The Oklahoma City Thunder acquired guards Kevin Martin and Jeremy Lamb, two first round picks and a second round pick from the Houston Rockets in exchange for guard James Harden, center Cole Aldrich and forwards Daequan Cook and Lazar Hayward, it was announced today by Executive Vice President and General Manager Sam Presti.
So much for the Lakers competition in the West. Brutal move for OKC and for Harden. He should have taken the money they were offering and stayed with a winner. Have fun battling to be .500 with the leagues most overrated PG, Jeremy Lin. Kevin Martin sucks, too. OKC got worse, but at least they got draft picks out of the deal. They just dropped from a Championship contender and possible 1 seed in the west to a 4-5 seed and a 2nd round matchup with LAL on the road. Good luck, boys.
OKC is a private business but they run that town. I'm sure their revenues are very lucrative, an extra 4.5mill over 4 years for Harden? They could of done so many things instead of this trade.
1. Pay him
2. Just wait until after the season (Half the players of Harden's caliber in the NBA are on like 5 teams now, they could of still got a nice deal from 1 of the other 25 after the season) Maybe if you win the title he takes the 4/55.5 instead. Stupid to potentially breakup a dynasty over a few million.
I actually think Lamb will be a solid NBA SG but Martin is always hurt and can't play any D.
Depending how protected the picks are the deal could be better for OKC than it looks but its still hard to believe they couldn't get an = haul after the season for a 23 year old all star caliber SG.
Harden isn't really a roleplayer and OKC already has Russ/Durant so his value was a little minimized on their team. I guess 1 of the picks is Toronto's and will be around 4-8 range and the other is Dallas (Dirk already hurt, could be top 10-15ish), coupled with Lamb that is a nice haul.
If they can surround Russ/Durant with really good roleplayers it could prove to be a nice move long-term, I just think for this year its gonna ding their chances vs LAL some.
Lamb is a lotto pick caliber player and the Raptors pick will likely be in the 4-8 range so they did get 2 lotto picks along with a scorer in Martin. I'm not sure they could've got too much more than that considering Harden would have to be willing to sign with the team they dealt him to.
Definitely makes them worse vs LAL this year since it'll be tougher to expose Nash on D without Harden but more I think about it I'll give the deal a wait and see. Only 1 basketball and with Russ/Durant in OKC Harden was a little more of a luxury than necessity.
