A player said it's his DREAM COME TRUE to play for his new particular team. He finds reasons to praise it, like, it's his home state, or, he admires the team's star. First time in history! So glad you found that unmotivated, indisputable info. It's hard to find a local Jason Quick introducing a new player to a fanbase, with the player gushing over his new team (with agent standing behind him holding a club). If Olshey had offered $17M, Cole Aldrich would have forgotten where he was born.
WRONG! You go to a Portland restaurant and you're surrounded by neckbeards and hipsters. In NY and LA you're surrounded by the rich and beautiful.
Your chart proves you wrong. Those guys at better than Leonard. He isn't in their class in his 5th year, and will not be 5 years from now.
For a starter, $10M is nothing. For a 10th-12th man like Leonard, it's gross and ugly. As for the future, why should we pay for 4 years for the 1% probability that he'll become Shaq 5 years from now? A good GM finds bargains, instead of paying for improbable future stardom. (Remember, the thread's about Olshey's skills, not Leonard's.)
Leonard's salary this year is roughly 10% of the salary cap and 8% of the luxury tax level. It's not nothing, but it's also not large enough to cause any major problem to a team's salary structure.
By what metric are they better, your imagination? Toss out Chandler, Gortat, Jefferson, and Bogut as all being 32 or older and on the down side of their careers. Here's how the current season stats of the rest stack up: Meyers Leonard: 24 years old, 15.8 mpg, 3.2 reb, .4 blk, 5.2 ppg Miles Plumlee: 28 years old, 10.9 mpg, 1.9 reb, .3 blk, 2.7 ppg Nikola Vucevic: 26 years old, 27.9 mpg, 10.9 reb, .9 blk, 12.9 ppg Omer Asik: 30 years old, 16.7 mpg, 5.8 reb, .4 blk, 3 ppg Kosta Koufos: 27 years old, 19.7 mpg, 5.8 reb, .6 blk, 5.7 ppg Tyler Zeller: 27 years old, 12.7 mpg, 3.3 reb, .6 blk, 4.2 ppg Cole Aldrich: 28 years old, 13 mpg, 3.8 reb, .6 blk, 2.9 ppg Vucevic is clearly the stats winner, but he's playing almost 11 more minutes per game than Leonard. Leonard is the youngest of the group by a considerable margin, is coming back from a significant injury, and still is producing as much or more than the rest of those guys who are making about the same money.
Leonard has trade value (how much is debatable), but some blazer fans are just blinded by their rage. Sometimes I feel like there's no balance with our fanbase, we either hype up players too much, or we think they're the most useless pieces of shit ever. The truth is usually in the middle though.
Same with me, but I had hope he'd improve till I saw him in Summer League after his rookie year, when he showed he had gotten even worse. Then another year of no change, and another. Finally last year, his contract year, he started trying for once. Now I at least see effort, unlike his first 3 years. Maybe a better defensive coach will help him at his next team. I've posted that attempted optimism for years...that he badly needs a new locale.
I don't know what being young has to do with it. It just means that teams are more suckered by false potential.. You took out the top third of your 11-man list, but even that doesn't make Leonard better than the bottom 2/3. Every one of those players is better. Some posters are blinded by Meyers worship, and will still be in his 10th year if he's still here. I get it. You're a homer and have always opposed every proposed change, whether coach, GM, or player. Good for you, but more rational people must lead.
it is neil tho guys. If by February we havent made a deal to make us better and save us from luxury tax hell he needs to see the door.
You're showing your usual inability to follow a thread. I'm more than happy to trade Meyers at this point. I was just pointing out that his contract isn't out of line for similar players of a similar age. Next year, with the cap and lux tax going up again, superstar players will be getting $30 mill a year. Ten mil for a midlevel player will be the norm.
I hear what you (OP)'re saying about Olshey. HOWEVER: it seems to me that while he has a knack for finding bargain basement, um, bargains (like RoLo and Harkless) he has a poor drafting record that is obscured by his undoubted success in landing Lillard in a pretty weak draft. He seems to have a predilection for scorers over well-rounded players, and values "character" above all. While that might be welcomed by those who regret the Whitsitt "chemistry?" years, he seems to have gone too far in the other direction. Besides that I have two major concerns with Olshey: First, he was hired from the Clippers on the strength of the Chris Paul trade. But it's looking more and more like that was luck more than anything (after the Lakers' trade was nixed, in an extraordinary move, by the league) and we just have very few assets to do a comparable one. (Furthermore I wonder how much being in LA helped him in ways he didn't realize before he came to small-market Portland) Second, in LA he was trading players he hadn't drafted, whereas now he is wedded to Lillard and CJ in particular, and is less likely to be objective about a rebuild than somebody brought in fresh. I can't imagine him ever bringing himself to trade Lillard. That's fine if Lillard were a superstar like LeBron or even Durant, but he's at best a top 5 PG, whose defense will always be a problem. It's a little annoying that Charlotte, with Cho at the helm, is looking much healthier than us.
Why did we negotiate what will be the norm a year later? In this thread more than once, your argument has been that we should pay players what they can negotiate in the future, not what is the going norm now. Why would we do that, if we can get today's norm, today? A can of soup will cost $20 in 2050. You'd better voluntarily give your grocer that price now.
Name one... There are several significant disadvantages (reduces the team's flexibility), but I can't think of one advantage.
Denny said near the LT, not over. The advantage is that you have more salary to use in making trades than you would if you were just over the cap. The Blazers can package several players and take back players with big salaries as long as they don't put us into the LT. If they were just over the cap, there's not as much flexibility to take on a big contract because the salaries have to match within 125% plus $100K.
Yeah, you're probably right. It's probably all some elaborate attempt at deception to make me look good in an anonymous internet forum. Now it all makes sense. Why else would he have chosen to live in MIN for the last 6 off seasons prior to signing with the Timberwolves? He obviously hates the place and took a bullet for me. Thanks Cole, I appreciate it! Thanks for clearing that up for us. We would have never been able to figure that out on our own. So, let me get this straight. All we have to do to lure 3rd tier free agents to Portland is offer them $10 million/year more than the second highest bidder? Sounds about right. BNM
