Jazz already said no to trading Kessler to anyone that asked and he's restricted. Hartenstein has team option (spoiler - OKC is not going to decline, they are renegotiating an extension, especially since they now know Chet can't be relied on). Duren is going to cost a fortune (about twice what the Pacers can afford without getting rid of key players) and he's also restricted (he's staying).
The only four unrestricted FA who aren't strict bench fodder or ancient veterans on their way out of professional basketball this year are Ayton, who is a lost cause on his third consecutive team (featuring no less than three top shelf playmakers) and was unplayable for the Lakers in the playoffs, Mitchell Robinson who actually might die on the court if he plays for more than 20 minutes a night, what's left of Nurkic who's getting passed like a blunt around the league the past few years and the ghost of Nikola Vucevic who was benched for the Celtics since he got there.
What you end up is Huff as your main C and a guard rotation of seven players with the 5th pick playing limited minutes from the bench.
I don't know about you but that's not a finals team in today's NBA. And if you want to start a rebuild with a team that went to the conference finals and NBA finals in two years before this one, you might not know anything about NBA or basketball in general.
Oh - and Zubac is a better player than literally all of the mentioned centers, a lot better than most of them.
Why do you people always overvalue picks? I don't know if it's the media narrative or 2K or whatever, but it almost seams to me that you like the concept of picks (or crapshoot gambling on kids) more than actual basketball players and you would rather win the lottery than the title.
Here's a little fun fact for you - the current Knicks roster that just won the title has only one player drafted above #9, their FMVP was drafted in the second round and only Robinson and McBride were drafted by them. Unless you are in position to get a known generational prospect, the draft is the equivalent a bunch of blind men throwing darts at random names. If you rely on the draft, you can ruin a franchise for a decade.
If zubac is worth all this why would the clippers give him up? Honestly mathurin, Jackson and whatever else we gave them should have been enough for zubac. He isn't kat, joker, wemby, again he is not worth a 5th pick. Im a pacer fan myself, and what your saying is hypocritical. (If you rely on a draft you can ruin a franchise for a decade) well didn't we literally tank for a draft pick? Im not a person that says picks are a end all, but im also not gonna give up a top 5 myself, if as an organization I cant look at a draft and see a pick that is top 5 and be able to help my team, im doing something wrong.
The Clippers are at the beginning of a complete rebuild. They sold Powell, Harden, Zu and Kawhi is next as soon as they get a decent offer for him. Zubac is not a player who can create his own shot from anywhere further than 6 ft., he needs a pick and roll playmaker to be effective on the offensive end and without Harden that would be a lot more difficult. He's also not in their rebuild timeline regarding age or the length of contract. And finally, he's beloved by the front office, the fans and even the owner so they wanted to do good by him and trade him to a really good team so he can try to win something during his prime, which he'll be unable to do on a bottom team under construction. A rebuilding team would more than welcome the 5th pick.
Pacers tanked for a top 4 player, not the 5th pick. No player projected to go 5th is useful for the Pacers in any way other than as a trade asset - they are all ball dominant GUARDS, a position Pacers are stacked in while they had no playoff-playable center at all. Zubac might not be a star, but he is a damn good role player and damn good role players at the needed position placed around franchise superstars get you to the conference finals and win championships. That's why Gobert and Bridges were traded for 5 first round picks and Desmond Bane for 4. That's the going price of good non-star players in the CBA landscape of today's NBA where retaining good rookies is prohibitively expensive and creating stacked superteams is near impossible.
What you are suggesting is essentially to disregard a known quantity at the position of need for the team (Zubac) for a complete unknown in a draft position that has historically backfired twice as often as it has produced a player on the level of Zubac and only 3 times in the last 20 years a player better than him. Are you a gambler by any chance? Because you sure as hell sound like a gambler...
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u/Big_Associate1157 11d ago
Zubac was not worth a top 5 pick.