FanShot

Crystal Ballin'

2

It's December 15, 2018. Three dramatic and recurring storylines have surfaced in the 60 days since the regular season started: 1. Anthony Davis turned his ankle early and Niko Mirotic grew a beard dirng the summer. New Orleans appears to have fallen out of playoff contention, sitting below .500 in 11th place. This setback, coupled with the loss of Rondo and Boogie, has frustrated the Brow as he looks up at the impossible task of Sisyphus'ing the Pels into the playoffs. AD politely goes to management and requests a trade. The Pels would need a SG to pair with Holiday and a viable big-man replacement (if there is such a thing) for AD since they already lost Boogie as well and would be extremely thin up front. 2. Jimmy Butler and KAT play along nice to start the season as the Wolves hover around .500. Then disaster strikes in December in yet another public spat between the two stars after a bad loss to the Kings at home. The two have to be separated by coaches on the team bus after the two sub-tweet each other on the ride to the airport. Jimmy not-so-politely goes to management and requests a trade or he threatens to walk next summer. The Wolves are looking for a PG of the future and other young talent to put around Wiggins and KAT for cheap. They like the Blazers two rookie picks a lot. 3. The Kawhi Leonard experiment in Toronto has gone all bad. He's failed to give 100% and the Raptors are below-par in a weak Eastern Conference, sitting in 5th place in mid-December. His teammates including Lowry are not big fans, and behind the scenes the Klaw has cont'd to let his LA intentions known. He asks management to trade him to LA...again. At this point Toronto is screwed and Ujiri is fired while an interim GM scrambles to get any value for Kawhi that he can find. In short, Olshey pounces on a huge opportunity facilitated by the following: 1. The values for the Klaw and Jimmy Buckets has never been lower. Both teams are known flight risks throughout the league, and notoriously surly teammates not likely worth the rental or big bucks longterm unless you really 100% believe that either would help bring a championship. 2. There are teams that can offer each team mo' better trade packages than the Blazers. However, ALL of those teams (Boston, Philly, GSW, etc) will be highly competitive at this point in the season and not inclined to make dramatic trades for high-risk stars. 3. AD specifically asks for a trade to Portland to play with Dame. Portland offers the absolute best package they can for AD and good-enough offers to procure Jimmy and Kawhi in subsequent trades, given again their high risk to current and other potential trade partners. The Blazers, having just acquired AD, believe the Klaw and Jimmy will want to stay in Rip City to form a super 4 in Portland with AD and Dame. 4. The Blazers have started off the season better-than-expected and again sit in 3rd place thanks to the elevated play over last season of CJ, Moe, Zach, and ET. Here are therefore the respective trades: Portland > NO: CJ McCollum & Zach Collins for Anthony Davis & Alex Ajinca Portland > Minny: ET, Anfernee Simons & Trent JR for Jimmy Butler Portland > 6ix: Moe, Biggie & Meyers! for The Klaw http://www.espn.com/nba/tradeMachine?tradeId=yb8s8uca Resulting Lineup/Depth Chart: PG: Dame SG: Butler SF: Leonard PF: Davis C: Nurkic Bench: Aminu, Se. Curry, Stauskas, Baldwin, Layman Need to rent to some cheap free agents from Ice Cube to fill-out the roster. Especially some big men as we are pretty thin up front after this trade but definitely boast a star-studded starting 5 as well as a versatile 6th man in Aminu. Kendrick Perkins anyone? Lol. It has been foreseen and cannot be unforeseen :) #ripcity