05-21-2024, 03:53 PM
(05-21-2024, 02:27 PM)KillerLeft Wrote: Another thing I'll add about Gafford:
While I hope he's an impact player here next season, I'm really worried about him taking time from Lively, and I think that in the correctly sized role (relative to Lively), Gafford is probably the most likely guy on the roster to be "not worth his contract" moving forward. To me, that means that he's potentially much more valuable this summer than he will be for the next 1 1/2 years. Obviously, he'll be an expiring contract at the deadline the year after next, so it's not a death sentence to keep him or anything, but I don't look at this situation in Dallas for him and imagine he'll look like an asset at that remuneration level by the end of his time here, and I suspect he and his agent might WANT to move on soon (if Kidd does the right thing with Lively). I hope that makes sense.
Or, maybe Lively gets hurt in training camp and Gafford being here is a Godsend. Who knows?
Two thoughts on this.
First, we could also try to dump Kleber to a team with cap space. I know, we love him and he‘s holding up the well-established German guy from Wurzburg tradition - which is a beautiful city about an hour away from me by the way - but in reality he doesn’t fit Luka‘s timeline and is far too unreliable from an injury perspective for the 11 million he costs us, for example compared to DJJ. That way we keep Hardaway‘s contract until the deadline, where it will reach it‘s highest trade value and could get us a nice asset from a team that changes from trying to win the championship to trying to win the lottery midseason.
Second, I feel exactly the same about Lively needing 30+ minutes to maximize his growth gradient. But what if he‘s coming back from the offseason ready to get 10 of those minutes at power forward next to Gafford in the role of Kleber? Similar to Wemby or Chet, who are sometimes playing the four, but without their ballhandling tasks and more in a stay in the corner and stretch the floor kind of role? Problem solved, you can play physical and athletic for 48 minutes at center with Gafford and Lively each getting 30 minutes per night.