A very short and simple post.

1) Players like Kawhi Leonard, Jimmy Butler and perhaps Luka Doncic (who probably won’t end up in quite the same league, just because few players do, but whose cost may have been essentially nothing for a top 10 team, at least if one believes the Kent Bazemore rumors) don’t become freely available very often.

2) The whole point of draft picks is really so one can find players like Kawhi Leonard, Jimmy Butler, and perhaps Luka Doncic, that a team can build around.

3) The fact that teams are willing to trade future firsts to move up at will within a draft, but suddenly won’t trade anything but cannon fodder once players like Leonard, Butler, Kevin Garnett or Chris Paul become available is asinine.

4) Most teams whole rosters aren’t worth what Leonard, Butler, Garnett or Paul are. I appreciate teams wanting to hold their teams together, but if you believe you can re-sign these players after trading for them, you do it, even if it’s difficult and requires searching for creative solutions and getting third parties involved. The simple fact is that teams have no chance of winning on the highest levels of play without such players.

5) Again, when you can tick off guys who are definitely top 3-to-10 players in the league and you have the chance to acquire them, you do it. You do it at the risk of team chemistry. You do it at the risk of almost everything. Teams (the Kobe-Shaq Lakers as an example in basketball, the Reggie Jackson A’s as an example in baseball) have won when they hated each other. No team has ever won when it wasn’t talented enough. It’s very simple math. Either your team has the talent or it doesn’t.

6) If your team doesn’t have the talent, nothing will help. If your team has the talent and doesn’t have good chemistry, then the team has a simple solution — find a coach who is a better motivator and strategist. And if that doesn’t work, at least it has talent. Talent is always tradeable for more talent, or at least chips that might lead to more talent i.e. draft picks.

7) The trade market in recent years has been the easiest place for teams to find star players. It’s evident, even when the direction of the star changing hands is sometimes surprising. I’m talking about Kevin Garnett, Chris Paul (two times, though only one time not by choice), James Harden, Victor Oladipo, Kawhi Leonard, and now Jimmy Butler (twice). Indeed, it’s most teams’ only opportunity to potentially find a superstar, since they don’t have top 5 picks and aren’t likely to take swing and miss picks on players like Giannis Antetokounmpo, Draymond Green, Mitchell Robinson or even Robert Williams when they have the opportunity to do so. And yes, a “miss” here is in most cases a worst case scenario of finding an average at worst player.

8) Am I trading less value than I am getting back? Yes. Is all that value, which was formerly in multiple roster spots, now consolidated into a single player? Yes. And yet, it’s like teams don’t realize the inefficiency and stick by the line, “I’m not going to trade for a player I could just sign in free agency.” News flash. That’s total bullshit. If your team isn’t one of three or four teams, your team definitely isn’t going to sign said player in free agency. It’s a way to play it safe, where play it safe more than likely means “how to lose graciously but to keep one’s job while one is doing it.”

9) Yes, I am talking about the idea that Jamal Murray or Gary Harris would be untouchables in a trade involving Kawhi Leonard or Jimmy Butler. But these are far from the only ones that shouldn’t be untouchable. Almost whole rosters of a great many teams should be touchable.

*Photo Credit: Mark Runyon