So for me, if there should be any outrage, it should be about who we drafted at the spots we actually did draft, not what trades we made.

The “outrage” is because they suck at the draft overall. They do weird draft pick punts, then routinely fail to miss obvious talent when it is available. And that’s not cherry picking, because just about everybody on this board wanted Haliburton and Bane instead of Toppin and Quickley.

We have routinely seen the argument made here that they punted these picks because they didn’t want the salaries on the books. Okay, fine. They then used those precious cap space savings on Evan Fournier. Then they used some more of it on Kemba Walker. They’re just not good at any of this.

Any of the players that were available at #19 could have been drafted at #25 other than Kai Jones, Jalen Johnson, Keon Johnson, Isaiah Jackson, Usman Garuba, or Josh Christopher could have been drafted at #25. Same for all the players drafted between #26 and #33…all but those guys could have been drafted at the picks we had.

The FO could have stayed pat at #19 and 21 and drafted Grimes and McBride in some order, then drafted Rokas at #32 and Sims at #58. There wouldn’t have been a peep about trading out. Instead, there would have been an outcry about how we passed over Bones, Ayo, or whoever.

Or alternatively, they could have made the deals they made, drafted Bones at #25, Herb at #34, and Ayo at #36, and then we’d have all the cherry-picked players instead of the ones we have.

Trade-out or no trade-out, there was a path to draft any player the FO wanted to, other than the six I listed above.

So for me, if there should be any outrage, it should be about who we drafted at the spots we actually did draft, not what trades we made.

Even going back a year:

We could have drafted Hali instead of Obi, like most here wanted. HUGE MISS!

We could have drafted Bane instead of IQ, as most here wanted. A miss, but Bane is possibly closer to his ceiling on O than IQ, and IQ is the better defender by far.

Anyway, we could have had Hali, Bane, Bones, Herb, Ayo and Sims as our young core, regardless of whether we traded out of #19 or not. So the outrage should be about our draft evaluators, not the pick swap that slightly devalued the pick we swapped out of, but not as much as if we picked any of the guys picked from #19 to #24.

How Walker Zimmerman is our second best Center back is hard to imagine

But great effort and great performance overall