After a quiet offseason, the Magic could be one of the league’s biggest sellers, Steve Kyler of Basketball Insiders writes. Other teams that could look to aggressively shop their assets include the Suns and Hawks.
Orlando’s front office was smart to lay low and gauge their own in-house talent, Kyler says, now they’ll look to start shaping their future with a number of notable trade chips ranging from Nikola Vucevic on a $12.3MM contract to D.J. Augustin ($7.3MM).
Phoenix, having stockpiled youth for years, could be in a similar boat, eager to unload contributing pieces to the highest bidder. While linked to Kyrie Irving for much of the past few weeks, the Suns won’t be afraid to shop players like Tyson Chandler or Eric Bledsoe around elsewhere if it means they can improve their standing as a franchise.
Kyler notes that the Hawks, fresh off of a summer that saw them part ways with Paul Millsap and Dwight Howard, could be in the market to deal. The club, he says, is in full-rebuild mode now after a year of half measures.
The Nuggets, Bulls and Lakers, Kyler says, could also be sellers over the course of the 2017/18 campaign.
There’s more from around the league.
- Former NBA big man Jeff Ayres has signed a contract to play with Eskisehir Basket in Turkey, Emiliano Carchia of Sportando reports.
- An ESPN Insider report penned by Kevin Pelton zeroes in on the league’s most recent transactions, suggesting that the Knicks‘ move to land Michael Beasley could reflect that the organization is bracing for a future without Carmelo Anthony.
- The Superteam Era has hurt the chances small market teams have to compete and there’s no sign that it will end any time soon, Chris Mannix of The Vertical writes. So long as players are willing to forego max money in order to sign with other stars, there’s little the league can do to curb it.
I’d say DJ Augustin’s contract has negative value already at this point.
Yeah Hennigan giving Augustin 4 years was extremely suspect.
Trade Chandler and Bldesoe for Nikola Vucevič
I think they’d wanna save trading Bledsoe for a Kyrie deal, unless that doesn’t materialize at all
If Orlando is in a rebuild mode they’re not going to take Chandler and bledsoe’s contracts. They want pics and Youth.
The solution to breaking up super teams is simple: do away with the max contract.
It’s easy for KD to take $25M over $30m, it would be a lot harder for him to take 25m if other teams are offering 50.
Exactly this. Free market economics would solve this problem naturally. That’s why baseball doesn’t have this problem.
Franchise tag the superstars like the NFL so teams don’t have to worry about losing them for nothing. Once they franchise tag them then they can trade him during the year. That’s just an idea. Even if they leave 10 million on the table and they know they will also make more during a long playoff run by playing more games than having their season to end short. One way as for the league to say the teams only pay their players for the season and don’t pay them anything during the playoffs.
I bet he would. Durant has like a 400 million dollar shoe deal.