I think Bridges and Booker are good enough to be part of your top 3 although ideally we'd need a number 1 playing with them. And I'm not sure CamJ can ever fill a top 3 role. I certainly never thought of him as that third piece or even Bridges as a second piece.
But getting rid of them because CP dropped off a cliff made no sense to me as that still left us with the same problem, a washed up Chris Paul instead of the impact player we needed. Even KD at his best isn't enough to replace Bridges, CamJ and star level CP3 and by including those picks we jeopardized our ability to fill those holes.
I agree with your first paragraph. I think what some are failing to see is:
1. With Paul falling off a cliff you really only have a single #1 or #2 in book (which I believe is your belief from the statement in the first paragraph).
2. The only likely way to get another #1 or #2 is going to be to seal talent. That’s likely some combination of cam, bridges and Ayton. And bridges is likely the centerpiece as neither can nor Ayton have that value. Some either bridges/cam or bridges/aytin likely going out to bring book the needed star.
3. To win a championship it has to be a high level star. Not a trae young. So it likely costs more than just two of youngsters. Throw in a couple picks.
4. That star has to want to play here. That’s not every star. So the universe is limited.
5. Most teams don’t want to trade a star. So most available stars are going to have some ding (ball hog, age, injuries, off the court issues).
6. Trading just a slew of draft picks alone doesn’t net you a Durant level star. It nets your a Rudy Gobert. I think we can all agree that a guy of that level isn’t moving the needle for us much with the old team.
7. The old team was going to continue to be a playoff entrant. Like top 4 seed. Draft picks were going to be in the 20s. There a very tiny chance one of those picks netted us a #1 or #2 to play with the entire cast.
