We shall find out soon enough if they are assets or dead weight. Our assets as a team is last in defensive output.
Assets have market value, and will produce economic benefit in the future. http://www.sportstwo.com/posts/2034146/
Still trying to understand how having a "team culture" that "builds from within" got us to our present record. Personally, I think it's a lot of "smoke" up our "collectives asses."
Why wouldn't they be? There are teams that need wing players who can hit 3pt shots. There are teams that would take a chance on our lotto picks (Leonard, etc.). Heck, the team we played last night, Toronto, is starting Pascal Siakam at PF and the career 30% 3pt shooting Corey Joseph as 6th man.
Do you really need to ask? They are massively over-paid. Take a look at the calibur of player that makes 18 mil per season, even adjust that down to account for the cap increase. You don't find many guys that are just "ok backups". Boston liked Turner but didn't even match that contract. Pascal Siakam is making 1 mil per year. If we called Toronto up and offered Crabbe, who do you think they'd package to get him? They wouldn't even bother. Leaving aside the issue of how over-paid he is, the other team would have the challenge of putting together a group of contracts that come close enough to matching his 18 million dollar salary. A team would basically need to have a massively overpaid player they want to throw away in order to even begin trade talks.
Wait until next year. The salaries will look way smaller after another bump in BRI. It's not the amount, it's the % of the cap (or LT threshold, really). There will also be another class of FAs signed to the much bigger sized contracts. Even then, contract amounts are significant for ballast in trades, per CBA. Consider if we wanted to trade for a $30M/year player. If we have a $18M salary player and a $10M salary player, we can make the 2-for-1 trade. If we have a roster full of $5M players, we'd have to trade 6 of them to match the contract size. As well, it's important to be over the cap (and ideally just shy of the LT). If you're under the cap, you can't make trades that get you much over the cap. Assuming price does equate to how good the players are, $15M players are going to be better than the $5M ones. Having LT/$15M means more really good players vs. CAP/$15M. NO knows what he's doing, as do the other GMs. Plus our players aren't bad players. The panic about their play is a bit unwarranted. Like Crabbe's .415 3pt % is VERY valuable to teams.
The cap is going up about 10%, and these guys contracts are escalating as well, so no, they won't look way smaller next year. And I don't know if teams will be having oodles of cap money like last year, because the cap isn't taking such a sudden leap. And Crabbe's contract is about 20% of the cap. Sizable for a guy who is nothing more than a decent bench player. 20% is what you'd pay a good starter. Crabbe has a good 3pt shooting percentage, yes, but his jumper is really his only skill. Dude is averaging 12 points per 36.
Crabbe's contract is 16% of the cap. 1/6th. Like a 6th man should get paid. It'll be less than 16% next season. CJ will be paid $6M+ more. Crabbe is playing almost 30 MPG. He deserves to be paid.
18.5 /94 = 19.6% And I'd dispute your other two points as well, that Crabbe deserves the title of "6th man" and that the the 6th man should earn that much. Considering how max contracts are being dealt out these days, most teams are going to have at least 50% of the salary cap invested in their top 2 players (which is the boat Portland is in with CJ and Dame. That leaves the other 50% to divide between the other 10 players. You think 20% of that should go to one bench guy? What about the other 3 starters? Your logic does not add up.
The LT is $113M, not $94M. What a difference ~$20M makes! Next year, LT is between $122M and $127M. Dame and CJ will make ~$49M of that. 39% of the payroll. Crabbe' contract is again $18.5M, or 15% Of the payroll next year. You bet I think he's worth it. Edit: I used the $122M figure for next year %. References: Crabbe' salary - http://www.basketball-reference.com/players/c/crabbal01.html 2017-18 Cap & LT - http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/16859143/nba-salary-cap-projection-2017-18-season-lower-expected 2016-17 Cap & LT - http://bleacherreport.com/articles/...016-17-salary-cap-luxury-tax-and-salary-floor Edit 2: NO spent us to within about $1M of the LT. Ideal. Well done. The payroll is $112M and change. You don't want to be so close to the LT that a player earning a bonus for making the all-star or all NBA teams or DPOY / MIP type awards puts you over.
We will be $7M (worst case, best case $2M) over the LT next summer, assuming we don't re-sign Plums, Quarterman, Connaught on, and Ezeli. To stay under the LT, we need to trade away $7M in salaries. It's not hard to do. Ed Davis for a TPE or conditional 2nd round pick might be enough. To re-sign Plums, which I think is the idea, we need to trade away that much more to stay under. NO has until the trade deadline to get under the LT. It is also a reasonable strategy to pay the LT, too. For one season, only if they want to keep the roster together another season. One possibility to get under the LT and re-sign Plums is to trade both Davis and Leonard for trade exceptions (someone else's cap space). That would be ~$10M for Plums. We can go into the LT to sign Plums to any amount up to his max salary. Bird exception. Some of it boils down to the owner's willingness to spend. We do not want to be in the LT for 3 of any 4 consecutive seasons; the penalty for that is staggering, even for a $billionaire. Edit: I believe my figures are accurate enough for illustrative purposes.
The way I see it, we'll be at 124 mil if we renounce Festus and Pat. The projected cap is 102, and so the luxury tax will probably be around 111 (it's 9 mil more than the cap this year). So that's 13 mil over the LTT before we do anything, which is better than I thought, because I forgot Festus was not guaranteed next year. But Plumlee will get at least 10 mil, so signing him will push us into the 20 mil range (which would result in a 45 million dollar tax). Anyone we sign beyond that would be $3.75 per dollar. (then it escalates next year) In 2018, we have 121 mil locked into 7 players. That will be near the tax threshold for 7 guys (a core that isn't even good). So I think Neil has us in a bad situation financially.
Well, you see it different than the dozens of sports articles I've seen that say the LT will be $122M, down from $127M. That's the league projection. They're not always right, but close enough. NO isn't stuck with any or all of the players. That's just wrong thinking. There simply isn't one player he's signed that someone else wouldn't take, given their contracts. Nobody, not even NO, can tell us who's going to be here in 2018. If you're all bothered by contract sizes and wasted money, we paid $5M last season to a backup C who was way over the hill and who played very little. Good money down the drain. http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nba/2016/04/15/nba-salary-cap-higher-than-projections/83095482/
Where on earth dfo you get your info from to provide this view as how you see it? I posted a week or so ago about the projected jump based on the new CBA agreement..... Your numbers are off. It isn't a "The way I see it" The numbers are black and white. yes there are variables based on options as to how we look next year, but the numbers are numbers. Black and white. It isn't a see it one way or another way....
The luxury tax has historically been 10-12 mil over the cap, but according to that report, it's jumping up quite a bit. But even if it is 122, we're still right at the threshold before signing anyone. In 2018 we have 121 mil locked in to 7 players, and according to your chart, that'll only be 5 million short of the luxury tax. It's Paul Allen's money, but I just think he may be very hesitant to keep guys that'll put them deep into the luxury tax when we don't even have a chance to compete in the playoffs. Sure, we have some very tradeable contracts, but they would basically be salary dumps. We're not going to get any needle movers for Ed Davis or Plumlee. And Crabbe/Turner/Leonard have negative trade value. If Portland had done nothing but resign Harkless this offseason, we'd be going into next season with 81 mil on the books. So at least we'd have another shot at a good FA. Layman, Napier, and Vonleh would not be downgrades over the guys that we resigned that are making 10x as much. 45 mil next year for Leonard, Turner and Crabbe....that's almost what you'd pay for 2 max players. You guys think teams will want those contracts?
