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Haven't gone through the rest of this thread yet, but I agree with this. At this point, as happy as I am about the playoff berth and the game 1 win, and as much as I would love to see this team make playoffs next year, as of this moment (and it could change), I am of the mind that playoffs are not our top priority next year. Our top priority is to play our new young core, and see what we have with them and what they are made of. 4 of our starting 5 need to be Bamba, Gordon, Isaac, and Fultz and see how they play together and how they gel. That is our core going forward. It's time to let them develop. How Vuc, Fournier, and Ross will end up playing into that core, we can get that figured out. But we need to be playing our core 4, letting them develop, and playing supporting guys like Vuc, Fournier, Ross, and Augustin around them.

It's not really me being pessimistic. It's just the situation we find ourselves in. We have several young guys that need to step up. We ran our offense through a center that doesn't fit our long term philosophy or really today's game. Fournier isn't bad enough that there's an easy upgrade. He's not good enough to be enticing on his contract with a pick. There's not a great market of upgrades. Not a ton of good shooting good defending starting shooting guards out there. Augustin is good enough to be a fringe starter but not good enough that he'll push Fultz off the court. We'll keep him as a placeholder until we figure out what Fultz is. I don't think we trade for fillers. I think we sign fillers in free agency. I'm not sure what you're expecting but I think you need to be prepared for this to basically be the team going in to next year. The core is Isaac Gordon Bamba Fultz with Augustin, Fournier, Ross or a Ross analog, and iwundu as complimentary pieces. We need to lower our floor a bit to raise our ceiling. The easiest way to improve next year is to bring vucevic back, upgrade iwundu's spot, and have a stable roster but that limits our future. But we'll be better long term if we don't do the dumb thing and overpay for guys who don't help us long term. Move Fournier next summer when his contract is more tradable and our pick has more value. Make more long term choices when we have a better idea what the young guys can do.

I have no doubt this organization will spend whatever they need for a multiple all-star, all NBA type player. Just look at the last time we were in that position when we might have overpaid for Rashard Lewis.

Relying on development of the youngsters like Isaac, Gordon, fultz and bamba, a pick and a fa while setting you up with financial flexibility for the future is by far the best we can do the goal is not to be a perennial 8th seed. The goal is to build a real contender. You will not get that if you keep starting Fournier or pay vucevic long term crazy money

If Bamba doesn't like basketball that much, he should become a politician. His pre-draft interviews made it look like he wanted to be the next Hakeem Olajuwon -- And please, for the love of God, let these kids grow with heavy minutes. Isaac and Gordon have exciting potential, but they're still raw as hell and need reps and responsibility. I can't stress this enough

We did that with Fultz, Martin, and Grant last year. And in the past, fournier, Harris, CJ Wilcox, and Shabazz Napier. We'll probably keep the pick and just draft a guy but the theme for this draft is everyone has a major flaw. If we're not thrilled with our options at 16 we could go after Jackson who has terrible efficiency numbers but plays solid defense and sporadic stretches where he averages 20ppg on great efficiency for two weeks. Or Zach Collins maybe. If we want to flip the pick for a veteran on a team shifting from contention to rebuilding we could go after Michael Kidd Gilchrist, Cody Zeller, maybe Dion waiters, Jordan Clarkson. Not a great market for those types of guys.