**OFFICIAL 2019 NBA OFFSEASON THREAD**

Which team will win the 2018-2019 NBA Championship?

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The days of boogie scoring 60points is long over... but sad to see injury take him out so bad he have to settle for 3.5 million.
 
keko jones said:
This is how pathetic dude is..
Padding himself in the back for recruiting dudes that continue to say no to him.

SmH
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is this the best you got?

the man wants to win so he recruits the best players to play with him... what is pathetic is losing 3-1 in the finals and crying and begging on the phone and sobbing to durant to make him come to oakland

now THATS PATHETIC
 
Hyde: Could Blockbuster NBA Trade Pave Way for Russell Westbrook to Heat? | Commentary

Russell-Westbrook-to-Heat.jpg


https://www.sun-sentinel.com/sports...0190706-fychacz3zzazzpun554n6jjhwm-story.html

Well, can they do it?

Can the Miami Heat make one more headline?

Could they piggyback off the Los Angeles Clippers’ stunning trade for Paul George and cherry-pick off the misery of Oklahoma City by getting an actual and mercurial whale in Russell Westbrook? Or take on the good news/bad news of Washington’s Bradley Beal and John Wall?

The NBA awoke to another summer bombshell Saturday morning with George and free agent Kawhi Leonard joining the Clippers as the free-agent period again seemed more entertaining than the season.

So now Westbrook appears on the market, too. Short answer: Yes, the Heat could move for him. Longer answer: Good luck making it work since they don’t have an unencumbered first-round pick to trade for eight years.

Longest answer by the timeline: Would Oklahoma City take five protected draft picks in the 2030’s? That’s something the Heat might do, loose as they are with draft picks.

The only realistic Heat chance for Westbrook seems a youth-filled package of Bam Adebayo, Justise Winslow and unsigned rookie Tyler Herro. It would be a live-for-the-moment deal that would give you two unpredictable and mercurial, 30-year-old centerpieces in Westbrook and Jimmy Butler.

Would you do that? More pointedly, would it make the Heat a contender?

You know Heat President Pat Riley is turning everything over in his mind on a Saturday where free-agent contracts become official, making it a basketball Christmas in Los Angeles and returning Canada to hockey.

The Heat had to do something this summer and did. It made a marketing improvement by trading for for Jimmy Butler and trading off Hassan Whiteside. But as all the dust settles, the Eastern landscape doesn’t look as re-arranged as the Heat roster.

A quick pecking order: Milwaukee, Philadelphia, Boston, Toronto, Brooklyn, Indiana and the Heat. For all the maneuvering of the Heat, that’s not much maneuvering where it matters. Seventh place isn’t why Riley plays. A good season, they’re sixth or even fifth?

It also must crush Riley to watch his aging peers assemble titanic moves to become relevant again. His former backcourt mate and then boss, Jerry West, oversaw the Clippers moves. His former Laker team owned by the Buss family got Anthony Davis to team with LeBron James.

On the flip side, there’s always the New York Knicks. That franchise hasn’t been the same since Riley walked out the door more than two decades ago. Its clown act continued this summer. And what a full summer this past week proved to be.

NBA stars flexed their muscle again in shuffling the power. Leonard left a team, province and full country in despair. George pushed his way out of Oklahoma City in a trade for five first-round picks, veteran Dano Gallinari and point guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander.

So now the final gold rush of free agency is here. The Heat reportedly could send Goran Dragic and his $19 million to the Los Angeles Lakers. Maybe that happens. It gets the Heat off the despised hard cap. It’s a nice landing spot for Dragic.

Maybe the Heat do something else. The problem is mistakes have been made that only time can solve to some degree. Big contracts for average players. They’ve also been loose in trading draft picks to the point they can’t sweeten any deals.

Every deal is a gamble now, too. Trading all your youth for Westbrook? Taking on the massive contract and injured body of Wall?

The Heat lived through Chris Bosh’s final years to know what it’s like for a quarter of the salary cap not to be in uniform. They still had a team that made it within a game of the Eastern Conference Finals. But is that any way to build?

There’s been a lot of noise and headlines around the Heat in the past week, a lot of coming and going. What hasn’t changed much is their standing in the East. It looks like how this free-agent period ends for them, too.
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