For reference, GSW offered Moody+two 1sts+2 swaps+2nds, and Utah countered with Kuminga+Moody+Podz+two 1sts+two swaps+2nds
Assuming Presti decides to pull the trigger and you know for sure Lauri would extend, what are your deals to top either the GSW offer or Utah counter? I’ll post mine in the comments
by deejpro11
14 Comments
that’s a ridiculous counter-offer. three high-potential young guys and that much draft capital? ainge is asking for way too much for an expiring contract
i guess you could says hes asking for too much deliberately and they meet in the middle and only trade two guys but still that’s a lot
None, don’t need him
For GSW’s offer, I’ll assume they offered their 25+27 1sts, swaps in 26+28 and we won’t bother with the seconds since OKC has tons of them
Topic+Kenrich (to make the money work)+the better of OKC/MIA ‘25 picks, the HOU ‘26 pick, the DEN ‘27 pick, and any OKC pick from 26 or 27 plus seconds
For Utah’s counter-offer – they’d probably ask for Cason+Topic+Dieng as the player package (let’s assume Ainge realizes he’s not getting JDub) to be comparable or better than what they’re asking for from GSW, then probably the same pick package, or if Utah likes the players from GSW better you’d have to include one or more of the LAC pick/swaps.
Cason plus one of the LAC assets would probably be where I’d draw the line
I don’t think we are even interested in Lauri anymore. We got Caruso and Hartenstein that’s all we really needed. Our lineup is so good right now, and our future is looking amazing, I don’t see the point risking either one of those. Vegas already has us as the #2 favorite to win it all behind Boston, and if we don’t get it done this year we have so many years ahead to make it work.
I don’t think ainge really wants to the trade.
It’s not happening. But I’d say an offer Utah would accept would be:
Cason, Ous, and the 2 worst FRPs we get in 2025, a 2029ish lightly protected first and a 2028ish lightly protected swap.
We’re not doing that just for the right to pay Lauri a ton of money. Cason’s too valuable at his age with his potential.
No thanks. We are already set without him.
Best counter is to do nothing.
We need to give up the Lauri talk. He would fuck up the cap big time with his extension.
We have our 3 stars. We need to max them and build around them.
Let’s trade assets and picks for a guy that will force us to break up our core in 2 years who also hasn’t played more than 60 games since the pandemic
We could make a pretty crazy offer tho and it wouldn’t really affect us…
Dieng (upside kid, gleague finals mvp)
Topic (perfect future point guard for them without affecting their tank)
Wallace (3&d guard, we good with Caruso)
That’s is three top notch prospects. Maybe only two of those is enough.
Then we can give them back their 2025 protected first which has to be annoying as hell for them as it might threaten them for years
And we have a second of theirs too.
Throw in one more decent first and I think we have a very compelling offer! And we have actually consolidated this roster a bit.
We were out on Lauri as soon as we signed IHart
We already have our big name guys. Shai, Chet, and JDub are going to be a scary big 3 for years to come. The front office is likely more focused on getting role players to complement the star studded lineup. They’ve shown that by acquiring guys like Caruso and Hartenstein. Getting someone like Lauri would really mess with the flow of things. We’ve already made significant improvements this offseason. Best thing to do is just sit back and watch it happen. Wasting our assets now doesn’t make much sense when we haven’t even seen what this new iteration of the Thunder can do.
Bruh I’ll take him. He’s incredible.