I don't know if you're doing it on purpose or not, but you're not only misrepresenting the point of most of the people who want to trade LMA now, but also in the need for a small market team to build through the draft.
First, this year's not a good year to pick to say we can’t get marquee FA’s, whether that’s true or not. As shown multiple times, we had "only" 11.9M in cap space. That wasn't enough for a "marquee-" or even "semi-marquee-level" player like Paul (21.4M/yr) Howard (20M/yr), Smith (14M/yr), Jefferson (13.7M/yr), West (12M/yr), Iguodala (12M/yr), Bynum (12M/yr). Pekovic would’ve been matched at any price we would’ve been able to afford. Splitter was matched at about the max we were going to go (9M/yr).
We had enough for either Evans (11M/yr), Millsap (9M/yr) or Mayo (8M/yr) and a spare part left over. I don’t consider them “marquee”. We could’ve afforded JJ Redick (6.2M/yr), but it seems he wanted to play in LA with CP3 and Lob City. You want Kevin Martin (4yr/32M)? Jack, Calderon or JR Smith at 4/25M+?
Second, someone (Jayne?) stated that our offseason was like picking up a couch of the sidewalk. That’s kind of dumb. It was more like buying a drug-runner’s Lamborghini at a police auction, or Iverson’s Bentley at a bankruptcy auction. The rules stated that a team (in this case, HOU) wanted to do something the law wouldn’t allow, and so they had to have assets re-po’d (or sold at fire-sale prices—in this case, Robinson) to be able to get what they wanted (in this case, Howard). Same for NOP and Lopez. They wanted Tyreke, and the price for that was fire-saling their starting center. Doesn’t mean that they aren’t still useful assets, it means that because of extenuating circumstances you didn’t have to pay full price for them. Could we have traded cap space for the #5 pick 12 months ago? Or even 4 months ago (when SAC gave up Robinson)?
Third, you don’t have to tank to get good draft picks. But you do have to get them. Trading 30 y/o All-Star Gerald Wallace for the #6 pick was not the catalyst for our 2011 slide, it was a move that gathered assets after seeing that he wasn’t going to be here long-term. Yes, the team was hurt in the short term because Mehmet Okur and Shawne Williams were not as good as Crash was, but the team got a pretty good value (in Lillard) going forward. CLE doesn’t have Kyrie Irving because they sucked—they have Kyrie Irving because they traded their 28 y/o All-Star PG (Mo Williams) for LAC’s lotto pick—which won the lotto. They were slightly worse short-term because Baron Davis’ broken-down body wasn’t as good as Williams. But they got around 8+ years of Kyrie Irving instead. OKC used cap space to take on Kurt Thomas (and got two 1sts—Serge Ibaka included—for their trouble), and then traded him for another future first. Didn’t matter how good or bad they were—the picks were other teams’ assets that they were able to leverage. By trading 27 y/o All-Star Chris Paul two years before they knew he was going to not re-sign with his team, NOH got a not-quite-as-good player (Gordon), some young pieces and a lotto pick. Didn’t matter how much they sucked, they were getting a pick based on how bad LAC was (and it ended up at #10). Deron forcing his way out of Utah got Favors, a lotto pick (that ended up at #3), a mid-round pick (Dieng) and a point guard that actually played better than Deron did for the rest of that year. Didn’t matter how bad they tanked or not—they were in the running all this year for a playoff spot. I can go on, but there’s more.
Going back to the point of the article, we can’t Spend Paul Allen’s Money to circumvent a cap anymore. It doesn’t matter if we actually wanted Hibbert so bad we would’ve paid 40M a year to get him, we were limited by the CBA and IND could match whatever we wanted (BTW, Hibbert was a pretty marquee FA that would’ve signed here, so there’s one). Did anyone ever think that POR was in the running for one of the “marquee” FA’s this year (CP3 or Howard), even if we did have oodles of cap space? When we had Roy, Oden and Aldridge, and 11M in space, which marquee FA’s lined up to sign here? Not Hedo. Millsap got matched. We went with Andre Miller. Instead of having RLEC traded for Vince Carter and 2 firsts at the previous deadline.
What we (as a non-"glamour" city) need is to continually get assets to keep building up a team. In Portland, the FA method for getting marquee players has proven to be one that is lightning-in-a-bottle at best, and non-existent at worst. Getting future draft picks is a way to maintain the flexibility and ability to get good players on inexpensive contracts, maintaining cap flexibility to go after future assets like we did this year (or Presti did with Kurt Thomas or Utah did with Jefferson and Biedrins) and setting yourself up if a Pippen/Howard/Deron/Melo trade comes along. Letting an All-Star-caliber player walk for nothing is beyond short-sighted, and has been shown to be that throughout recent NBA history.
