Buying low on high-impact veterans

A lot of us (myself included) have spent a lot of time this offseason speculating about trading for players like Herb Jones or Mikal Bridges to shore up the roster. Needless to say, getting either of those guys would be fantastic — but the trouble is that they're both highly valued by their teams, have multiple years left on their contracts, and (most importantly) are significantly outperforming those contracts at the moment. In other words, they're pretty much at the peak of their trade value right now — so pulling off a trade for one or both of them, while technically possible, would mean "buying high." That doesn't necessarily mean it'd be the wrong move, mind you; like I said, I'd be overjoyed if we got either one of those guys. But I think it's also worth considering what kinds of guys might be out there who are either (A) on the last year of their contract, or (B) free agents who could be obtained in sign-and-trades — both of which would require us to give up a lot less in return for them. It might seem like the market for those kinds of players is pretty sparse right now, but looking around the league, there are actually a few potential targets who seem like they could really help us a lot, and might actually be obtainable with a little bit of luck (OK, maybe a lot of luck). Obviously, it'd be ridiculously unlikely for us to snag all these guys — but the thing about our cap situation is that, crazy as it sounds, I think we actually could theoretically pull off all of these deals, at least on paper (assuming the rumors are true that Trae and JJ are the only ones on the roster who are truly untouchable). This is all nothing but wild speculation, of course, but hey, it's the offseason, so why not indulge in a little bit of armchair fantasizing?

Let's start with OG Anunoby. According to the latest rumors, there's a chance he might actually "test free agency and consider deals from other teams besides New York" this offseason. Seems unlikely to me, but if the Knicks don't want to go over the apron by paying him $40M or whatever, let's imagine for the sake of argument that he would be willing to sign with a different team that was more willing to pony up. If we decided to be that team that throws the bag at him, we could (as far as salary-matching goes) get him in a sign-and-trade centered around, say, Hunter and Capela, and the Knicks might actually be inclined to accept, not only because Hunter could step into OG's role for half the price (and Capela could likewise replace Hartenstein if he leaves New York as well), but because their only other alternative might be losing OG to a team with cap space and not getting anything in return. It'd be a less-than-equal return for New York, obviously, but that's how sign-and-trades usually go; they're almost always more lopsided than regular trades because the free agent is the one with all the leverage.

For the same reason, if the Hawks decide to take Risacher instead of Sarr with their top pick (or if they trade the pick away outright), they could try to make a run at Nic Claxton and see if they can snag him in a sign-and-trade as well. I don't know if it would be possible to fit him into the $23M trade exception from the John Collins trade, but if there's one thing our front office seems really good at, it's convincing guys to sign team-friendly contracts, so if he decides he really wants to come back and play in Georgia again, it's at least theoretically possible that we could get him without giving back much more than that trade exception. This would give us an elite rim protector who's also switchable enough to guard perimeter players, as well as a top-percentile roll man with great hands who can finish all the lobs Trae can toss up for him. (I've heard one of the knocks against Sarr is that his hands aren't necessarily super-great; I don't know how true that is, but it at least seems worth mentioning because I know that can be a red flag for a lot of Hawks fans when it comes to big men.)

Moving on from sign-and-trades, though, another guy I've recently been thinking could be a prime trade target is Alex Caruso. He's admittedly a little older than those other guys — he's 30 right now — but he's in the last year of his contract, and the Bulls seem primed to blow it up, so unlike someone like Herb Jones, he might actually be attainable without giving up too much in return. Besides, 30's not that old, and the way I figure it, if we still aren't competing in a few years, we'll probably be blowing it up ourselves anyway, so I think he's still worth a look just because of everything he could offer on the court in the meantime — top-tier defense, shooting, cutting, and also the ability to handle the ball and facilitate for teammates without being so high-usage that he always demands a ton of touches and takes the ball out of Trae's hands too much.

In fact, all three of the guys I've mentioned so far are pretty low-usage, and that's especially important because the last guy I want to mention is Donovan Mitchell, who's been in trade rumors recently because he too is in the last year of his contract and might not necessarily be interested in re-signing with Cleveland (which would mean the Cavs might be willing to consider trading him before he walks away for nothing). I know, you're probably skeptical about whether he'd really fit alongside Trae (at least if you're judging from how things have gone with DJ — and that's entirely fair); but on the other hand, Mitchell has been part of top-ranked defenses under Quin Snyder before, and even now he's playing alongside Darius Garland, who's a pretty good approximation of Trae defensively, and the Cavs still have an elite defense in their own right. So it seems like it would be perfectly possible to have a legitimately good defense even with a Mitchell-Young backcourt, as long as they had really good defensive teammates (like any of the guys listed above) playing alongside them. And as far as the offense goes, it's true that there's only one ball, and there might be the risk of a your-turn-my-turn kind of dynamic between two ball-dominant players like Spida and Trae — but given what we're seeing right now in the playoffs, it seems like that might just be something you have to accept if you want to contend. All the best teams these days — Boston, Minnesota, Dallas, Denver — have at least two guys on the roster, not just one, who are legit star-caliber bucket-getters (Tatum+Brown, Ant+KAT, Luka+Kyrie, Jokic+Murray). So if the Hawks want to contend by doing the same thing, their best chance at landing that second star scorer will probably be to go for Mitchell. He might not seem like an ideal fit at first (much like the Luka+Kyrie pairing), but considering how close he is with both Trae and Quin, he's probably the most realistic option available. And although trading for him would probably mean sending Cleveland a package centered around DJ and the #1 pick (which they could then flip to a third team if they wanted to), a package like that might very well be enough to beat any other offer Cleveland might receive for him. And if we'd already managed to line up deals for Claxton/OG/Caruso in the meantime, that would certainly lessen the sting of not being able to draft Sarr or Risacher or whoever. I don't think I'd necessarily want to trade for Mitchell unless we had managed to snag Clax at the very least — but like I said, in theory, just in terms of the salary math, it actually does seem like it would be possible for us to not just trade for one or two of these guys, but for all of them. That'd give us a starting lineup of Trae, Spida, OG, JJ, and Clax, with Caruso, Kobe, OO, Gueye and Bogi/Bey/Vit as the second unit. That's two legit All-Stars in Trae and Spida, three legit All-Defense guys in OG, Caruso, and Clax, and multiple young guys in JJ, Kobe, OO, Vit, and Gueye who are all on upward trajectories and could have major breakouts themselves (not to mention AJ and Lundy if we can keep them). If that's not a stacked roster, I don't know what is.

Of course, realistically we're not actually going to land all of these guys. What's more likely to happen is that we'll draft Sarr or Risacher, and then maybe, hopefully, we'll manage to trade for one or two guys who are at about the same level as Caruso or Claxton. Honestly, though, that would be a pretty great outcome in its own right. A lineup of, say, Trae+Caruso+Krejci+JJ+Sarr actually sounds really fun to watch — Trae plus four guys who are all above-average facilitators for their position, who can all bring the ball up and initiate the offense themselves (and are willing passers), but are also active and good at playing off-ball (cutting, spacing, etc.), and can play solid defense as well. I think it could potentially be one of those "greater than the sum of its parts" kinds of things where the lineup doesn't necessarily blow you away on paper, but the chemistry is so good that it ends up really exceeding expectations (especially if Sarr really does turn out to be the second coming of Kevin Garnett or whatever).

At any rate, this is one of the most intriguing offseasons we've had in a while, and I for one am really looking forward to seeing how it shakes out. As much negativity as there's been lately surrounding the state of the team, we've actually got a lot of flexibility right now and are in a unique position to potentially make all kinds of moves. So here's hoping we make the most of it!

TLDR: Yeah, I don't blame you for not wanting to read all that, lol. Definitely did not mean for the post to get this long. Probably you can just look at the bolded names and get the gist of what I'm going on about.