Also, I'm just sitting here imagining the alternate timeline where Jimmy stays and recruits Kyrie, as was speculated.
The old regime + Jimmy/Kyrie would have been an absolute gold mine for WTF drama.
No, that's the entire point.
The NBA salary structures are a Byzantine maze that necessitate teams hiring capologists to help facilitate transactions.
The Sox also have the seventh highest payroll in baseball, so they're spending money, they're just spending it real fucking poorly. A better question would be "why did you spend money on Leury and Harrison when you could have just signed Escobar and played Mendick on the MLB roster from the start?" Right now on RealGM you have Bulls fans upset that Dallas Keuchel's DFA might hurt the Bulls free agency dreams but they don't correlate.
I think my biggest problem/frustration is that if even Ricky Renteria were still here, we'd be seeing better out of Eloy, Yoan, and Robert (when healthy). He couldn't manage a bullpen, but the team was enjoyable and played hard for Ricky.
Possible 2-way?
Here's a draft profile from a Pistons site. Apparently he had a good 3 point shot in college: https://www.detroitbadboys.com/2022/6/22/23170244/2022-nba-draft-john-butler-jr
Pujols, Hamilton, Rendon, Upton (a trade, but a trade with a lot of cash/years attached).
Every time they try to add a second/third star using their pocketbook, it crashes and burns.