As I said, I see it like this:



Walker

Murray Poeltl

White



If Hunter is at or above Walker's level, then Murray or especially White shouldn't stop you from getting him. Ultimately, you don't draft a contender. You use the draft to supplement your main guys, but you aren't going to select a whole le-worthy team in a couple of years and just hold onto them for a decade. That's why the Spurs' approach of going from David to Tim to Parker/Manu to Leonard made sense. They're not all supposed to have the same window.



If Hunter, Murray and Walker are your core going forward, then so be it. Pay them and surround them with smart draft picks and savvy signings. You start paying everybody because "Hey, they're worth it in a vacuum". you get to be like the Iggy Nuggets or the Grit-and-Grind Grizzlies real fast.



Presti's problem wasn't that he traded away one of his young core. Indeed, he was just working under constraints given to him by the owner. The problem was that he picked the wrong guy to dump. Harden, KD, Ibaka and Adams would likely still be a strong unit today if he had realized that Westbrook was never really going to get better than he was back then.