Hypothetically, if LMA wasn't happy (long-term) in Portland, would it be reasonable to trade him to, say, Cleveland, Orlando, or Washington, get a proven SG and another decent player (to make the salaries work), flip-flop 1st Round draft picks, then sign Hickson? ....or similar?
If he is unhappy, and Olshey knows that, then yes, it makes sense to trade him, but no to keeping Hickson.
I was thinking about it this evening, and it would occur to me that Aldridge, at this point in his career (what is he now, a 6-year vet?), would want to have a stab at a championship. I'm guessing the Blazers are a 2 or more years away from that. When does his contract expire? Might he walk at that point?
If LMA shows signs of leaving then a Cleveland trade makes sense. Depending on what you get left, I would consider signing JJ. He sure worked his butt off this last year, and showed lots of improvement. I would hope to sign him for two years and see if he can add some defense. Remember that the salaries don't have to work, and Portland should take back as little as possible. If going that route, I would stockpile as many bigs as I could get so that you could trade one to fill out the roster later. ABM, did you have any SGs in mind? Or is it just that there aren't really many good 5s that you could get in such a trade? The teams you named don't really have good established SGs. Beal from Washington would be interesting. The problem is that after the first pick (Noel) then the next most interesting picks are SGs, so Beal doesn't really make sense. What would be fun is to get one of the first three picks and somehow parley it into something like the 5 and 8 and end up with Len and McCollum.
The CLE deal has potential. Package that pick (with Meyers?) for DMC. We'd have competition with the LOLcats -- they are trying to put together a similar offer. We'd have the #10 to use or deal. Use the #19 on Shane Larkin. DMC/Thompson/Larkin is a nice haul. With Ujiri, i wonder ih he'd have interest in pairing LMA with Gay. I like Big Val's potential.
OK, I'm no trade guru (please be kind), but I tried this earlier this evening and it appeared to work.....not that either team would do it, mind you. Portland trades Aldridge, Joel Freeland, and the #10 pick Cleveland trades Varejao, Waiters, and the #1 pick
So there seem to be only a few scenarios available. 1. "Trade LMA this summer for the boatload of young players/unprotected draft picks." CLE has already made it known that they'd trade the #1 for Kevin Love. If that's the starting point, I'd imagine you could pull some more assets away (#19, #31/33, SAC's protected 2014, future 1sts). And if (since?) LMA is that much better than Love, then you'd think you could get even more. That CLE wants LMA isn't a made-up rumor by Simmons. It was reported by Yahoo a week before Simmons talked about it. As for people talking about having to pay a higher salary for the #1 pick, I don't think that's much of an issue. If you get the #1 pick, you're going to still be paying that player less than Wes, and only about 1.3M a year more than Freeland. This seems to have the highest volatility, but highest ceiling. It's not close to the lowest floor, though. 2. "Trade LMA next summer or at the 2014-15 trade deadline for a significantly reduced amount/quality of young players/draft picks." This isn't the most horrible idea--seeing if you can make the 2013-14 team as competitive as possible and fulfilling LMA's wish of a big body. There are a couple of issues, though. a) depending on your level of optimism, the return in the summer of 2014 for LMA will range from "significantly reduced from this year" to "rent-a-player". You're also cutting out a significant portion of suitors. This summer, there's a small chance that LMA wouldn't gripe about going to a team that has sucked but is seen as on the rise (CLE, SAC?, CHA?) in addition to the normal "contenders" like HOU, DAL, OKC, etc. Next year? I don't think there's any way that CLE/SAC/CHA/MIL/17 other non-contenders teams in the league offer much of anything in exchange for one year of LMA right before he takes money from a contender in the summer of 2015. b) If you do manage to trade him in 2014, you're going to be left with Lillard, 2 more years of Batum, one more year of Wes, our bench, and whichever overpriced big body we bring in this summer (Jordan/Asik/Pekovic/McGee/whoever), the #10 pick, no pick in 2014 (1st or 2nd), whoever you can sign for the MLE in 2014 and the return from the trade. 3. "Don't trade LMA at all--he's an All-Star and there's NO WAY he'd leave Portland at the end of his contract. Get a 'defensive-minded center who might only play limited minutes' and build around LMA and Dame." This one has both the lowest ceiling and the lowest floor. In what I see as the most likely scenario, we are decent next year (probably even a playoff team), lose our pick (leaving us with a total of zero picks) in a great draft, only have the MLE available to improve next summer, and use that single acquisition and personal growth to possibly make it to the 2nd round before LMA leaves for somewhere else for nothing. OR, assuming that he does stay, we're still with Dame/LMA/Batum in his final year/Leonard/Big Body C and our bench, with our 2015 MLE acquisitions and no way to improve going forward other than MLEs and mid-round picks. I don't know if I see that as a championship team. Additionally, if you think that LMA is sticking around past 2015, then it seems like you're committing today to a 5-year max for him in the summer he turns 30. That's going to be at least a 5yr/95M deal that starts out at 16.5M and goes up to 21.5M when he's 34. Maybe he'll be worth it. Maybe he won't.
I am not so sure that is true. Contracts don't seem to be escalating that much any more. I would think that an extension of 15 per each year is closer. Still a lot of money, but about 20 million less over 5 years.
max raise is 7.5% for a team extending their own FA. 7.5% of 16.5M is 1.24M a year in raises. salary year nba yr lma age $16,543,800 1 15-16 30 $17,784,585 2 16-17 31 $19,025,370 3 17-18 32 $20,266,155 4 18-19 33 $21,506,940 5 19-20 34 edit: Can someone explain (via PM if you need to) how to embed spreadsheet inputs?
I think that there are a bunch of permutations of #3 that may be available. I think that the crop of likely centers is pretty unlikely to move the dial much. I could see Olshey going for a bigger hit by trying to pull off a deal that gets another All-Star caliber player at a wing position and then moves either Wes or Nic for a serviceable center. I guess there's also the option of banking on Leonard getting better quickly, just picking up an aging vet for not much money (O'Neal?) to buy some time, and using most of the cap space to pick up better bench pieces. I call that one the MediocreMan Coronary plan.
Nobody else CAN. The most another team can offer (even in a sign-and-trade) is 4yrs/$70.6M. They only get 4 years and 4.5% raises.
So why do you think it would take at least 95 mil over 5 years? Can't we just offer him 75 mil over 4 years and beat anyone else by 5 mil? Sorry if I am being a little dense here.
Sure, we could do that. But if the team's big plan is to gamble that LMA stays past 2015, I don't think there's any way you do that scrimping on a deal. If HOU (for instance) could offer 4/70 and Portland offers 4/75, then they're leaving a year and 20M on the table. Maybe LMA understands that. Maybe he gets pissed off that he can't get a "max" deal.
I like LMA. But I do not over estimate his talents. I doubt the GM's of other teams do either. His home state teams will be the biggest competition for his services. Hopefully Houston will be maxed out with Howard. As for Dallas....will Dirk retire? Will Cuban replace Dirk with LMA? I guess they could but I am not so sure they will. LMA is good, but i doubt other teams are saving their cap room for him. We may be able to sign him for a decent contract.
It's a good thing that the only rumors of Aldridge showing signs of wanting out are in this forum. Aldridge is the best PF in the game right now. I still laugh that so many want him gone in here.
Same. I also think it's odd that there's so much worrying about what happens at the end of his contract...as if NO and LMA haven't had conversations about this issue?
