Pacers have traded this pick to the Spurs for George Hill sources say

[DPG21920]

All I'm saying is that I understand the move in isolation but big picture (this year) in don't see how it accomplishes moving the team closer to contention. I need to see how everything plays out before I can fully evaluate the trade. At the moment, I give it a B or B+, but I need to wait more. That's just me.

[MaNu4Tres]

You keep calling Tyson Chandler a minor tweak? That's what I don't get. Whether the Spurs are way behind the Mavs or not, they have legit things they need to address and the Mavs aren't the only team to be concerned with.

You and I just disagree with regards to where the Spurs are at from a contender standpoint. I was a vocal minority that said before the season Spurs werent true contenders. That doesn't mean I think they were way off, but I knew their margin for error was nil. They surprised me with a 60+'win season, but I don't put too much stock in that. Most knew they overachiever and they flamed out against a mediocre team. It's hard to tell where they were at bc of injuries, but that's a legit problem and not a fluke.

Again, I don't mind the trade and can see myself really liking it, but as of now the Spurs are completely stuck in no mans land.

Spurs are right outside of the elite championship contenders level. They're on the next level, where one or two subtle/significant tweaks could change things. And Chandler wasn't a big move last year-- it was subtle/significant though.

You didn't see analysts crown the Mavs champions last summer with the addition of Chandler.

[Aggie Hoopsfan]

You realize he's 19 and Richard Jefferson is on the roster right? I don't think anyone is " ing" about getting Leonard, at least I'm not. But thanks for the tl;dr.

Your comment sounds a lot like when Tiago arrived. "We finally got our starting center, this changes everything!!!!". It's not that Tiago can't help, it's looking at who is on the roster, who the coach is comfy with and how big of an adjustment NBA rookies outside of top 3 picks normally have to make.

You mean the coach who was so comfy with RJ that he had him sitting on the pine for the end of the Memphis series?

Yeah, clearly Jefferson is a lock for 40 minutes a night after that...

[DPG21920]

Ok, we will see. If RJs on the team, we will see if he gets the Tiago treatment

[ohmwrecker]

Ok, we will see. If RJs on the team, we will see if he gets the Tiago treatment

I'm just hoping Tiago doesn't get the Tiago treatment.

[MaNu4Tres]

I'm just hoping Tiago doesn't get the Tiago treatment.

Amen.

[DPG21920]

Also, it's not about having the media crown us contenders. While maybe no one predicted a Mav le bc of Chandler (mostly bc he was injury prone) it was a significant move/gamble. Spurs need something like that to have a true shot. It might not work out, but I would at least like to see that type of move. Just like the RJ trade. It didn't work out, but I love the idea behind it. You can't fault them for that.

When that trade was made it was bc the Spurs knew they needed a sig piece to truly have a shot at a le. They are still as far away as then so IMO they need more than minor tweaks.

While they don't need a bunch of all stars, they need some proven pieces.

[DPG21920]

I'm just hoping Tiago doesn't get the Tiago treatment.

Ha, true.

[Buddy Holly]

People who believe Hill was going to become an All Star here or is going to become a all star in Indy, need to stop smoking whatever it is that gives them this belief.

[lowdown]

Overall, this seems like a really good trade for the Spurs. I'll miss George Hill as a Spur but the FO seems to have gotten a lot of value for Hill considering where they were in the draft. Now an additional upgrade in the front court would be awesome if they can do anything in free agency or via trade.

[Mr. Body]

You realize he's 19 and Richard Jefferson is on the roster right? I don't think anyone is " ing" about getting Leonard, at least I'm not. But thanks for the tl;dr.

If that was a tl;dr, then you have squirty donkey for brains. And plenty of people are sobbing their poor little eyes out about the trade.

[Mr. Body]

DPG, for someone who complains about other people's posts, you sure have diarrhea of the fingers. Goddamn do you post a lot of words that are barely worth reading.

[Obstructed_View]

Fianances definitely played a part of the Hill trade imo, but I do not believe that was the sole purpose. Because of the Spur's depth at the 2, they could afford to make this move, and the players acquired, although just rooks, have a chance to stick because of their defensive abilities.

I agree with this. The GH3 point guard experiment gathered enough data. He's not a point guard, and he's not really the defender everyone hoped he'd be. There's not really any reason to think that Neal and Anderson can't do exactly what Hill did for far less money. Once you decide that, he's basically an asset to trade unless you want to just let him walk next year.

The Spurs did get a couple of guys that are really young, but there's scuttlebutt that the season's not going to happen, so what's wrong with having really young players, especially if they can defend? If one, or even two of those small forward guys manage to pan out the Spurs are suddenly a much better team and never miss Georgie.

[ElNono]

Its all semantics as far as I'm concerned. The package deal is a metaphor. When Duncan retires, the Spurs will work hard to trade Parker and they will find plenty of suitors. If you don't understand satire, just say so. Duncan's retirement signifies the end of an era and with or without Parker, the Spurs aren't contenders. Non-contenders don't like to haul around $50 million dollar contracts on their roster.

I agree that they most likely going to disband and tank. I still don't understand how this ties with the notion that Parker's salary is coming off the book so we could've payed Hill then. At that point, you want to have as much players as you can on minimum deals, and whether Hill is around or not is frankly irrelevant.

Not Necessarily. If Kahn doesn't see Love as a player he can keep, he won't think twice about shopping him. Other teams would certainly show interest but most contenders might shy away because he hasn't shown the ability to raise his game to the next level to create more of a winning atmosphere in Minny. The Spurs could have paired Love with Duncan and given them that rebounding presence they soarly missed in the post season. It might have prolonged Duncan's career beyond next year. But now, I see no reason for Duncan to continue to grind it out a few seasons and beyond with the team out of contention.

The only way Khan gets rid of Love is if he packages him with a bunch of bad contracts on the team and gets back a superstar in exchange. It's the only thing that makes sense because Love's current rookie contract would only net $3m in return.

You need much more talent than Hill/Blair to pry a legitimate star like Love.

Along those lines, I would say Mahimni was even a bigger steal last year. Talk about a bargain buster. A player who never played, but came cheaper than most 3rd/4th bigs and helped the Spurs fill out the roster and field a compe ive team.

Mahinmi was on a rookie scale contract, Splitter isn't
The Spurs obviously have bigger plans for Splitter than they ever had for Ian.
IE: They hope Splitter can be a 3rd/4th big (rotation guy), unlike Ian, who was the 5th big and a roster filler pretty much.

What a bunch of malarkey. Bargnani is 25 years old and has steadily gotten better each season. He averaged over 21 ppg in 2011 and Splitter isn't exactly a picture of health himself. Its tough to get rebounds when your constantly playing on the perimeter. Both players have flaws but Barg is the better player.

This is the first season Bargnani breaks the 20ppg mark on a team that could only muster 22 wins.

We're talking about the #1 pick in the draft. Blake Griffin averaged more PPG in his rookie season.

I'm not comparing Splitter to Bargnani. Bargnani makes 3 times as much and rightly so, since he was the #1 pick in the draft and is seemingly more talented. The point is, skilled big men are not cheap in this league.

I can't take you serious when you make silly comparisons like this even if its in aggregate. Splitter struggles to compete on the court against backups. Even when Duncan retires and with increased playing time, I sincerely doubt Splitter will ever be the focal point of the offense.

And bigs aren't hard to find. Quality bigs are hard to find.

Bargnani shouldn't be to focus of any offense either. But that's besides the point. Splitter has already shown he's a skilled player in a different league.
I don't think he'll be a superstar big in this league either. But skilled, serviceable bigs in this league cost a good chunk of money. I mean, we paid Oberto, who was comparatively speaking fairly old when he came over, $2.5m a season.

[ElNono]

Maybe I didn't articulate my point well:

The trade itself is fine IMO because Hill, while very good, isn't going to turn into one of those "holy sh*t we messed up trades". So in a bubble, the trade is fine and the spurs don't really miss when it's in the lottery range (weak draft or not). We won't know if Leonard is solid until he plays but even if he's a bust it doesn't set any thing back in a major way. It will be a blow to both contending and rebuilding but not a massive one either way.

But things don't happen in a bubble so the issue is if you gave up a rotation player on a contending team for some 19 year olds that might not be ready to contribute (maybe too young) or might not get an opportunity (RJ can't be moved) then you likely stayed put or moved backwards from a contention standpoint.

I know there is time, but swapping young player for young player doesn't really send you full steam into rebuild mode while at the same time it doesn't look to help you push forward from a contention stand point.

Thats all I said about the situation. Not that I hate the trade itself, it's just that when you move a young productive rotational asset, you would like to see it clearly be on a path to accomplish something either way (rebuild or contend).

Still plenty of time to go either way, but when evaluating this draft which is what happened, there are no real answers to anything.

If your contention is that this trade might backfire in a bad way, then yes, I agree that it could. There's no "likely or unlikely" here, IMO. It's a gamble. It will either pay off in the long run or not.

[Obstructed_View]

If your contention is that this trade might backfire in a bad way, then yes, I agree that it could. There's no "likely or unlikely" here, IMO. It's a gamble. It will either pay off in the long run or not.

In the long run, George Hill was likely going to leave as an unrestricted free agent. The only real question becomes is this the best the Spurs could do. They got two young players, one of whom was a targeted lottery pick that slipped to them, basically the small forward verison of DeJuan Blair.

Every trade is a gamble. There are safe bets and there are long shots. This is far closer to the former than the latter. Nobody thinks George Hill is going to turn into Michael Jordan once he gets to Indianapolis.

[ElNono]

Every trade is a gamble. There are safe bets and there are long shots. This is far closer to the former than the latter.

I agree with that. However, I can't discard outright that Leonard might just not work well for us, or that Corey might not be even serviceable if we have a couple of injuries and he needs to play.

Anything can happen, but that's in part why you do it. If any of these kids end up being some kind of gem that give the team a tangible quality jump, then it was more than worth it. You don't get a shot at that possibility if you don't make the trade.

[ChumpDumper]

Well, I'm not overly sold on the financial pressure to trade Hill. The main reasons seem to be it was decided he is not the point guard of the future for the Spurs; there were several other, ultimately more conventional options available at the two and a team was willing to give multiple picks for him, including one that would net lottery level talent immediately.

[Ginobilly]

Well, I'm not overly sold on the financial pressure to trade Hill. The main reasons seem to be it was decided he is not the point guard of the future for the Spurs; there were several other, ultimately more conventional options available at the two and a team was willing to give multiple picks for him, including one that would net lottery level talent immediately.

Agreed. Neal, Anderson, and Manu is more than enough at the 2. It shouldn't affect the Spurs too much on the offensive end, but now the Spurs don't have that athletic pg/sg tweener to guard the Derrick Roses, JJ Bareas, and John Wall's off the bench. Hopefully Parker makes a better effort on defense this year.

[coachmac87]

In the long run, George Hill was likely going to leave as an unrestricted free agent. The only real question becomes is this the best the Spurs could do. They got two young players, one of whom was a targeted lottery pick that slipped to them, basically the small forward verison of DeJuan Blair.

Every trade is a gamble. There are safe bets and there are long shots. This is far closer to the former than the latter. Nobody thinks George Hill is going to turn into Michael Jordan once he gets to Indianapolis.

How can you compare him to Blair? He isn't undersized for his position and actually has skill offensively..Your only comparing him due to his rebounding. Closer comparison could be a Gerald Wallace/Tayshaun Prince..

[Obstructed_View]

How can you compare him to Blair? He isn't undersized for his position and actually has skill offensively..Your only comparing him due to his rebounding. Closer comparison could be a Gerald Wallace/Tayshaun Prince..

I said that he was lottery talent that slipped to the Spurs. He's lottery talent and he sllipped in the draft. THAT's the only reason I'm comparing him to Blair. But now that you mention it, he's got hugely long reach for his height and is a very strong rebounder. Thanks for making the comparison that much better.

[coachmac87]

I said that he was lottery talent that slipped to the Spurs. He's lottery talent and he sllipped in the draft. THAT's the only reason I'm comparing him to Blair. But now that you mention it, he's got hugely long reach for his height and is a very strong rebounder. Thanks for making the comparison that much better.

Yet you said he is the small version of Blair...Didn't kno Blair was lottery potential hahaha. You making up now?? But your welcome

[ace3g]

RealSkipBayless Skip Bayless
Liked Spurs trade. George Hill too inconsistent, underconfident. KLeonard a steal at 15. Blue-collar toughness will help. Nice little move.

[Obstructed_View]

Yet you said he is the small version of Blair...Didn't kno Blair was lottery potential hahaha. You making up now?? But your welcome

I said he was the 'small forward' version of Blair. If you don't understand what a small forward is, then perhaps a basketball message board was a poor choice of hangout on your part. But then again, you didn't know that Blair was projected to be a lottery pick.

[ElNono]

Blair was actually projected to go in the first round (which I assume is what 'lottery potential' means in that case). The reason he didn't was the risk with his knees. Leonard didn't have such risk attached to him.