As big as this FA will be, it is hard to imagine next year will be bigger ten fold. The goal next offseason should be to re sign LA, while the goal this offseason is to strengthen the bench. 2015 Free Agents: RESTRICTED Will Barton Victor Claver Joel Freeland UNRESTRICTED LaMarcus Aldridge Robin Lopez Wesley Matthews Dorell Wright I don't think we should sign a pg to a long contract right now. We should focus on developing CJ and see if anything pans out with I drafted players this year. The reason I say this is because I'm sure Duncan and Manu will retire next year, and depending on what Pop does, there is a chance who Parker (younger than Duncan and Manu) will go play his last years some where else. Parker is the perfect player for dame to polish his inside game around. He would be unstoppable with his outside game, and Tony Parker's inside game and craftiness. We have a few things going for us as well: We will have tons of cap space to sign him. San Antonio is a very similar market to Portland. He is great friends with Batum. As woj tweeted earlier, our roster is very desirable to play with. 2015 is when we find out how tight everyone really is, and do they think they can be as good as we've heard them say? If so then we could see the same core returning for less money giving Olshey an opportunity to add more depth. You would think that if LA was going to take less money he would have worked it out by now. Matthews probably shouldn't ask for much less, but could help. It will be interesting for sure. Any ling term pg signing this year tells you that TP is not part of Olsheys plan. The most important thing is to have another successful year and convince all of our FAs that it is worth it to come back for less.
We will have tons of cap. But how much of that goes to tony and what do we do about center? This is assuming that CJ or dame could take over Wes' duties at SG.
Matthews is going to be intriguing... whether people want to believe it or not, the PR staff has dubbed him as the hard-hat guy... he's probably going to want to stay here and will most likely be between the $7-9 mil range per year. It's going to be a tricky offseason.
Kevin love isn't appealing? Nor is Tony Parker? Or lamarucus Aldridge? Damn you crazy nate Other names(all unrestricted): Verajao Hibbert Deandre Jordan Jameer Nelson Thaddeus Young (will undoubtedly go some where else) Dragic Robin Lopez Matthews Marc gasol David west Asik Rondo
I agree in that we should be very cautious with giving out a multi year contract. That being said if we can get a Pau Gasol or Luol Deng stud player on a near MLE type of contract yes of course we should pull the trigger. Those would be easy contracts to dump if need be. Think of Houston, they were able to dump Asik contract for cap space and get a first round pick. Maybe Olshey has his eye on another up and coming player that would be easy to dump next summer even if they were on a multi year deal. But if a multi year deal is to acquire Mario Chalmers, Avery Bradley, Isiah Thomas I'd probably rather just skip those players and sign a slightly inferior free agent to a one year deal. Once LMA, Rolo and Wes are locked up to extensions then it'll be better to add bench players to longer term contracts. A lot can change between now and next offseason, usually half of the players we expect to improve regress and half we expect nothing out of improve. Next summer we will have far better information to use our cap space.
