dwiley20 wrote:Mike1989 wrote:The question is what will it cost to acquire Jimmy Butler? Salary wise he's slated to earn $20.4 million next season. So to balance salaries we would need to send Lee and Thomas or Hardaway for Butler straight works on the trade machine, but I'm not sure whether such a basic deal would get things done. I suspect we would need to include a future first round pick, perhaps a lottery protected first round pick in 2020 with protection reducing in 2021 and unprotected in 2022?
I'd be fine with doing a deal for Butler to get him on board ready for making an attempt to recruit Kyrie next off season. If we could field a starting line up featuring Kyrie, Ntilikina, Butler, Knox and KP we should be pretty well set. However, I wouldn't want to give up too much for Butler or take on a bad contract as well like Dieng.
Facts!! i dont want to give up draft picks..Minny has to realize he isnt resigning and something is better than nothing
While I don't want to give up draft picks either, the timeline I suggested in my post wouldn't cause us any issues when the pick is likely to be conveyed. We aren't giving up our pick in 2019 because we will probably end up with a high value lottery pick, though the acquisition of Jimmy Butler might throw a spanner in the works. After the 18/19 season our aim should be to make a return to the play offs in 19/20, if we make the play offs all we give up is a pick in the 15-30 range. However, if we really want to make it difficult for the pick to go in their direction we can always protect it in a similar fashion to the Bucks, the first round pick they owe in 2019 is protected 1-3 and 17-30, so that pick should not convey and they'll instead send their 2020 first round pick. So there are other protections we can add to our pick in order to make it as difficult as possible to not lose a first round pick, and instead we can then send either a late first round pick or a future second round pick.
Now obviously if we can acquire Jimmy Butler without giving up a future first round pick that would be ideal, and if the reports are true that he won't re-sign and will walkaway in free agency, then that gives them no real leverage to play on the trade market. So as you say, it is simply then a case of them getting something rather than nothing. However, we shouldn't really be too concerned about our picks from 2020 onward because we shouldn't be picking in the lottery at that point. So if it means sacrificing a non-lottery pick to guarantee ourselves Jimmy Butler, that might be worth it because his addition should help us to recruit a top free agent in 2019. I think it would also help us cap wise because we would have Butler's bird rights and thus could sign his to an extension without needing the cap space, so we could end up with three max level contracts on the books (KP, Butler, 2019 free agent) and then our younger players and veterans to support them.
7/3/2018 2:58 PM