If so, he may be a useful tool in our rebuild. I don't think it is a good idea to keep him at the salary he'll likely command but I think there are plenty of other teams that would make sense financially. The Pelicans in particular, need swingmen and are rumored to be more than interested in retaining Jrue Holiday- Justin's brother. What better way to kill two birds with one-stone than to acquire Justin and have him encourage Jrue to stay in New Orleans?
For it to work financially, we'd have to eat Omer Asik's contract but I think it'd be worth it if the Pelicans offer up a lightly protected first round pick and pick swaps of our own choosing. After all, we could just eat that deal or stretch it to still maintain some financial flexibility moving forward. $5 million per year, for the next 7 years to potentially get an additional lottery pick to our asset cache would be huge in my opinion.
For the record, I obviously don't think the Davis-Cousins pairing will work. A deal like this would serve as a Trojan Horse that would handicap NOH financially and prevent them from having the ability to surround their core with talent, thus increasing the value of the pick we'd be receiving. Demps is on the hot seat and I think desperate enough to justify the Cousin trade, to make foolish mistakes that we should and could leverage. Just my two cents.
Maybe we could expand the deal slightly to better the risk-reward ratio? I don't think there is any realistic way they can take both Joakim AND a sign and traded Justin Holiday...but what about a sign and traded Justin Holiday and Lance Thomas for Omer Asik, Quincy Pondexter's expiring contract (that is $4 million less than Lance Thomas') and their top-3 as well as 19-30 protected 2018 first round that becomes unprotected in 2019 (as well as whatever combination of picks swaps and/or 2nd round picks to counterbalance the inherent risk in the deal)?
I just think that their franchise is ripe for the plundering. George Shinn has no interest in basketball and has not made the appropriate infrastructure investments for that team to live up to its potential. There have been multiple articles published about how the Pelicans use the same trainers and facilities as the Saints, who are poorly equipped to deal with the physical realities of professional basketball. It explains why their players are so frequently injured and why their talent does not translate to wins. If we also force them into a trade that handicaps their ability to add depth, I think we are looking at a team that massively disappoints, which benefits whatever draft picks of theirs that we'd own through this deal.
Combine that apathy, with a GM looking to keep his job and I think it is a situation that could give us a similar haul to what the Sixers got from the Kings back in 2015. That gamble is worth $5 million of cap space IMO.
