Did the Celtics win by kicking the can on a possible IT4 albatross max contract?
IT4 was never getting a max contract given his injury. It was never going to happen so really doesn't need to be discussed like it was a possibility.
Relax. Half this thread is filled with hypotheticals, alternate universes, & insane tangents. Nice to see tongue in cheek go over your head, though.
Also while I generally agree that IT wouldn’t have gotten max, he could have certainly got 3-4 deal at 12-15 million a year from us over that summer. At the time there was a lot of confusion about the severity of the injury and it also seems like in the time since there have been several setbacks. He certainly had some value in the eyes of Cleveland at the time. I don’t think anyone believes the cavs would have traded Irving for the Brooklyn pick and crowder alone. Plus IT had already started talking about his contract publicly when it was not even expiring. We definitely can’t act like we didn’t dodge a bummer by having that circus happen on the team last year and there is a lot of value in that.
Thomas signed for the veteran minimum contract after he finished yet another season injured and wasn't due back for months into the next season. There is no way Thomas was getting a 4 year contract at 12-15 million a year last summer from Boston or any other team, unless of course he somehow managed to finish last year healthy and without needing surgery. And in that scenario he would have been worth that type of contract.
How in the world can you say you have any idea if the Celtics would have offered IT a contract extension last offseason if the trade was not available? As demonstrated by the trade itself (unless you are going to try and argue the Cavs would have trade Irving for the Brooklyn pick and Crowder/Zizic alone), he definitely had some value in the offseason even though he was injured. At the time it was believed he was not going to miss tons of time.
If Thomas and his agent go to the team and say, hey look, we realized we are injured and there are some questions, and we don't want to rush back from this, so lets figure out an extension. We don't want this hanging over the offseason. Then the Celtics feel like they are getting a discount at the time, why would it not happen?
It obviously could have gone other directions, like Thomas demanding a max extension, getting angry and him and Crowder torpedoing the chemistry and the Celtics ship out half their roster like the Cavs did.
One thing you can't argue is that it was a very bad situation to be in and we made that situation the Cavs problem. You are just completing discounting that side of the trade. I also think there is a reasonable argument to be made that this trade was the end of the Cavs and Lebron together. if the Cavs got something useful last year for Irving instead of Thomas, they could have maybe even had a legit shot at the championship.
Sure I can't say for sure, Ainge wouldn't have given him an extension, but Ainge has never given an injured player an extension and in fact rarely extends any player before they actually hit free agency. Everything about Ainge indicated he would have let last year play out and worried about Thomas last summer and last summer there is no way Thomas was getting much more than the minimum.
Almost no trade would have made the Cavs a real threat to the Warriors last year. They made the Finals after all, but even with Irving the prior year they got smoked by the Warriors. I actually think you could argue that last year's Cavs team was better than the prior year given they had far more depth and some better fitting pieces around James (even if they had closed out game 1, I can't see that series going more than 6 games). Now perhaps if they could have actually gotten a player better than Irving, like say Paul George, then maybe they would have made the Warriors series at least interesting and given James a reason to stick around, or maybe not and both him and George go to LA last summer.
And obviously, the Cavs thought they were going to get more than the shell of Thomas they got, but when they realized he was toast (coupled with his mouth) they moved him for some young players to start building for the future if James left or for trading purposes if James would have stayed. And it isn't like Nance and Clarkson are bad, they are at least rotation level players in the league (which is obviously more than Thomas is right now). But the Celtics knew Thomas was toast. They knew his hip wasn't healing properly and that he was going to require surgery, which is a large reason why they added the BKN pick to the trade just to move him.
Given all of that, I firmly maintain my position that Boston was not going to extend Thomas and because they didn't want him to be a distraction they traded him.
Topic: If Irving walks, did the Celtics lose the trade with the Cavs (Sexton)? (Read 3863 times)