If you can get Harden still in his prime with 2 years left on his contract then none of these players are off the table. Are you ****ing kidding me? Harden will retire as one of the 20 best players of all time. This is nearly unprecedented value. If the Rockets wanted Simmons he’d be here right now.
if we hypothetically lose harden for nothing it would be when his contract ends and brown is 25. if we trade him for brown now we are locked into a very mediocre non-playoff roster for the foreseeable future, and even afterwards down the road which star free-agent player is going to say to himself “oh i wanna go to h-town to team up with jaylen brown and win a ring”
We would have two young players with star potential, a competitive roster and draft opportunities. That is the best case scenario we're facing. When superstars demand trades from their teams, they almost always get their way. Also, a Rockets team with Jaylen Brown is much more attractive to Free Agents than a team without him. We have no other choice. Losing him for nothing would be catastrophic.
they won’t do it, but BK upgrading from Kyrie to Harden would make them insanely good Denver wants to keep Murray off limits like Harden isn’t several tiers ahead of him as a player and wouldn’t catapult the Nuggets into real contention...
the price for Harden is at the very least Jaylen Brown, Marcus Smart, and several picks unprotected + pick swaps Boston doesn’t want to come close to paying it, so they’re not serious Jaylen Brown has had a nice start to the season, but Harden at his age was finishing 2nd in the MVP race and leading a team to 56 wins and the WCF in the West be willing to pay the price for an MVP caliber player, or don’t even bother...there will be no settling
gladly, i have little worry that stone is going to accept a trade for harden with a piddly player like brown as the main asset coming back. we’re better off just finishing out the season as is. i mean if stone does nothing and let’s the trade deadline pass what will harden do, sit out the playoffs? no chance
There's a lot of assumptions in that post. He makes one 3 pointer and now he's going to take 1 per game? Do you realize that in 5 games this season he's taken 4 total shots from beyond 10 feet? He's not likely to attempt one 3 per game this year. More importantly, how many will be make? He's in his 4th year and he's made 3 total threes in his career. He's also shooting 1-4 outside of 10 feet this year. He's 3-25 on threes in his career. That's a whole new level of bad (12%). You're comparing him to Fultz? This is the third season since rebuilding his shot, Fultz has shot 28.6%, 26.7% and is currently shooting 27.3%. Do you consider that fixed? if it's that easy to fix his shot then why is he in his 4th year and he's a historically bad shooter? It's not just the 3 point range that 's a problem for him. His shooting range is his sleeve length. It's not that easy to go from bad shooter to a good one. Why do you think Westbrook and Giannis are still bad shooters? Thou compared to Simmons those two are Steph Curry. Philly isn't even trying to use Simmons away from the basket. He's in the dunker position near the rim most all of the time. You want to know how Philly is 4-1? It's because of their schedule. Wins over Washington, Knicks, Toronto and Orlando and a loss to the Cavs. Replace Harden with Simmons. Now pretend that you are the opposing coach. How do you defend us? If you play Simmons in the dunker position then his man is always sitting in the lane. If you move Simmons to the perimeter then teams just drop his man down into the lane and dare him to shoot. Either way his defender is clogging the lane. what does that mean for the other Rockets? 81% of Woods made shots come from within 10 feet. Same with several other Rockets (Wall 75%, Cousins 66%, Tate 76%, Gordon 50%, House 76% and Nwaba 88%) who have most of their made shots from inside 10 feet. For all of those guys they now have an extra defender to contend with in the paint. I think that teams would be more than happy to allow Wall and Simmons to boost up all the threes they like.
If Brown is a 'piddly' player then what caliber of player do you consider fail value for Harden considering the current circumstances? Antetokounmpo, Doncic, Mitchell, Tatum, and Young are not possibilities. So would you pass on a player like Jaylen Brown just so we can lose to the Lakers in the 2nd or 3rd round? The quality of trade offers will drop significantly once Harden becomes an expiring contract. I honestly doubt Ainge is willing to trade Brown for Harden at this point anyway.
The rockets lost to the blazers in the first round when harden was 24 (jaylens age) harden is much better but just thought we should talk facts and apples to apples here he was also 5th in mvp votes behind Noah who was 4th
as long as harden agrees to an extension with the team he’s being traded to i don’t see his value dropping at all. regarding fair value, if we’re speaking with boston then it has to be tatum of course. if b****ass ainge disagrees then move on to other teams. denver currently has 86 points halfway thru the 4th, they could probably use wilt harden’s services
Simmons at least is consistent. 59.4% career free throw shooter. This year they say he has improved though to a respectable 61%
Harden also made his 2nd All Star team that year and as you said was top 5 in MVP voting. Brown has played well this year but he's not anywhere close to where Harden was at that age. The issue for the Rockets is that no potential contender can offer them a fair deal for Harden. That means that as soon as we trade Harden then we get substantially worse but won't be bad enough to draft a stud prospect.We'd be back to the days of picking in the middle portion of the draft. If I had to trade Harden, then Brown is likely as good as we could get. Porter has a higher ceiling than Brown but his back scares me. I also don't think that Houston wants to trade Harden to anyone in the West. The problem with a Boston deal is that the Celtics don't have any attractive picks to offer. Even if we got Brown and every first rounder that Boston can trade, odds are that we 're mediocre for the foreseeable future. Including Smart doesn't change that. Because of that I don't trade Harden. I keep him and hope that he decides to extend his deal. That's the best chance that we have to be good the next two years. after two years, if Harden walks then we would have $97m in salary coming off the books just for Harden and Wall. That would be a much better scenario for a rebuild. of couse, that's what I would do if I made decisions. Who knows what Fertitta and the Rockets will do. Boston is in a similar position and it's mostly because of Kemba 's knee and a couple of big acquisitions that walked for nothing in return. With Kemba, if it's a degenerative knee problem as everyone says, then they are stuck with that contract and won't get the real Kemba. They really need his scoring and playmaking. Harden definitely makes Boston much better but is it enough? That's what Ainge has to decide. EDIT: Just realized that Wall will expire the year after Harden can opt out. So if you kept Harden for two years then it would take an additional year to clear Walls salary.
Y’all are arguing as to whether Brown is worth being the center piece of a trade package. Option 1a-1f should involve some version of keeping harden. If you can keep him you do whatever you can to keep him. There’s absolutely no trade package worth him. But if it’s an absolute must to trade him then all options are pennies on the dollar. And of all options not involving keeping Harden, Brown is the best of the all the worst options out there IMO.
my bad, Harden at 24 was an All-Star in the West and made 1st Team All-NBA, then at 25 was MVP caliber and a top 5 player leading his team to the WCF
He doesnt have to be a good shooter he just needs to be a shooter, period. 27.3% from Fultz is "fixed" because at least now he isnt bouncing around the ball in his hands before he takes a ft. If Simmons shoots 27% from 3 thatd be great cuz then he can start working on his shot now that his hesitation to shoot is gone. Simmons is 24, Wood is 25. They have all the time in the world to figure something out. Wood has 81% of his shot in the lane why not make that 60%? Dude's shooting 40% from 3. Why are you worrying about Gordon, House, Nwaba? These guys are role players if they cant fit the team you ship them out for better fitting role players like what Morey has done. So if the opponent is always clogging the lane how come Philly is 4-1? Who cares whether they played weak competition according to you there is always a man there in the paint it should be extremely hard for anyone to score. The opposing coach always has a man in the paint daring Simmons to shoot. Are the coaches of opposing teams just dumb? They cant figure out Simmons cant shoot thats why 3 players scored 20 pts vs Orlando? Or is it that you are exaggerating Simmons weaknesses and minimizing his strengths? On our team we have mostly offensive players we dont have a good defender besides an old and slowing down PJ Tucker. We also lack any sort of rebounding. Simmons would immediately fix two of those holes and be that "Ariza" type of defender to complement Tucker. Embiid had 11/13 of his shots in within the 3 pt line he still shot 63.6%. Isnt that crazy? Its almost like having shooters around them created enough space for both Embiid and Simmons to operate.
