KG4Ever wrote:We should focus on Richardson and move on from Bam. Richardson is the real deal and he's on a great contract. Bam is all hype and he's not even at Whiteside's level, at least yet.
Richardson, Winslow and 1st for Butler OR
Richardson, Whiteside and 1st for Butler and Dieng
I'm ok either way. Riley is not giving up both Richardson and Bam and a 1st, so we are just delaying things by being inflexible. The fact we are talking to the Clippers who don't have much to offer is telling and I am less excited by the possibility of landing Tobias Harris than JR as he will be an UFA and is a high risk of walking.
The Richardson, Winslow 1st deal doesn't meet the salary match requirement. Even adding McGruder doesn't get salaries to match, so the deal doesn't even work under the CBA without including Bam.
The Richardson/Whiteside deal would be a big mistake in my view. Pat Riley has been trying to get rid of Whiteside for over a year now and he can't find any takers. There's a reason Riley wants him gone and it's the same reason he can't find any takers. Whiteside clearly has attitude issues. Think of it this way. If Whiteside is such a cancer on a solid team with a terrific well-established head coach like the Heat, imagine his negative impact on the chemistry of a team like the Wolves, which is currently in disarray with a head coach teetering on the edge of being fired. Then you have to consider Whiteside's difficulty staying healthy and whether he'd mesh with KAT on the court. You don't want to tie up $25 million in cap space for two years on a guy like Whiteside. That's what bad organizations do.
Bam is more than hype. If he were just hype, Pat Riley would readily include him in a deal for Butler. The fact that Riley would have to be pushed to include him, assuming he ever would, tells us all we need to know. But you can look further at Bam's stats last season. As a 20 year old rookie with only 1 year of college, Bam averaged 5.5 rebounds and 6.9 points on 51% shooting in 19.8 minutes per game. Extrapolate those numbers to the 33.3 minutes Taj played and Bam averages 9.25 rebounds and 11.6 points, compared to Taj Gibson's 7.7 rebounds and 12.2 points. And again, Bam was a 20 year old rookie. Yes, he's not a proven player. That's the point. He's a prospect. But unlike a draft pick, he's already shown he can play and produce at a pretty high level in the NBA. It would be a coup to get him included in a Butler deal with Miami - and it's a coup worth holding out for.
At the end of the day, I'm convinced that Pat Riley would give up Richardson AND Bam if that's what it took to get Butler, but he'd probably refuse to include the 1st round pick. I'd be ok with that because the pick would likely be lottery-protected and the Wolves will likely have their own lottery pick. To make salaries match, we'd have to also get Winslow back and that could be a show-stopper although I'm not sure. If so, then we could broaden the deal to include Dieng and Tyler Johnson. I think Pat Riley would be thrilled to start the season with a starting five of Butler, Dragic, Waiters, Olynyk and Whiteside, backed up by Dwayne Wade, Wayne Ellington, James Johnson and either Tyler Johnson or Justise Winslow. Getting Butler to join the rest of that cast would make Miami the instant favorite for the 4th seed in the East and, with some luck, they could break into the top 3.
If we give up Butler for Richardson or Bam but not both, we will have failed to fully appreciate the value Jimmy Butler likely has to Pat Riley. He desperately wants to be relevant again, but he has neither the draft picks nor the cap space to make that happen without a major trade. And Jimmy is the only difference-maker available.
