. CANNOT make the same mistake twice and be a responsible FO.

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Wholeheartedly agree with this sentiment, but I just can't see the bolded happening.

RchfldCavRaised said:

IM not getting into @inliner311 being emotional about Dion Waiters being traded. Best move for the team. Glad its done. Looking forward to seeing how Shump compliments Bron and Irving, AND what the OKC pick brings... anything from JR Smith will be bonus.

But I will say that its in the best interest of the ORG if Tristan is either moved or retained for less than market value. Simply irresponsible for LeBron to push to have Andy paid like he was, when he was. CANNOT make the same mistake twice and be a responsible FO.

Irregardless of how this season plays out (outside of TT being turned into a Dion like return on future asset/flexibility and a true rim protector) that will be the next move that I watch in regard to LeBron's input on how this team is constructed.

SIMPLY cannot hamstring this team with TT and Andy at similar pay rates.

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“When you’re operating over the cap, you cannot replace the player,” the executive said. “This is how Jeff Green got $9 million. Boston was over the cap and looking at Green as a $6 million player. But they had to decide: Do you pay a $6 million player $9 million or replace him with a guy making the minimum? So you pay the $9 million.”

The bolded quote was from Lloyd's article yesterday and I think describes perfectly the problem we are going to have with TT.

He won't be worth $10-12 million a year (although I could actually see a team paying that) as a back-up, but we are so far into cap oblivion that we can't find another 24 year old big who can replicate his production for the minimum.

He should be getting Andy's money, and Andy should be gone if they had done it correctly.

TT has the team over a barrel now because his agents know that we need him for what he does, and that we can't replace him if we let him walk.

Our choices are probably wildly overpay like we did with Andy or relegate ourselves to being the Heat and filling his spot with another aging vet type every year who wants to chase a ring for cheap.

Cavatt said:

If you think I like all the moves we have made in the name of our lord and savior Lebron, then you are mistaken. He wants Mike Miller to start! He is happy to clear or assets or for us. I do not approve of Lebron as our gm. Misstep after misstep since his return.

There is almost 0 upside to this team. No young players developing. A strength is now a weakness because we tried to build a contender in one year. No flexibility.

The argument was that the heat had no assets to improve and we did. That's us now. We better pray for perfect health.

We overspent and are now panicking.

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Yeah I don't disagree. I was more speaking to the significance of the fact that Lebron would have certainly okay'd the move which means he soured on Dion just like a lot of other people. Lebron was one of his big supporters early on.

Birdy89 said:

“When you’re operating over the cap, you cannot replace the player,” the executive said. “This is how Jeff Green got $9 million. Boston was over the cap and looking at Green as a $6 million player. But they had to decide: Do you pay a $6 million player $9 million or replace him with a guy making the minimum? So you pay the $9 million.”

The bolded quote was from Lloyd's article yesterday and I think describes perfectly the problem we are going to have with TT.

He won't be worth $10-12 million a year (although I could actually see a team paying that) as a back-up, but we are so far into cap oblivion that we can't find another 24 year old big who can replicate his production for the minimum.

He should be getting Andy's money, and Andy should be gone if they had done it correctly.

TT has the team over a barrel now because his agents know that we need him for what he does, and that we can't replace him if we let him walk.

Our choices are probably wildly overpay like we did with Andy or relegate ourselves to being the Heat and filling his spot with another aging vet type every year who wants to chase a ring for cheap.

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They will just let Tristan sign an offer sheet and match it. He will probably end up getting paid handsomely, due to the cap increasing and a team trying to overpay to steal him from the Cavs.

I am positive that you could find somebody late in the draft or even free agents that would give you the same production as TT. Just look at Tarick Black. Give him same minutes as TT and he will produce at the same clip. Energy bigs off the bench with limited offense is easy to find.

RchfldCavRaised said:

Sucks to see this play out, but I think Dion and his agent were irresponsible for casting him as a SG just to get him drafted higher.

I actually love Dion's emotion. Just feel he was miscast from the start. Should have never been put next to a player like Irving. They both need the same kind of 3 and D guard beside them. He'll get that now when he ends up in combinations with Roberson and/or when Russ is sucking wind and lets him handle the ball in their time on the court.

Im more upset with Grant for making two picks that stunted the growth of Irving and left us with two reserves than I am for Dion not turning into what he never showed he could be. Kinda like expecting Tristan to turn into what he is not as well. Would rather move on from him too than pay him 12 mil a season now.

Two very bad draft picks.

Good Luck Ball Hard

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It's turning out, that Chris Grant was a pretty crappy GM. Couldn't draft worth shit, all his free agent signings bombed, regardless if they were all his choices, or not.

I guess the only good thing to say about him, is he did very well in trades, and the idea he had wasn't exactly bad. But when you can't make the picks count, it defeats the purpose of what he was trying to do.

Gilbert may be at fault for a lot, but he made the 100% right decision getting rid of him.

It's not exactly that Grant's picks were bad basketball players, he had poor vision though seeing what kind of team we needed to be. He had no idea of what kind of team he envision on the floor when it came to making his draft selections.

He just figured the players he liked, regardless of how their games mesh with each other, would just work. And it clearly didn't. So yes, he's definitely a HUGE reason why the growth of this team has been so stagnant. Hell, as much meddling as Gilbert does, and as much dirt he has on his hands, I still give most the blame to Grant.

If he just made the right picks, things could have looked a lot different, but he didn't.

I'm not saying Grant can't judge talent at all, but to me, it's pretty obvious he's just a scout at best, and he has no idea how to build a team. Being a judge of talent alone, definitely doesn't qualify someone to be a good GM.

He didn't know how to put a team together, and it was obvious with his draft picks, and his free agent signings. The guy just wasn't a good GM, however you want to slice it up.

mao_puks said:

I am positive that you could find somebody late in the draft or even free agents that would give you the same production as TT. Just look at Tarick Black. Give him same minutes as TT and he will produce at the same clip. Energy bigs off the bench with limited offense is easy to find.

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Many big men have stamina issues and foul problems that prevent them from playing big minutes. What makes TT decent, despite his flaws as a basketball player, is that he is an "energy big" that can do it for 35 minutes.