Avery Bradley + Dallas 2016 pick + Boston 2016 pick + James Young
Milwaukee gets a veteran starting SG to balance out their starting five. A player who is having the best season of his career and is a quality starter. And 3 first round caliber prospects to add quality youth to their team.
Seems like a pretty fair trade
Danny would likely do this deal, though he'd probably think about it harder than most would assume. But doubtful the Bucks would.
I thing Danny would laugh and hang up.
Right now Avery Bradley is about 3x better than Jabari Parker, there is no way I would trade him for Parker straight up and I don't think Danny would either. That AB/Crowder bulldog defense is a HUGE reason why:
1) We can afford to start IT and give him a huge role
2) This team is one of the top defensive teams in the NBA
We have such a good record because we are a good defensive team AND a pretty good offensive team. When our offense isn't falling, sometimes we can still win games with our defense.
Trade Bradley for Parker and everything falls apart.
Do you remember how badly this team was playing, and how much we were struggling, back when Bradley was out due to injury? We were playing like a fringe lottery team.
Yeah I know Smart can make up for the loss of Bradley defensively, but then you have two other issues:
1) This weakens the strength our second unit, which has been a huge reason for our recent success
2) Smart still has to develop offensively, and doesn't offer the scoring punch or the shooting ability of Bradley - which is critical in creating space for Thomas.
Bradley is such an important player to this team, and to Thomas. Bradley's ability as a shooter forces teams to defend him (and Crowder) on the perimeter, which stops teams from being able to crowd the paint against Thomas' penetration. Bradley's defensive ability (along with Crowder's) on the perimeter also makes up for Thomas' defensive limitations, hence allowing us to be able to use Thomas as a core guy in our starting lineup (and our go-to scorer).
Without Thomas this team struggles badly to generate points, so it's absolutely critical for this team to be able to have Thomas on the court in order for us to be able to win games at a good rate. Without him our offense is way to weak and we'll get spanked on a nightly basis.
This is why the 3+D capabilities of Bradley and Crowder are so critical to this team, because without those two guys on the court it makes it very hard to put Thomas on the court - and without Thomas on the court this team cannot score - and without scoring this team cannot win.
There is a reason this team is a 3rd seed despite not having tons of talent, and that is 'fit'. Our guys fit together incredibly well, and this team is better than the sum of it's parts because of the way those parts interlink. This team is a very efficient machine, and an efficient machine is system of parts that on their own don't achieve much, but when combined together can produce a specific result. Randomly taking one piece out of such a machine an replacing it with some other completely different type of part, may lead to the entire machine falling apart.
Avery Bradley happens to be a very core part of this 'machine' and core parts like him are the riskiest ones to try to replace - because he handles so much of the load that replacing him with somebody like Parker could (and probably would) make this team significantly worse.
I know the argument is about upside, but I don't buy that either. Everybody on earth was saying that Jabari Parker was THE most NBA Ready player in this draft. If there is anybody who should have come into the NBA ready to fire up from the get go, it should have been Parker. Alas, he has been horrible (and that's not an exaggeration).
Danny already said that he's cautious about gambling away core players to pick up a star. He'd be even more cautious about doing it to land a guy who everybody throught would be a star, but has shown nothing so far. People will say "but he's sure to get better and will break out eventually". People said the same about McLemore, and I still don't know if he's a legit starting caliber player years into his career.
I pass on an AB for Parker trade, and I think Danny passes too. I think he definitely passes if you ask for two picks and a prospect too.