So the honeymoon period is seriously over. The team looks NOTHING like a contender, and you really have to wonder whether it will as currently constructed. Bringing one of the wings off the bench is a start but man do we need some role players that don’t need the ball to be successful.
When you are 1st in defense (but tend to get scored o by good offenses), and bottom five in offense you are by definition going to be an around 500 team. We are what our record says we are.
That said I've seen you make this point several times, and I understand where you are coming from. But lets say we could exchange some of our guys like Brown, Smart, Rozier, Morris or the so called "role players" for guys who better fit a role. The problem is that as uneven as we've been, we don't have the top end talent to compete with a GS or even Toronto if we go that direction. Al has taken half step back. Kyrie is still great but not an MVP level guy. Tatum is good, but he has serious flaws in his game he has to work on and isn't gonna be the foundational level guy this year (tho long term he could be). Hayward has sucked. Swapping say out pieces on the peripheries might make us marginaly better, but to be honest as long as our "stars" are playing poorly, we aint winning it all. That's part of the reason i'd hang onto Brown in particular. He at least has some potential (A Davis trade is different, I would trade brown for him. Or Tatum for that matter. Tho probbly not both).
An underated problem with this team is that two of our max guys are underwhelming this year. Al is still solid, but seems like he's about 5-10% worse than last year. Not suprising at his age. nd Hayward is uneven, ttho mostly bad. Thats 60 million right there giving you abaout 22 points a game.