| Angelus said: Seems to me the Thunder just did the Lakers a huge favor. If Paul George had been traded somewhere like Boston, Cleveland, or Houston, as people were talking about, he might have been enticed to stay with those teams beyond the 1 year. They would have been highly competitive, and that's a hard thing to walk away from. But now.....OKC? Small market. Team definitely won't be good enough to challenge for the championship, or even the conference championship in my mind. Plus there's a decent chance I think that Russ and George won't get on that well. So I think it's pretty much a lock at this point, Paul George will be a Laker next year. |
You see this is what I'm talking about. In my honest opinion, the Thunder lost this trade. This most likely is just the 5-8 best team in the West, and honestly doesn't really put them over anyone. PG has no inclination to stay in OKC, and on top of that Westbrook may see the same as PG and decide to leave as well. They also sort of continue to butcher their bench depth in the process, if there was any to begin with. PG is a top 15 player no doubt, but he's not a natural scorer like KD. KD can make up for losing 4-5 bench guys, having to give up a decent starter for PG just doesn't seem like a great incentive to me. The only argument I see backing the Thunder is that they got him for next to nothing, and I will argue that. Everyone agrees if Westbrook goes with PG, they can start a rebuild. Why then did you just give up two young and pretty good prospects in Oladipo and Sabonis? You put yourself back and not only that, you don't have your pick this year, so if they both leave, you have to wait another year to get a young prospect. The Thunder kinda screwed themselves bad in this, but hey, if they make it to the Finals then this rant will be pointless.
