Aloha
Rob has indicated that he would like to bring back as many guys as possible and that makes sense. He understands that we can not create reasonable cap space without gutting the team. Internal improvements is the biggest path to winning.
I think all of our young guys need to continue to grow. There are 4 I believe will be back for sure. Austin and Rui both had growth spurts last year. They both will need to continue that growth. Vando at 4.8 is a no brazier but he will need to get more consistent on offense. And lastly can Max break into the rotation? The team and the league are high on him and so am I. I have seen two different redrafts where he broke into the 1st round. I like his defense. Yes he made 19 year old rookie mistakes that hopefully he is correcting but he was generally locked in and he shot 41% from 3 which is a bonus. As important as those two areas are, is that he showed no fear. I saw him plays some g league games and he was always the best player in the game.
Another means of improvement will be trades. I suspect DLO will either be traded or will be back. I don’t see a better player that we could sign in free agency with our cap situation. He much to good of a trade asset to let walk for nothing.
Malik, Bamba and Harrison have a combined 30 mil in tradable contracts. Plus we have two tradable firsts. I believe that will be where we can find help. I’m sure trade talks are going on now. This years draft could tell us what we are going to do with the others. Malik could have real value. He didn’t play well for us but he has had a solid career and he could be of interest to a team like the Hornets who are desperate for shooting.
By the way, this will be a good draft for us. If you look at the mock drafts after the first 8 players, it seems there are wild swings. For instance I saw Jet Howard coming to us at 17 and I saw him going at 30. I’ve seen Lively go at 12, also to us at 17 and at 23. So there will be good players available.
One other interesting note, there will now be 3 two way contracts available. Maybe we can find another Alex or Austin with one of those.
For me the great thing about this year is the amount of options that we have. That hasn’t happened in a long time.
One of most underrated aspects of the makeover that Pelinka pulled off was the options and flexibility it gives us this summer and next year at the trade deadline is so much better than last summer.
I agree Tom. One of the greatest obstacles we had in the past was lack of tradable contracts. Now we have some.
“Internal improvements is the biggest path to winning.”
I totally agree with you, Michael. Our main should be to come up with players and a plan to counter the two-headed monsters of the Nuggets- Jokic and Murray. These two are going to be a problem in the Western Conference for a long time if we don’t bring them down.