Replying in the right place
On Hill, I don’t know that I’d say having a player approach us halfway through the trade period really constitutes proactively looking for a small forward, but you’re right that we offered what turned out to be a top 30 pick for him. Rosas we don’t really know either way what we offered him or what we would have offered the suns. If we thought we could get a sneaky good player the suns didn’t rate for a future third rounder, then that doesn’t change my argument. If we were offering five years and our future first was on the table, then that would be one for yours.
What draft currency did we offer up for Stengle? I know we were interested a few years back, but he was a delisted free agent, it would have been free. Have we been interested since? Because picking up a twice delisted rookie pick with 16 games under his belt is exactly the sort of resource outlay I’m talking about.
Probably the only easy one, in the sense that it doesn’t require imagining us doing anything other than what’s served up to us or guessing that a late second round pick would become an overnight superstar, would be take the trade richmond offered in 2021 to get Hobbs. Would have given us the ability to take two picks in the top 30, one of which could have been Jesse Motlop. He’s been injured this year, and could still go either way, but I think he’s shown a decent amount for the position.
But of course then we wouldn’t have Hobbs and Hobbs was too good to pass up because he slid to us and you just have to take best available in that situation and inside mids like that are so valuable and exactly, that’s how you never seem to get the opportunity to get the player types you don’t rate highly, because there’s always something better that you can’t possibly afford to pass up.
Edit: and I will say, I guess if our list management team just doesn’t rate the position as important, that’s fine. They don’t have to. Same as any other list management team valuing any other position particularly high or low, it’s a fine opinion if you’re proven right. If they do think it’s important to find a dangerous crumbing forward but are loathe to spend a top 30 pick on one, that’s what I would have a problem with.