In a vacuum, yes the KD is better that Mikal and Cam.
I'm not sure if anyone saw that Bridges had limited upside before the trade, even before we had a new owner. I knew he was young, I liked the defense, I like what i saw when he started picking up some offensive skill sets. But did anyone here say we were wasting time keeping Bridges on the roster prior to the finals year and the year after? Once he went to the Nets, yes he was the #1 guy, but here, he was our #3-4 guy, who was pretty good in that role.
I don't think Ayton regressed as much as you want to believe, just looking at stats he didn't waiver much in his last year with us, except his % was down slightly. But I think its more of him not growing and maturing, that was the disappointing part of his development or lack of, while with us. I think he wanted a bigger role, and some of this separation was probably on Monty as well. Maybe even JJ, because the suns got rid of Monty and Ayton still wanted out. I mean, heck, we even soured things with Crowder.
I think we could have re-upped if the Crowder and Ayton relationships were better, and we flipped CP3 for something usable. This would still leave us with some flexibility going forward. I hear all this talk about, oh will this and that team didn't blow it up, look at them, it took them a few years to put it together; see teams like the Wolves, everyone thought the Gobert trade was awful, a healthy Nuggets, what was looking to be a healthy Clippers team. Even the Mavericks kept their core somewhat and re-tooled, how? Because they kept their flexibility and players happy.
Outside of a vacuum, the trade has been a failure. This was an awful season to watch.