Yeah, Sabonis is marginal; easily replaced. Dipo is a decent player but he took up too much cap space for his value. Getting a one-year rental of George for those two was pretty smart — and they’ll end up with cap space when George leaves.
George isn’t going to extend. Oklahoma is not his intended destination. And even with Westbrook and Paul George, there’s literally nothing OKC can do to engineer a team roster than can keep up with Golden State, so blowing future assets — which will come into play when Golden State falls off its perch — isn’t bright at all.
If OKC doesn’t take the long view, they won’t have any view at all.
Westbrook might be too impatient to stay the course; that’s a risk. But he’s still pretty young and there is no athlete in the world who is in better physical condition. He’s good for a few years; he might even get better. Having one guy be the focal point for an offense works okay with a talent like Westbrook’s, but it’s sort of predictable, and it doesn’t work as well as a talented team that can share touches and create for each other. The potential for growth in Westbrook’s game is to move off the ball more and let others create for him and for each other. OKC’s roster needs to be moved in this direction so Westbrook doesn’t *have* to have so many touches and play so much iso. OKC needs to step up its defense a notch or two, also.
I think Durant left because the chemistry of a team that requires so many touches to go through one player just isn’t optimum. He wanted to experience a better style of play before his career is over, and win a couple rings, if possible. He sure seems to be happy at Golden State, doesn’t he? He’s now playing ball the way it should be played. It’s beautiful basketball, truly.
Paul George represents a pretty decent caliber of talent. But the key to unlocking OKC’s championship aspirations doesn’t rest on George’s shoulders. It’s on Sam’s, and it’s all about roster management under the cap starting in 2018–2019 and 2019–2020, when GSW will run into its own cap management nightmares and stands to lose key talent. Really, they’re already having cap management nightmares; the only reason they’re still standing atop the Western Conference next year is Durant bailed them out with a lowball contract. He isn’t going to lowball for the rest of his career, and GSW can’t afford to pay him what he’s worth. They’ll even have difficulty paying Klay Thompson what he’s worth when his current contract ends.
I think Sam understands all of this, which is why he moved Dipo (overpaid) and Sabonis (underperforming). It really wasn’t about getting Paul George at all; it was about positioning the Thunder for future moves, when they’ll need Westbrook, cap space flexibility and young players who are playing over their pay grades.
Next year’s free agent class will be a doozy. There will be some impressive names in play, in contrast to this year’s free agent class, where Paul George and Gordon Hayward generated most of the news. They’re both good two-way players, definitely. But it’s not obvious that either of them will ever make it into the Hall of Fame, is it? Some future Hall of Famers will be in play next summer.
The short-term benefit of the PG trade is there for OKC, though — adding George as a rental makes business sense. He’ll help to fill seats and help them get back to the playoffs, and those are not small considerations in a small market franchise.
So, yeah. I’m applauding Sam for doing the best he can this summer while keeping his eye on out years, where OKC’s best chance lies.
Do you understand now? There’s nobody else they could pick up this summer who will get them past Golden State as currently configured. The smart thing to do is to take a longer view. Keep the business healthy, keep Westbrook happy, don’t overpay anyone, keep the cap space flexible, develop young (cheap) players to play over their pay grade, drill and train hard, acquire and hoard draft picks and use them wisely in the draft or future trades. Set the stage for maximum effort when Golden State falters.
I say GSW *will* falter. They can’t keep their core together for more than 2 years longer; and within 3 years, Curry and Green are likely to be the only all-stars left on that team. Durant and Thompson will cash in on the paydays they both so richly deserve — with someone else.
Of course the problem with that prediction is Durant might not do what I expect him to do; and GSW is awfully good at developing young players and signing cheap veterans, so if Thompson does leave, they may be able to keep trucking without him.
It’s Durant who we have to watch carefully. He is a generational talent; there is no replacing a guy like that.
A GSW team without Durant, without Thompson, with Curry and Green and a front office as good as GSW’s, will be a playoff team, and maybe will get into the finals again, but they’ll be mortal. That will be the time to strike.
What they have with Durant and Thompson also present is… well, there aren’t enough superlatives. They might be the best team the NBA has ever seen. They just finished crushing all comers during the playoffs, 16 games to 1. And they faced some very decent teams and one absolute monster of a team (Cleveland) as they did it.
If money is not Durant’s motive, if the only thing he cares about is playing basketball at a high level with teammates Curry and Green and whatever other talents GSW’s front office can surround them with (it’s a great front office, too), then damn, that upsets the whole league’s apple carts. The GSW dynasty could go on for another five years, six, who knows. Yikes. That would be without precedent in the NBA. The cap is specifically intended to prevent it, and it’s worked thus far, but Durant has the power in his hands to challenge the efficacy of the cap itself. Will he use that power? I say no, he won’t; he’ll sign a max deal somewhere where they can pay it to him, either next summer or the summer after that. But it’s Durant’s decision, not mine.
Sam can’t do anything about that; what comes, will come. But the safer assumption is, Durant isn’t going to keep signing bargain contracts forever. Long before age starts to slow him down, he needs to land a max contract somewhere, doesn’t he? So Sam’s moves this summer and next aren’t about a win-now strategy. His decisions are about running a successful business and carefully positioning OKC to strike when the iron is hot. I think he’s been doing that, and intelligently. If he suddenly switches to win-now by giving up valuable assets for another star, he’ll prove that I misread his intentions badly. And Sam will be trading a bright future for a dim present.