1) I think the success or failure of tank+Lauri is where the wins come from. I don’t mind if they come from younger players improving or playing well. If that is the cost of less lottery balls I al more than ok with it. I think we gave up our hard tanking aspirations by keeping Lauri. Realistically, we don’t have a player who can be traded for value or doesn’t have potential to be here for the long haul. There are no temporary vets grinding out wins which I’m happy with. I think we will see some intentional tanking activities once again, but for the most part we have to accept our choice with Lauri.
I’m assuming we pull the plug btw. If we keep playing our best players for the end of the year I’d consider that a failure in judgement. But I wouldn’t consider it a failure if our young players do well in the first half that it boosted our total season standing.
2) Kessler/Sexton are the two to discuss. I think I would be ok eating value on both. I am more inclined to trade Kessler because he has clear teams that need him + his anti tank potential. On top of that, while Kessler is a good young player I don’t see star potential in him. Sexton could be potentially a star player and I get more queasy about trading him. Having said that, for both players I have a hunch that UTA is not the situation for them to blossom based on how they’ve been managed so far.
For Kessler, I think I’d be willing to take the Knicks pile of stuff which is probably less than you’d hope for but still something.
For Sexton, I think if you get one really solid first and one mediocre/protected first I’d be ok with it. Sexton’s value is hard to peg, so I don’t even know if that’s an underpay, but I do a trade at that value. If the Lakers unprotected 27 and then gave us 29 (protected) I’d be ok with a deal like that.