Hollinger's bit about KAT and McDaniels got dismissed as a throwaway last-word about a crazy hypothetical Dame-KAT deal. I don't know how realistic it would be, but I would pick up the phone to talk about that. KAT's money resembles Dame's money, and McDaniels is an RFA after making $4m this coming year. I don't know who or what we'd need to do to balance the rest of that trade.
I'll bet Minnesota is high on McDaniels though, so maybe they would value him more than his trade could return.
One of the points that they glossed over is that Herro is just a more expensive Anfernee Simons. Why would the Blazers ever want to just take on Herro's contract.
In terms of picks and compensation, the Nets have the picks that Portland is looking for. At this point I don't care if the Blazers take on Ben Simmons, as long as the Nets compensate us properly for taking on that albatross. We can treat Simmons as an expiring.
Also, did you notice how the sense of urgency is different when they talk about Harden vs Lillard? Somehow the 76ers can take their time trying to find the right trade, while Portland is somehow urgently needing to unload Lillard.
I wouldn't mind Simmons. Portland would be the lowest pressure situation he'll ever play in (how things change in a year) and it'd be nice to take on salary that's more than just a dump or an expiring.
I'm glad I usually listen to the podcast rather than watch because Hollinger was unwatchable for a few minutes in the beginning. Grinning about how Miami's package was so good, they'd hardly have to offer everything... and then like you say, throws Herro out there like Portland wants to corner the market on one way guards.
And yeah, they see sense with Harden because his value to $$ ratio isn't as nice as it recently was. But no mention of timelines for the Dame trade in ~25 minutes of chat.
