Renouncing rights to Petteri and Freeland

Assuming the story is accurate, it does seem a bit of a puzzle.

I am not too surprised they would drop Koponen. As I understand it, he has shown very little despite playing in a weak league. For Freeland, I would guess it has as much to do with timing as with money. The team would probably like at least one more year in Europe to evaluate him - and he is trying to force their hand.

As I understand it, once an NBA team drafts a player, they can't force him to stay in Europe. The player can put them in a position of "sign me or renounce my rights." Of course, that implies the team is so unimpressed with Freeland that they would rather drop him than give him Ruffin or Randolph's roster spot!

 

You mean, like projected top 10 pick Brandon Jennings?

Actually Koponen is playing for Virtus Bologna, one of the powerhouse clubs of Europe (notable past players include Michael Ray Richardson, Nesterovic, Danilovic, Jaric and Manu Ginobili). He's a rookie with them, and they tend to get treated like shit (as Jennings discovered). The coach wants to play Earl Boykins at the point so Koponen had to make do with scrap minutes, or starting at SG. His Finnish coach is mad that the Italian coach is misusing him, but one thing that has happened is that he's become something of a defensive stopper. When his club won the "Fiba Eurochallenge" he was credited with doing a lockdown job on Nando de Colo here he is, lying to the left of the picture:



Why are we taking Mike Rice's word on this? Is he reliable?

 

Locking him down to the tune of 24 points(leading scorer of the game), on 9-13 shooting? In a whopping 16 minutes?

 

Maybe those are metric system numbers?

 

sorry, shoudl have clarified it was Petteri who only played the 16 minutes, not Nando

 

i think its a bit silly to renounce their rights....

 

Good, now people will stop talking about them as if they'll ever be more than a Sergio Rodriguez type player in the NBA.

 

He wasn't guarding him the whole time:

 

One other thought on this: both Koponen and Freeland were taken with picks that KP bought outright with Allen's money. That's $3M each. And they just waive them without even bringing them over? I don't see it.

 

I think they will renounce them. Here's further speculation:

http://www.blazersedge.com/2009/6/16/911479/tuesday-draft-workout-report

 

Here is more speculation: They figured Freeland would never come over after signing a long term deal, and Koponen just wasn't doing anything, so they decided to save some cash for partying on Paul Allens Pimp Yacht.

 

This is speculation right? I figure we wouldn't do it until necessary, which would be July 1st.

 

I'll believe it when I see it. Rice has a long, colorful history of making wild predictions.

 

Acquiring their rights was a risk just like getting Rudy or Batum were. Two of them turned out great, two of them didn't. It's an imperfect science.

I am a bit surprised we can't at least get a future 2nd or something for them, but that just confirms there true value in which case cutting them is the correct move.

 

Actually, it wouldn't be necessary until the cap room would actually be needed to make a transaction, which would be July 9th at the earliest.

 

Good way of looking at it. However, it might not be a situation where renouncing them is just a situation of "they suck, cut them". It might be a scenario of "they're potentially good, but right now we need the cap room to make a better move". That is to say, the front office might still consider them to be valuable assets, but renouncing them would result in an even more valuable asset.

 

if so is 1.6m really that much?

how valuable can 1.6m be?

 

It can add 23% more cap room (going from $7 millon to $8.6 million).

It could be the difference between getting a significant player and just getting a role player.

 

Over the life of say a 5 year contract, quite a bit actually. A FA can only get 8% increases, as opposed to 10.5 for youe own player.

Let's use 7.2 million as a starting point on a 5 year deal

Years
1. 7,200,000
2. 7,776,000
3. 8,398,080
4. 9,069,926
5. 9,795,520
Total 42,239,526


Now use 8.8 million as a starting point on a 5 year deal

Years
1. 8,800,000
2. 9,504,000
3. 10,264,320
4. 11,085,465
5. 11,972,302
Total 51,626,087


It's the difference of 9,386,561 over the life of a 5 year contract.