By most accounts it was on purpose. Krause wanted to reboot and forced MJ and Scottie out. MJs return from retirement was a pretty clear indicator of his preferences and Scottie was sick of getting screwed over. The only real difference was that it was pretty much common knowledge throughout the last season and not an off season surprise like with other examples.
That’s a decent point. By keeping yourself “one player away” you are in the conversation at the trade deadline and at the start of next off season to grab the next disgruntled star. Not sure that’s worth the opportunity cost of starting a youth movement sooner or not.
The Oklahoma City Thunder have traded Russell Westbrook to the Houston Rockets in exchange for Chris Paul, first-round picks in 2024 and 2026, and pick swaps in 2021 and 2025.
You might recall that Chris Paul started out his career in Oklahoma City with the New Orleans/Oklahoma City Hornets.
Thought the Hornets started in Charlotte, and it was the Sonics that moved to OKC?
I hate the trade. This smells ownership driven, by someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing, but damn it, they’ll do it all over the place if they want to. See, Snyder, Dan for another example. Houston had another owner like this in Drayton McLane, and towards the end of his reign did all sorts of stupid, pennywise and pound foolish personnel decisions, solely to fill seats in the here and now.
Westbrook is a better basketball player now than Chris Paul. Paul’s skills, even as decrepit as he is, are a better fit for this team than Westbrook.
Maybe the 2nd and 3rd worst contracts get swapped for one another.
Paul’s is so bad, that the Rockets needed to throw 2 firsts and 2 pick swaps to get away from it even though it’s 2 years shorter!
Westbrook and Harden sharing the ball?!?!?
Westbrook and Harden playing for D’Antoni?
Are the Rockets better with Westrook? I’m not sure.
The Thunder have SO MANY picks. I don’t even know what to expect for next few years.
The Rockets gave up 1sts and pick swaps spanning the next 7 years! Harden and Westbrook will probably be long gone when that 2026 pick conveys, safe bet a few of those will be high picks (no word on protections yet).
Chris Paul on a team with nothing bu young guys…that’ll go well. They gonna try and buy that albatross out or what?
He was also playing the role of 6th man at the time. Which in hindsight, is pretty unbelievable.
Here in Oklahoma, all of the sports-talk radio-heads are saying that CP3 will never play a game for the Thunder. Miami seems to be the only real choice which limits his trade value. That, plus he’s 34 years old, has a monster contract, is injury prone, and apparently doesn’t play well with others.
The only destination I’ve heard that makes sense to me is Minnesota. Minnesota takes that albatross of a Paul contract back in exchange for the albatross that is the Wiggins deal.
For this to be real a couple things need to change. Minny, who just gave out that deal last summer, has to have completely done a 180 on his value and long term prospects. If they now think that he’s unfixable and somehow puts Towns development in jeopardy, maybe that happens. It gets them out from under that deal 1 year sooner. OKC would almost certainly need to send some additional capital their way to balance that considering the player’s relative ages and Paul’s larger annual salary. Minny would also have to somehow think that Paul is going to elevate Towns’ production as well. Similarly OKC has to view Wiggins as a salvageable asset and maybe see him as a good box office draw due to the KU connection.
I don’t really see any other options unless the Thunder are desperate and they give away a bunch of those picks they worked so hard to get. If I’m betting, Paul is probably stuck there for the foreseeable future.
With football starting in a few weeks, there has been zero, and I mean ZERO talk about the Thunder and Chris Paul on TV or radio. The Thunder could buy a billboard on I-40 in the middle of OKC announcing a Paul trade and no one would even notice. This has been, and always will be a college football state.
It’s a shame. That team had three of the top six players (by total Win Shares) of the 2010s at one time (WB, Harden, and Durant) and only made it to one Finals. Basketball is a funny game.
Agreed, though at the time, nobody, probably not even Morey, thought that Harden would turn out to be one of the best offensive creating NBA players of all time. I’d think you could make the argument that Ibaka was better than Harden at the time Presti had to decide which one to keep.
Do you think that Durant, Westbrook, and Harden would have had enough touches to go around? There’s only one basketball on the court at a time, you know.
While Harden is absolutely a beast on the offensive end, he needs the ball in his hands. Durant and Westbrook could make it work between them, but there’s no way a third ball-dominant “small” could coexist on the floor. Thus, Harden as the sixth man. But sixth men don’t get massive contracts, and Ibaka plays defense. A repeated DPOY contender is more valuable to a team with Durant and Westbrook than yet another scorer.
At the time, it absolutely felt like a toss-up between the two. Harden was averaging almost eight points more a game with incredible efficiency (the 35th best TS% season of all time), but he was a liability on the defensive end even then. As a part of the Thunder, Harden didn’t really have much further he could go - he was already playing over 31 minutes a game. Ibaka was doing just fine with his limited shots, but he was averaging almost four blocks a game, almost twice what #2 DeAndre Jordan was managing.
Hindsight says Presti probably made a mistake. If he could have traded away Westbrook and managed the problems and personalities that emerged, that Thunder team might be talked about like the Heatles. Instead, he’s finishing blowing up the current team and trying to figure out how to rebuild with NONE of those superstars. Eh, you win some, you lose some.