What If...

[Lipoli390]

There seems to be a consensus on this message board that Thibs did the right thing making the Butler trade. But let's play a game of "what if" and speculate on what we would have wanted Thibs to do if lottery luck had been better. Specifically, what would you have wanted Thibs to do under the following scenarios:

Scenario 1: Wolves had won the lottery and ended up with the #1 pick in the draft. Assume, based on reports at the time, that the Bulls offered Butler for our top pick straight up. Apparently, the Bulls offered Butler straight up for the #3 pick. Obviously, we can't know for sure whether that was true, but the report seemed to ring true.

Scenario 2: Wolves secured the #2 or #3 pick in the lottery. Assume same as above for scenaio 1.

Scenario 3: Wolves simply held their position, ending up with the #6 pick.

[BloopOracle]

1-Draft Fultz and flip Rubio to the highest bidder and turn down the Butler trade

2-Trade it without Lavine for Butler

3-I think I would stay and pick Isaac, Chicago would likely still want Lavine as well as Isaac in the deal and thats too much in my opinion

[khans2k5 [enjin:6608728]]

1. Keep Fultz
Options 2 and 3 trade for Jimmy.

[Monster]

A fun talker would be if you made the same deal the Celtics did at #1 to trade down to #3. Then what do you do?

[Phenom]

A fun talker would be if you made the same deal the Celtics did at #1 to trade down to #3. Then what do you do?

I'm assuming that if the Wolves had moved up to 1 that there is a good chance that Sacramento and or Philly do not end up at 3 but Philly would likely still get 5th. I would have liked to see the Wolves trade down with Philly for the same deal that Boston did, collect the picks and then do the Butler deal. If the pick was 3 4 or 5 then the Wolves should have been able to withhold LaVine from Chicago. We then flip Zach for a different asset. Keeping Zach would still be cost prohibitive.

[TheFuture]

1) Trade it for Butler, LaVine becomes the sixth man. Spend the remaining 8ish mil on CJ Miles and RE LRMAM. Match Shabazz.
2) Same as above.
3) Trade back with Portland for 15, 20, future 2nd, cash. Draft one of Patton, Collins, or Allen and OG.

[Lipoli390]

A fun talker would be if you made the same deal the Celtics did at #1 to trade down to #3. Then what do you do?

I thought about that. If we had the 1st pick and Philly offer the same deal they offered Boston, I'd take it. Then I'd be inclined to flip the #3 pick straight up for Butler, but I'd insist as on the Bulls selling their #38 pick to us for the max $3 million as part of the deal. I'm still surprised we didn't hold out for that. It's clear with hindsight that the Bulls would have caved on that demand given the fact that they ended up selling the pick anyway.

It would have been tempting for me to keep the pick and pass on Butler if we had a top 6 pick. There were several players I would have loved to add to our roster -- specifically, Fultz, Jason Tatum, Josh Jackson, Jonathan Isaac, and De'Aaron Fox. But the opportunity to add Butler without losing Dunn or LaVine would have been too good to pass up. The only rub would be the longer term financial issues associated with extending LaVine. But considering that we added $19 million per year for the next two years by flipping Rubio for Teague and signing Taj Gibson, it would not have been unmanageable.

But alas, it's nothing more than a dream. The reality is that we have Butler, which is a very good thing. Unfortunately, we don't have LaVine. It's a trade that should work well for the Wolves, at least in the short term (next two years).