Missed Opportunities

[Salty]

Spot on! Our 2012 first round pick came last year as part of the Kwahi deal.

Lorbeck is probably coming over this year and although he wasn't the ostensible target of the trade for Kwahi last year, he's a veteran pro in Europe with proven abilities. Once you get past the top 10 picks in most drafts every remaining player is a gamble so Lorbeck may be the best new player we can acquire for the front line.

I wouldn't expect Lorbek to come over just yet. CSKA Moscow is still after him and they're probably gonna offer him a bigger contract than the Spurs can due to rookie salary restrictions. Still, he is 28 and this is probably his last chance to come to the NBA so nothing is certain. I know the guy can shoot, so it'll probably be bye-bye Bonner if Lorbek joins the Spurs.

[rr2418]

The Spurs don't have a lot of leverage until free agency starts.

So the FO decided to do a low risk, good reward pick with Denmon - shopping Red Rocket, Dancing Bear and Nailgun can wait.

Who's nailgun?

[tesseractive]

Move him for a future pick. Those always seem more easy to get than day of draft.

You tend to get draft day trades when teams look over who's still available and don't see anyone who can help them. This was considered a deep draft, so teams were all starry-eyed about the possibilities of the players they could draft, and mostly only traded down when they could drive a hard bargain. So if there's no value there, there's no value there.

Maybe we can pick up future picks, maybe we can make trades this summer.

Worst case, we go into the season and spend some time showcasing Bonner, Blair, Neal, etc., and try to raise their value so that we can ship them off for something useful at the trade deadline. It's a lot easier trying to trade someone who's in the rotation and doing something useful than it is to trade a guy who's buried on your bench and can't earn any minutes.

[maverick1948]

Blair is a huge bargain so it would have been dumb to trade him just for the sake of trading him. I'm sure the Spurs could have gotten something for him but if it's not something useful (like a first rounder), why throw him away? At worst you have a very good fifth bigman who gets paid near the minimum.

Bonner was highly unlikely to be traded tonight. The time to start worrying about Bonner's status is if the amnesty period comes and goes . . .

Amnesty period this season is July 11 until July 17. Guess we will know something by then about Lorbek and Bonner.