Nobody pivots like Sam Presti.
One year ago the Thunder GM won big getting Paul George to re-sign in Oklahoma City, pairing him with Russell Westbrook, and creating an interesting — if not quite as good as they imagined — team. A year later George demands a trade to the Clippers and it forces Presti and the Thunder to pivot, which included bringing in Westbrook to have a conversation about what he wanted next. What he wanted was to get out.
The blockbuster trade came down Thursday and Westbrook is now a member of the Rockets, paired with James Harden again. In the trade, the Thunder take on Chris Paul and get protected first-round picks in 2024 and 2026, and the rights to swap picks in 2021 and 2025.
Those picks are why the Thunder win this trade — combined with what they got in the Paul George and Jeremi Grant trades, Oklahoma City has pivoted to rebuilding brilliantly and has a treasure chest of picks that makes Danny Ainge look like an amateur. (Paul will be traded again, maybe to Miami, and when all is said and done the Thunder will be out of the luxury tax and have a lot of picks.) Just how many draft picks do the Thunder have right now?
Maybe the Thunder won the trade on paper, but the Rockets believe they can win with this trade. As in a title.
Can they?
In a vacuum, Westbrook is a better player right now than Chris Paul. He’s younger, more athletic, is more durable, and has not shown the same decline in skills as CP3. Westbrook is unquestionably an upgrade at the point guard position for the Rockets.
Houston, however, is not in a vacuum, they already have James Harden dominating the ball and doing it better than anyone. The league continues to insist that only one ball be used at a time, and that gets to the big question about how far the Rockets can go with Westbrook and Harden (two players with the highest single-season usage rates in NBA history, and they were first and 10th in the league last year in usage rate).
The Rockets will be the ultimate version of “my turn, your turn” basketball. Rockets backers will point out that both can play off the ball. For example, Westbrook played off the ball more last season, particularly early on (when George was hot and establishing himself as an MVP candidate). Which is true, however, Westbrook also shot 33 percent on catch-and-shoot threes last season. Not an impressive number. We already saw last year with the Thunder, when George had the ball teams helped off Westbrook, not afraid he could make them pay with a jump snot.
When Harden is off the ball, he tends to stand a lot out near halfcourt and conserve energy. He’s not going to be confused with Klay Thompson or J.J. Redick the way he moves. That said, the man can shoot threes and will be a help.
The problem becomes in the Houston offense and spacing. With center Clint Capela paired with Westbrook and Harden, it only leaves a couple of guys (Eric Gordon, P.J. Tucker) that are true catch-and-shoot threats.
Maybe it all comes together for Houston. Maybe “my turn, your turn” basketball works when you have two of the best isolation players in the game taking turns. Houston was the second-best team in the West the last two years and just upgraded talent levels at the point guard spot.
But it may be a lateral move for the Rockets — they got more talent, but we need to see the fit before fully buying into the Rockets as contenders.
Chris Paul is ultra-competitive, wants to win right now, and is getting older (and his game shows it).
That does not fit with Oklahoma City’s rebuilding plan — it has stockpiled so many picks Danny Ainge feels bettered — so Thunder GM Sam Presti is expected to sit down with Paul and his agent to come up with a plan to get the future Hall of Fame point guard where he wants to be, according to multiple reports.
One complication is the three-years, $124 million Paul is owed. Heat have the salaries to match and make this work — Goran Dragic, James Johnson, Dion Waiters — and the Thunder have the picks to send East if they want. The challenge is the Thunder are $3.7 million into the luxury tax and want to shed salary, while the Heat are hard-capped after the Jimmy Butler sign-and-trade and are up against that number, they can’t take on salary.
One way or another expect the Thunder to make a move, as ESPN’s Bobby Marks notes, and don’t even think about a buyout because OCK as an organization does not want dead money on its books (which is what a buyout would leave them).
It will not be easy, but expect Paul to be traded again long before next season starts. And expect him to have a big game when he faces Houston.
Marcus Morris will be a member of the New York Knicks next season.
That left the San Antonio Spurs scrambling because Morris had previously agreed to sign with them. Their answer turns out to be Trey Lyles, and the Spurs officially pulled their offer to Morris to make it happen, reports Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN.
Lyles has shown flashes in Denver of the player they traded for on draft night in 2017 (sending a pick to Utah that became Donovan Mitchell). However, last season Lyles regressed almost across the board, averaging 8.8 points per game on 41.8 percent shooting overall and 25.5 percent from three. More concerning, the Nuggets were -11 per 100 possessions when Lyles and Nikola Jokic shared the court. They just did not mesh.
So the Nuggets move on and the Spurs make a bet that those flashes of a quality power forward can be brought out in a different system.
At Summer League, there was a lot of discussion about what bad form this was by Marcus Morris and his agent Rich Paul — and people I spoke with from some teams were angry. Players have agreed to contracts only to get a better offer back out before, but when Morris agreed to terms with the Spurs for two-years, $20 million, the Spurs traded Davis Bertans to have the cap space to give Morris his money. It’s a move they could not undo.
Morris did back out to agree a one-year contract with the Knicks, something reported by Shams Charania of The Athletic.
This is a better deal for Morris: He makes more money, he should get a lot of touches (although Julius Randle is clearly the starting four in New York), and he re-enters free agency in a year, when it is a down market and there will be less competition for his services.
The Knicks get a solid veteran who can stretch the floor and shot 37.5 percent from three last season. Morris averaged 13.9 points and 6.1 rebounds per game last season in Boston. More than buckets, Morris brings grit and toughness that Knicks fans will love. Plus he can solidly defend the four spot. This is a good pickup for the Knicks.
And it leaves the Spurs scrambling (they snapped up Trey Lyles in a separate deal).
James Harden and Russell Westbrook are teammates again.
While all the buzz had been about the Thunder trying to trade Westbrook to Miami — a place Westbrook was interested in — that was a complicated trade because Oklahoma City wanted to dump extra salary and Miami was up against the hard cap.
Enter a trade to the Houston Rockets and a swap of big contracts for Chris Paul, a story broken by Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN.
There was a lot of talk floating around Summer League in Las Vegas that Harden and Westbrook wanted to team up again, a lot of smoke and, apparently, enough fire too that it got done.
In the past year there had been tension about the style of play in Houston between Harden and Paul — Harden thrives in isolation, Paul’s game has slowed a step and he wanted more picks and more ball movement — so for the Rockets this is a player that fits what Harden wants. That said, there is only one ball and two guys who want to dominate it. Mike D’Antoni, in a lame-duck year, has some work to do to get everyone to sacrifice a little. What we can say for sure is the Rockets will be an isolation heavy team, but with so much skill at that style they will be difficult to stop.
Also, Westbrook is a talent upgrade over CP3 at this point in their careers.
The Rockets remain title contenders right in the thick of a Western Conference at least five deep with teams that believe they have a shot at the title.
The Thunder say they are excited to have CP3 as part of a good core, but the smart money is they will not keep Chris Paul long term. However, trading him will be a challenge (he has three years, $124 million on his contract, and he wants to play for a contender).
The Thunder just keep stockpiling picks for a rebuild.
https://nba.nbcsports.com/2019/07/12/thunder-win-trade-but-can-rockets-win-big-with-russell-westbrook-james-harden/
2019-07-12 07:19:00Z
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