I'm sick of all this talk about how great next year's crop of free agents are going to be. CP3 is now sticking with the Clips, and if Dwight Howard gets his trade to the Nets, neither him nor DWill are going anywhere. Who does that leave that is unrestricted? Nash? Jason Terry? I'm sure there are others....but there are also a bunch of teams with cap space next year. Why would we trade Crash and/or let some of our main guys go to get cap space? Am I missing something? Despite the Crawford signing (awesome!), I'm still far from convinced a big time FA would sign here anyways. It just hasn't happened much, if at all. I think the best way the Blazers can rebuild is by taking on bigger contracts from teams shedding salary (i.e. Gerald Wallace last year), not becoming the team that sheds the salary to overpay for crappy free agents. Thoughts?
Don't remember the exact numbers, but I think we are enough under the cap in two years to wait until then.
I agree that best way to get talent is to trade for it as Blazers are not a huge attraction for free agents and some owners are looking to drop big contracts with the new rules on luxury tax coming into play soon. But it seems players are setting up contracts to be free agents for this summer. Crawford can opt out, Landry signed for one year, other one year contracts I saw out there (GS signed someone for year for 7 million), guessing Oden will be on the lsit of interesting free agents . . . there must be a reason teams are clearing cap space, right?
I agree, all the "big name" UFAs are old guys. That's why I did not like the talk of shedding players just to get cap space. Portland's best bet is probably going to be to use their cap space to re-sign their own guys (Felton/Wallace/Batum). After doing that, we'll probably only have enough to get a mid tier FA...something like 6 mil. We could save that space for another year, or use it to sign Oden to a short term deal.
There will be a lot more cap space then quality free agents next summer. Some teams will overpay for marginal players. Most likely I think we end up keeing our core together instead of using cap space. BUT it gives us a huge advantage for one season to see how good these guys really are. Is Wallace going to decline as he enters 30? Will Batum ever be more then a decent bench player? Will Felton be an acceptable starting PG? Is Oden officially done? We can do a nice retool around LaMarcus, Wes if the above players arn't cutting it. If the Blazers miss the playoffs and need to do an extensive rebuild we can even start in that direction. If a couple of our guys become all-stars we can resign them. If there arn't great free agent options we can add some speculative assets on one year contracts and try again the next off-season. We would have flexability. If another team is trying to dump a Gerald Wallace type of player during this season I would consider pulling that trigger and losing some of our flexability.
There was a Blazer team a few offseasons ago that had a decent young roster, cap flexibility, but was only a first round and out playoff team. They added Brian Grant in free agency, made a couple smart trades and free agent signings in the following off-season, then went to back to back WCF and nearly won a championship. That could be the example to follow.
It's not even about the free-agents as much as having the flexibility to do anything you want. Basically this summer we can use our cap to trade lop sided deals, get a free agent or trade a player for a pick. Hey we can even give our players a little more than anyone else can offer. Probably we will test free agency first, then from there make decisions.
