Q-was-here wrote:D-Mac wrote:Q-was-here wrote:Perfectdraft wrote:Sounds like many believe he will remain healthy and highly athletic over the next 4 years. I hope comes true. I will continue to root for it, despite feeling its very unlikely.
Have a great summer all...
Age of key bigs on recent Championship teams:
2022 - Draymond Green - 32
2021 - Brook Lopez - 33
2020 - Dwight Howard - 34
2019 - Marc Gasol - 34
Dirk was 32 when he won a title as Dallas' best player. Do you want me to go back to the Showtime Laker titles and their big man, Kareem Abdul Jabbar? He won his first title with the Lakers at age 33 and was only getting started!
In fact, the more I look at the data, the more I think it's almost a requirement that you have at least one age 30+ vet big man in the rotation!
Rudy Gobert will still be 30 during next year's playoffs.
How many of those teams over the last 4 years gave up the equivalent of 7-8 first round picks for those guys when they were 30? I can't believe you're really going to use THOSE 4 guys as examples of why we should go All In on a 30 year old Rudy Gobert. 2020 Dwight Howard is your justification for this being a good trade? He made 2.5 mil this year for the lakers. How long did Gasol last after 2019? I think you're only weakening your argument with these comparisons... so just keep posting and I'll grab some popcorn :)
Also gobert and dirk are polar opposites as players... hope you didn't pull a muscle on that reach.
As Cam said, that wasn't my point D-Loser. I was responding to Perfectdraft's concern about Gobert's age and potential declining athleticism and injury concerns. Obviously the last four winners of the NBA title had to rely on bigs older than Gobert is now by multiple years. And I think Gobert is better than all four of them, including Draymond Green.
But I think you were playing dumb, as you are wont to do, just so that you could natter on about what a bad trade it was.
Are you guys a tag team or something? I mean you're both good posters, but I really think you're both wrong on this. Yep, I get what you're saying, I think Gobert could (and better) still be on the level of those 4 guys in 4 years, but what's your point? 5 years from now we're going to have to extend a declining big man just to justify the fact that we just lost our unprotected pick (2027) for the terrible trade we made for him 5 years earlier. It sure would be nice to draft some cheap talent at this point, to put around ant, jaden and kat. Meanwhile in Utah, Kessler has developed into a fringe all star in 2028. Yeah maybe this doesn't happen, but maybe all of our picks don't land in the late 20's either. The timing was bad on this trade (ant and jaden aren't ready) and so was the age of the guy we acquired (at least for the price we paid) But TC and ownership shoved a square peg into a round hole and I think the fan base is going to regret it later.
I mean let's look at it another way too... we likely only get ONE shot at adding another star (via free agency or trade) during the entire prime years of Ant, Jaden and Kat, and TC decided to blow it all right away. On this. I mean this is truly pathetic. It's not necessarily about losing 4 picks that might be in the 20's... what it's really about is not saving these assets for the right deal. This is irresponsible, impatient, lazy and yes, idiotic.
Instead of this trade, I would have signed jalen smith to the full MLE or done a sign and trade for Ayton (if it could have been limited to one first round pick). I would have traded vando and Beas for a couple picks and then I would have kept Bev and developed both bolmaro and Kessler to see what we had. Sorry, I invest a lot time into following the wolves so I guess I'm just disappointed in the whole thing. I feel like we had a really good thing going but the owners and/or new exec felt like they needed to make a big splash and this is what we get.