Below could be fun and I think an upgrade for us—would not feel bad at all if Horford wanted to team up with KD rather than stay here, CP3 is as likely as Horford to last 2-3 more years, and Bridges is even better than Smart IMHO (Smart’s hero ball in the fourth of games 4-6 has left a bad taste in my mouth—if JT and/or JB would like to see him shipped for an upgrade/lateral, I 100% support that):
BOS In: CP3, Bridges
PHX In: KD, Horford, Smart
DET In: Ayton
BKN In: Unprecedented number of picks from PHX, DET, BOS, and generate a TPE for KD that they can use on a salary dump to take back a couple more picks from someone
Second deal for BKN because they’ve got an expiring in Kyrie who’s probably gonna “retire” if he doesn’t get shipped to LA (and we all know LeBron could care less about the Lakers’ future - heck, he wants to own a franchise by 2030 so it makes sense mortgaging the Lakers’ future for a Big 3 of LeBron/Kyrie/AD to close-out his career):
LAL In: Kyrie, Curry
BKN In: Westbrick, 2025 LAL 1st swap, 2026 LAL 1st, 2027 LAL 1st swap, 2028 LAL 1st, 2029 LAL 1st swap
They could basically turn KD/Kyrie into 8-12 first-round picks/swaps by also taking on Westbrick for one year (he’ll still sell tickets for them). It’s the smart way to rebuild, really, considering they didn’t give up anything to sign KD/Kyrie, and already salvaged much of the Harden deal in the Simmons deal (and I still think Simmons could pan out—or quietly bounce back and be tradable for 1-2 picks in 2-3 years when they have all their cap space available again to pursue free agents again).
Meanwhile, and more importantly, we’d have a new, loud veteran voice in CP3 (and basically heavy influence of the upper echelon of the NBAPA with CP3, JB and Brogdon lol), and an elite defensive wing alongside JT/JB giving us a Big 3 (or Big 4 if Timelord continues to grow):
CP3/Brogdon
JB/White
Bridges/TPE
JT/Batman
Timelord/Gallinari
Then we get to work on using the TPE on a solid 3/4, and adding some of CP3’s ring-chasing buddies to fill out the bench alongside Davison and/or Begarin. With any luck, we beat LA in the Finals and CP3 gets his ring he deserves. Love it!