Tag: NBA Free Agency

Danny Ainge Should Give the Spurs a Godfather Offer for Kawhi Leonard. Godfather: Part II, I Mean

By on • ( Leave a comment )

No, no, no, not a “Godfather offer” as is commonly used to describe an offer you cannot refuse. I’m talking about a Godfather: Part II offer.

Rumors are starting to heat up surrounding the Spurs’ trade partners for Kawhi Leonard, which the Celtics are prominently mentioned in. The Spurs have to trade Kawhi and Danny Ainge knows it. The whole league knows it. So why he would go out on a limb and trade one of his best young players for a guy that is almost assured to walk in 12 months is asinine. Sure Kyrie could walk at the end of next year too, but you traded an injured Isaiah Thomas and the No. 8 pick for 2 seasons of him.

Offer the Spurs a couple of low draft picks and maybe a bench guy like Terry Rozier and see if the Spurs bite. If not, then good day sir because I like this team heading into next season as is. The Celtics don’t have to add Kawhi. The Spurs do have to trade Kawhi though. And it would seem from all the rumors out there that the Spurs would rather send him East just to spite him rather than simply handing him to the Lakers.

Advantage: Ainge.

So let them take your blatant low ball offer, or they can go digging for gold with the Lakers, who, ironically considering the title of this blog, are now rumored to be planning a “Godfather offer” for the Spurs.

Your move, Danny. Don’t mortgage the future for 12 months of a guy who played only 9 more games in the NBA than me last year. I would love Kawhi Leonard on this team, but only on our terms. There’s no sense in pushing all your chips to the middle of the table for ONE run at this, not with Golden State still lurking in the West.

The 300s Podcast: Red Sox Chasing 100 Wins & the Gang Fights a PED Suspension

By on • ( Leave a comment )

A new episode of The 300s Podcast is hot off the presses! This ep is a grab bag of news as we’ve got headlines everywhere from drug rings to a historical run by the Red Sox to PED suspensions and back to NBA free agency. Click here to listen or download on iTunes or Google Play. Subscribe, rate, and review today!

It came out the other day that Hanley Ramirez was allegedly Pablo Escobar andddd now he’s apparently not. Whoops.

The Red Sox are on pace to win 100+ games for the first time since 1946 and I’m still not sold on this team.

Julian Edelman is pulling a Ryan Braun and appealing his 4-game suspension on the way his test was physically handled more so than the actual results.

LeBron “The Decision” James reportedly doesn’t want a recruiting circus this time around in free agency. Is this the height of hypocrisy or has LeBron learned from getting roasted after The Decision?

The 300s has a very exciting announcement to make and that my friends is what they call a big market tease.

Cavs Have Learned Nothing; Reportedly Shopping Kevin Love to Convince LeBron to Stay

By on • ( Leave a comment )

Yahoo – At present, the Cavs don’t have much to offer James. Despite reaching the NBA Finals, it’s tough to label the current roster as championship-caliber, and Cleveland’s lack of salary cap flexibility nixes the idea of signing a marquee free agent. In order to make stark changes, the Cavaliers likely will have to make a trade. And considering Kevin Love is Cleveland’s best player outside of James, the veteran big man could be the team’s saving grace. “They missed chances to trade their best non-LeBron player, Kevin Love, at something close to peak value, and will have hard time flipping him for even 50 percent of that now,” ESPN’s Zach Lowe writes. “Expect the Cavs to explore what they might get for a package of Love and the No. 8 pick around the draft in a last-ditch attempt to convince LeBron to stay.”

This is the exact kind of shit that got Cleveland in the spot they’re stuck in at this exact moment; forcing personnel moves solely to appease LeBron. Thats how you get a roster full of guys like JR Smith, Tristan Thompson, Kyle Korver, and (ironically) Kevin Love. So now, rather than try and actually build something the Cavs are just gonna double down and reconfigure the team on the fly again in an effort to entice LeBron to resign.

Let me be very clear; this is a TERRIBLE idea.

Completely altering the structure of the team by trading your second best player and a top 10 draft pick only to guarantee LeBron for another year AT BEST is asinine. The past couple of years LeBron has exclusively signed 1+1 deals where its 1 year + a 1 year player option. He then opts out after the 1 year to essentially put the pressure on the team to do what he wants and continuously add to the roster. Which is genius by the way. LeBron snatched all the leverage away and gave it back to the (elite) players. Business savvy as all hell. But its put the Cavs in a terrible bind the past few years, despite reaching the Finals 4 straight years.

Cleveland has essentially been operating under 1 year cycles, not even pretending to think about building for the long term. And don’t tell me that its exactly what they needed to do to win and be successful because the Cavaliers have just as many titles as the Celtics in the past decade.

So the Cavs could trade all of their best assets just to appease LeBron and then if it doesn’t work to his liking he’s gone next year anyways. Then you’re really hosed.

It’s an awful position to be in, but the Cavs let themselves get here so they need to do 1 of 2 things. Either sack up and tell LeBron this is the team we’ve got and we’ll do the best we can, but we’re not going to start purging valuable assets unless you commit to a long term deal. OR just blow up the entire thing and restart with whatever you can get for the assets you currently have.

Celtics Break LeBron and the Cavs in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference Finals

By on • ( Leave a comment )

This is a 7 game series and we’ve seen LeBron take one on the chin before coming back to lay waste to his opposition but last night was the absolute best case scenario for the Celtics who blew out the Cavs 108-83. They looked younger, quicker, more athletic, deeper, and overall just more invested in the game than LeBron and his flunkies.

When LeBron says he has “zero concern” over getting curb stomped in Game 1 though I genuinely believe him. He probably does have zero concern. Thats the problem. The C’s got up early and never looked back. This Cavs team is not built to play from behind, especially if LeBron isn’t scoring 40 points a game. He’s *averaging* 32.7 pts per game in the playoffs and the Cavs need him to hit and exceed those averages every single night if they’re going to beat the C’s. Do I think LeBron can do that 4 out of the next 6 games? Sure. Do I think he will? I doubt it. I think the Celtics will tax him mentally as they throw wave after wave of defenders at him and make him work, really work, to get upwards of 30 points a night. Not to mention he now has to play defense.

This quote from Jaylen Brown over the weekend was illuminating in the way they all view LeBron.

“You’ve got to make him work on both sides of the ball. Usually he’s guarding the least-offensive threat on the floor, so if he’s guarding me, I’m going to make him pay.”

Now unless Aaron Baynes is on the floor, take your pick LeBron and good luck. Despite all the injuries to this Celtics team they are so deep in terms of scoring threats. If he wants to D up Jaylen Brown well then he’s going to have to chase a 21-year old dude around all game. Same with a 20 year old Jayson Tatum. Both those guys are young, long, athletic and can shoot. Horford’s another All-Star so thats more work. Marcus Smart is smaller, but he’s a goddamn pain in the ass. There’s no weak link LeBron can just lean on to get some rest while playing D. This isn’t last year’s team that stood around and waited for Isaiah Thomas to score on every possession.

Now with all that being said, you know LeBron is going to come out SWINGING on Tuesday night. He wants to make a statement, which he has done so many times before. That is why when he checks himself out of a blowout with several minutes remaining nobody really bats an eye because he is great at taking the long view in a series. His team did not have it, hell they were 0-12 from 3 point land in the first half and shot 15% from 3 for the game. They only shot 36% overall. Meanwhile the Celtics were on fire shooting 36% from 3 and 51% overall for the game.

Water tends to find its level so the Celtics will shoot worse and the Cavs will shoot better. LeBron looks around and sees that and calls it an early night because he’s 33 and there’s no reason for him to play 48 minutes in a blowout when he can just save his energy to come out strong in Game 2.

But, if the Celtics can withstand that early attack from LeBron, throw Marcus Morris, Jaylen Brown, Semi Ojeleye at him and get him to struggle even a little bit then they are in the money. If LeBron senses he’ll have to win the entire series on his own he may just shut it down. We’ve seen it before.

Guerschon Yabusele even got 4 minutes in this game. The Dancing Bear is basically a human victory cigar for the Celtics as we got Gino Time in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference Finals. Insane.

With that we did also see some incredible flip flopping from the broadcast, most notably Jeff Van Gundy. After a Cavs loss to the Celtics in the regular season Van Gundy said the Cavs were still by far the better team and that was BEFORE Kyrie got hurt. Now the C’s get a big win in Game 1 and Van Gundy is rewriting his own history. Where is Old Takes Exposed when you need them?

We could potentially see the Celtics, a completely different Celtics roster and coach, chase LeBron James out of Cleveland for the second time in his career. In 2010 the Big Three of Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett, and Ray Allen frustrated LeBron so bad that he split for Miami just to get reinforcements. We could see that again here as LeBron will almost certainly opt out and enter free agency this offseason.

Before yesterday’s game I said my head tells me Cavs in 6, but my heart says Celtics in 7. I think if the Celtics are going to win this series its going to take 7 games, regardless of the results from Game 1. We’ve seen a young, upcoming dynastic team knock off the aging veteran champions before and it hurt like a bitch to watch. It would be poetic to see the same exact story unfold with the roles reversed on LeBron James now.

Should We Be Concerned By What Gordon Hayward’s Ex-Teammates Are Saying About Him?

By on • ( Leave a comment )

So, unless you’ve been under a rock you know we signed Gordon Hayward a little over a week ago to a max deal. He’ll be be that pure scorer we desperately needed to take pressure off IT and keep the points coming, from a bigger man at that. He’s not Durant or Curry or anyone like that but he’ll get buckets and that’s really all we care about him doing for the most part (more on that in a second).

What’s just a teeeeensy tiny bit worrisome is that since the signing two of his former teammates, one of whom wasn’t even on the Jazz last year, have come out with some, in the least not-positive things to say about Hayward and his switching teams. In and of itself this isn’t anything to really take a deeper look at, there’s always going to be teammates rubbed the wrong way – especially when you switch teams – athletes are people and not everyone gets along with everyone. However the comments aren’t of the same nature and come from two widely different people.

First on the 9th, Trevor Booker, the now non-Jazz (he’s on the Nets) in question came out doubted Hayward really wanted to be “the man” and that he, to paraphrase, did not want the pressure that comes along with such a role. Ok, for us this isn’t too much of a biggie. We have IT. We have Horford, Tatum, and Brown. Even if this is true it shouldn’t be too troubling, and Booker also complimented Hayward in his comments, but he still felt comfortable enough with his opinion, and apathetic enough with how Hayward would react, to say them.

Then, just a couple days ago Ruby Gobert, one of Hayward’s teammates for the last 4 seasons, came out to, paraphrasing again, simply say he understood blah blah blah but didn’t exactly like Hayward leaving “went down”, which can mean a million things in the Sports world. I’m guessing Gobert either expected a heads up from Hayward before things became public or didn’t expect him to leave at all and is a bit salty. The bottom line is the Stifle Tower is another ex-teammate that probably will not be making the trip to lovely New England to spend the holidays with the Hayward family.

Again, all of these comments were pretty innocuous but they do beg the question of what Hayward is like around his teammates and in the locker room. They certainly don’t suggest his Jazz teammates hated him but he doesn’t seem completely beloved by them either. We signed Gordon Hayward to fill it up and that is what he is going to due. I don’t think we need him to play a KG-esque captain role, but it wouldn’t have hurt to have gained some leadership or at least a good example of a veteran personality. We still may have, but now we are certainly allowed to wonder.

The Celtics Free Agency Plans are Crashing and Burning and Free Agency Hasn’t Even Started Yet

By on • ( 1 Comment )

I swear to christ, Celtics fans need their own personal J. Walter Weatherman. Blake Griffin re-signs with the Clippers, Paul George gets traded to the Thunder, and now the Celtics free agency plans are spiraling out of control.

We are now BANKING on Gordon Hayward signing with the Celtics or we are all fucked. I forgot my own rule to never get excited about rumored #WycFireworks until the pen was put to paper. This could all have been avoided if Danny Ainge had only left a note.