How'd we get Capela? Horford + multiple picks?
It was just an example to illustrate a player you might get for 3 picks. I'm not trying to get into a big debate about who that might be. Perhaps Capela cannot be had. But 3 picks, and possibly a rotation player we could replace can add a significant player.
Getting Durant can only be fairly compared to an alternate scenario where the required picks are also converted into a present day asset
Yeah, it's hard to know how to judge value without knowing the pieces on the table. For instance, if Seth Curry is packaged with Durant, that makes a lot of scenarios more palatable in the short term. If Brooklyn would accept protected picks, that changes the evaluation, as well. What players are being secretly shopped that the media doesn't know about? What follow-up moves are available to Brad.
The room for a deal seemingly is somewhere between Brown + White + one #1 and Brown + Smart + Williams or Pritchard + two or three #1s. To me, that's a fairly large disparity.
Of course the assumption is there is any chance of a deal and that the reality isn't the C's just checked in with the Nets looking at what value they were looking for and had little intention of making any deal in the first place and when communications went dry, the Nets decided to leak to Woj about an offer that was never really on the table and only talked about in the abstract.
I don't make much of a distinction between concrete and abstract trade ideas.
Scenario 1: "I'll give you Brown + White + #1 for Durant"
Scenario 2: "I'm not committing to anything, but let's say Brown + White + #1 for Durant was on the table. Does that get things done on your end?"
Yep. Those are both offers. It is basically negotiation rule #1, if you say something, you are offering it.
Except that's not really true. The second one is explicitly NOT as offer, its a hypothetical. The difference between the two is if BRK says yes to the first one the deal is done. If BRK says yes to the second BOS still might not do the deal. That seems a pretty huge difference to me?
Putting aside the specific details of which of those types of offers you think Jaylen Brown, those two things are absolutely different in intent and potential seriousness.
They aren't really different. When you are in a negotiation, anything you say is an offer. You don't hypothetically muse about something if you aren't actually prepared to do it.
As someone who's been in the room for multi-billion dollar negotiations, that is simply wrong. I have more than once both said and heard "We'd have to run the numbers, but what do you think about X?" Or, the more colloquial, "we're just spitballing, but what about Y?" They're qualified statements. If the other party is interested, you pursue them more, but you're in no way locking yourself into that position.
Other things that matter, and which were not reported: Who from the Celtics and Nets were talking? Was it Brad Stevens and Sean Marks, or their assistants? Assistants make hypothetical offers, because everyone knows they have to run it back up. GMs get on the phone when a deal might actually be made. If Stevens and Marks weren't on the phone, it's not a real offer, end of story, especially with superstars involved.
Again, having been involved in major negotiations, we've sometimes started the conversation with a disclaimer that anything we come up with in the room is subject to the approval of higher-ups. Sometimes that condition is on both sides, but it's not unusual. 9 times out of 10 a deal we come up with is okayed by the head of my organization, but it's not always the case, and that's understood. Sometimes I'll say "I'm okay with this but I'm not sure it's going to fly."
But no, just because someone from the Celtics told someone from the Nets "what about Jaylen Brown, Derrick White, and a pick" does not mean that Jaylen Brown was ever officially offered.