Steve Ballmer has the commitment and funds to pay whatever salaries or penalties to win championships.

But, investing in older Kawhi, PG and often injured and poorly motivated James Harden? I don’t know.

Kawhi is one of the top five best players — if he is healthy. I would resign KL if he could stay healthy.

I’m hoping for a MVP-level and healthy season from PG before committing to another contract.

James Harden — I’m not giving up T. Mann and picks. I would have given up T. Mann and picks for J. Holiday.

It looks like the Clippers will give T. Mann a big contract.

All the planets need to be in alignment for us to win a Championship. Pray to whomever you believe.

Best case scenario, we win a championship this year at staples/crypto. I know many here would be ecstatic if that happened, but I’d still be dreading what is to come when PG and Kawhi are both unplayable and highly played in a couple years and we don’t have any picks or young talent. Will be even worse if we give up more picks this year to try to make a run at it. At a certain point, we have to regroup and start thinking about the long term. I’m there now.

But I agree 100% that the only way to build a dynasty is organically though the draft and a couple trades for complimentary young players. The 2008 Celtics were an exception but they had Pierce and a few other pieces before landing Ray Allen and KG. The Heatles were another exception but Wade and much of that culture were already in place too.

I think Ballmer correctly identified that the franchise needed rebranding and made that the priority with plans for the new arena and the 213 move for some star quality. This may ultimately be what factors in and/or tips the scales in a Harden trade—although the new arena might carry the day enough to where we don’t want to give up current and future young assets.

If there is going to be such a trade they’d better make the deal this week so we aren’t dropping games mid season during some transition with physicals and a transition period on the floor.

Seems like it’s coming but we’ve been saying this for months now.

I’m not saying we would currently be a perennial contender had we not done the SGA trade for PG/Kawhi, but I think we’d be in closer to getting into that position. If we hadn’t done that trade, we would currently have SGA, who is better than PG for sure and potentially better than Kawhi if you take into account availability (Kawhi is the best in the league when he’s healthy) and growth trajectory. We’d also have had better draft picks over the past couple of years and all of our picks going forward if we wanted to try and trade for some of the stars who have already asked for a trade or likely will ask for a trade in the future, many of whom are very young stars (Embiid, Luka, KAT, Zion, Brown). Not saying we would have nailed our draft picks or nailed any trades, but I think we would have had much more potential to build a perennial contender. As is, we have dark days ahead and I’m not even talking about the worst basketball that we’ve seen since the end of lob city (still having nightmares of that Utah series where we had no ability to defend the high pick and roll).