Holding onto Giannis for right now seems to be the move. From what the reported offers were, his value should take off a bit more in the summer when a bidding war can more properly commence. We need to see what happens with this draft lottery. Ideal outcome: we get a top 3 pick, ideally can pick Dybantsa who is both a top talent, and seemingly fills our wing needs. Obviously that is a bit unlikely, but this would be ideal as it allows us to connect the line between present and future timelines. We could rebuild the competitive roster today with Giannis, while allowing Dybantsa to develop into the future star.
Say we end up with the 7th overall pick. The options there seem to be guard heavy, which is unfortunate, because we have a plethora of SGs, and 2 PGs (or Combo guards) who are solid. Maybe a caleb wilson slips, but he is better suited to the 4. If we go here, we either try to trade the pick for someone still on the younger side, with winning value (Trae Murphy?) Or we take the talent in someone like Keaton Wagner or Labaron Phillips, and try to upgrade the wing in free agency/Kuzma Trade.
The alternative here is tearing it down. Honestly, if we are in this position (7th-10th pick), this might be the most sensible option if we can get a godfather offer for Giannis. Obviously if he wants to stay, he can try to rebuild this thing, but if we cant get deals done to improve our roster holes for next year, its gonna be tough to suffer through another year like this one.
Lastly, we could end up with a pick in the late lottery, picks 11-14. Here honestly, it sounds kinda funny, but Id be back in on trying to keep Giannis. Theres 2 guys, Thomas Haugh, and to a lesser extent, Nate Ament who I think could really fill the holes on the roster. Nate has the higher ceiling surely, but is a lot more raw, and is a worse defender at this point. Haugh is pretty much a ready made 3 and D guy, who could slot into the starting lineup and be a plus net rating guy for us. Both, in my opinion, have ceilings low enough where I dont think they can be focal points of rebuilds, hence the wanting to keep giannis. We could continue to try to trade down (especially for Haugh, who I think will drop based on his age) or trade Kuz and the pick for a proven player. But at this point in the draft, I think all the people I am sold on as stars will be gone, and it would be best to try to retool instead.
Overall flexibility is the name of the game in terms of the bucks future plans, but none of it really matters till we fire doc rivers (which I pray happens at seasons end).
As for this deadline, I think we need to be selling more of guys we dont think are in our future plans. Do we really think Jericho Sims and GTJ (both of whom I loved when we added them) are gonna be here when we are competitive again? Why not sell them off for 2nd rd picks, Im sure some team that needs rebounding or shooting would be willing to offer some asset for them. I feel somewhat similarly about KPJ, with the caviot that he is worth much more, but if someone offers us a 20s FRP for him, or a solid young guy, I would take it. I think we need to be more aggressive in accumulating small assets for guys who wont make an impact. The big swing, for this deadline at least, is dead, lets focus on retooling, finding assets, and finding value, like we did with KPJ and Rollins over last offseason.