monsterpile wrote:lipoli390 wrote:Camden wrote:This off-season needs to be about cap management and swinging for the fences in the draft.
Andrew Wiggins and Gorgui Dieng need to go. From Wolfson's reports in the past, it seems that there might still be some sort of interest in Wiggins from a handful of teams around the league. Who those teams are I can't say for sure, but I believe one of those teams were the Kings and they scooped up Harrison Barnes so I would rule them out. The time to deal Wiggins as if he had any value was two or three years ago. Now it's about removing him. Get out from that contract by almost any means necessary. I think a savvy move would be to attach a lottery-protected first-round pick with him in an effort to take back short term deals. Trading his bad contract for an equally bad contract doesn't do much, and for this reason I think draft compensation is in play.
Gorgui Dieng is likely an even worse contract to try and move. The idea with most realistic Dieng trades will be looking for a player that has big money with less years remaining than him as he's signed through the 2020-21 season. One idea is Portland's Evan Turner whose contract runs through next season. Another idea is Courtney Lee who's an expiring next year on a Dallas team who currently has no center and an abundance of wings deserving minutes.
Another option entirely is to deal both Wiggins and Dieng to the Orlando Magic for Evan Fournier and Timofey Mosgov. The former is pretty clearly the better wing in this deal and the latter of which is an expiring contract next year. Minnesota would come out of that like thieves in the night.
The Wolves can't afford to give up 1st round draft assets just to get rid of Wiggins or Gorgui. No matter what, trading Wiggins or Dieng will likely mean taking back a mediocre to bad player with a similar annual salary but hopefully on a shorter contract. So it's not like we'd suddenly have cap room to sign a consequential player. And even when the acquired player's contract expires, we're not going to land an elite player in free agency with whatever cap room we have.
Whether Wiggins and Gorgui are here or not, the only chance the Wolves have to build a contender around KAT is to land an elite player in one of the next two NBA drafts or develop Okogie into an elite player. What the Wolves should be doing seems obvious to me. First, they should be soft-tanking the rest of the season. Actually, they should have started the soft tank a couple weeks ago. Second, they should be acquiring as many draft assets as possible, even if it's just more second rounders. Unfortunately, the Wolves let the February trade deadline slip away without dealing any of their vets for future picks. Rose, Tolliver and Taj Gibson would have at least fetched 2nd round picks -- maybe even a late 1st rounder from a contender. Finally, they should be playing the organization's young players as much as possible the remainder of the season to better evaluate them and give them more chance to develop sooner rather than later. It's so basic, but sadly so elusive to one of the League's worst organizations.
I heard from and insider recently that the Wolves will be looking to make a blockbuster deal of some kind this summer - likely dealing Okogie, KBD and future draft picks for an elite veteran player. That's an idiotic strategy, but it's what I'd expect from this Wolves organization.
I agree with you about not giving up picks to get rid of Wiggins and Dieng. We agree on developing young players and we need picks to do that.
Who is this insider and...they know who is going to be running the organization? Does the insider's name rhyme with Sven Saylor? :) Lets be honest it's boring but we may as well just table a bunch of these discussions until we have some sort of idea who will be making these decisions and who is coaching the team.
Monster - So you know Sven too? Wow, small world! :) You're right we have no idea who will be making the Wolves' front office decisions this summer. But if past is prologue, then whoever ends up running the front office will inevitably make the sort of bad decisions we're accustomed to from the Wolves organization. Meanwhile, opportunities are already slipping away - not trading older vets before the Feb. deadline, not going with heavy minutes for the young guys and failing to soft tank -- before a new front office regime is established.