I completely agree with you here.... however I think NO's mindset is tainted. His background as an agent lends itself to trying to get the players as much money as possible. I think he's carried it forward into the GM role. If you look at almost all of the deals he's been involved with, they have been on the high side of the player's value.
Actually, I thought he got Ed Davis and Al-Farouq Aminu on team friendly deals. Harkless at 4 years/$40 million isn't awful. Out of the 5 guys Olshey signed last summer, he was the most productive, but still a slightly below average starting small forward. He tends to overvalue the players he's drafted though. Allen Crabbe and Evan Turner are 6th men types, at best, but he way overpaid them. And they aren't even among the top 6th men in the league. Crabbe finished tied for 16th in 6th Man of the Year voting last season, which doing the math, tells me the voters consider him to be slightly below league average as a 6th man. Turner was 5th in 6th Man of the Year voting last year, so you could at least try to justify his signing by claiming he was one of the top 6th men in the league. I don't think either of them will be in the running for 6th Man of the Year this year. @KingSpeed thinks Crabbe is one of the top 6th men in the league. It will be interesting to see where he comes in at in the voting this year. His big contract certainly raised awareness about him, but I'm not sure if that helps, or hurts him. Some voters might vote for him based on his high 3FG%. I guess we'll see soon. BNM
Crabbe, 2015-16, not playing on a sore foot. 12.2 PER against is outstanding defense. Crabbe last season: 14 PER against is good defense.
yeah when dame and cj are killing it (aka when we win) crabbe gets more wide open shots (the only ones he takes or ever makes) and as a result thanks to circumstance he looks better. I think he had one single occasion (his 24 pt game) this season where you could say we wouldnt have won without him. Otherwise he's a net negative for 20m per. Stupid Fucking Blazers
But do you get that youre talking about two different tiers of players? Scrub vs. Starter One is worth the money spent the other just is not? GM's will spend all the money they can to get a player like JJ. If anything what youre saying makes it even more likely he WILL get paid stupid money cause the dumb teams i.e. the blazers already made bad bets and good agents can leverage that. Yeah some teams did dumb shit with their money (looking at you neil) but if you think that'll keep JJ's agent from getting more than AC did youre playing yourself.
Maybe I was wrong... Maybe NO knows what the hell he is doing. Maybe last year was just greasing the skids with PG-13's agent.
I love where your head is at but I think neil just simply doesnt know how hard he fucked up. Edit: but you gotta love how Paul George's salary and AC's line up almost perfectly....
The more I work with the future salaries and luxury tax, the less I understand how Olshey is going to fix the huge mess he created. The next off season, the Blazers only have 8 players under contract. Yet their combined salaries are tickling the luxury tax threshold. Add in the draft picks, and we are still under the LT, maybe. BUT, Olshey still needs to re-sign Nurkic, Vonley, Davis and Napier, if they are not traded. Re-signing only one of them will put the Blazers deep into the luxury tax. A major trade needs to happen before the next trade deadline. As of now, for the next 3 seasons, the Blazers are fucked due to bench players making starters money.
Olshey stacked a lot of chips on Crabbe and Leonard taking big steps forward and being, if not quite stars, top-end complementary players. He also apparently misjudged Turner as such a player (I can't imagine he thought Turner had major steps left to take in his development) while Turner is good as a low-paid reserve, not as an Andre Iguodala type. If those three players were extremely high-quality players, this would be an expensive but really good team. But as it appears that Olshey's bets look likely (at this point) to be losers, it's just an expensive and mediocre team. (Mediocre only due to Nurkic who is still on a rookie-level deal--once Nurkic gets his next deal, this team will be insanely expensive for mediocrity.)
Yep he played really well in those last two games of the regular season. All around play. And the Spurs were playing their starters.
I disagree that we are mediocre with Nurkic. We went 14-5 with him as a starter including some wins against really good teams. He was also +8 in 16 playoff minutes. I think we are much better than mediocre. I think we are top 4 in West. We're better than Jazz. Clippers will be worse next year. We may be better than Houston too. Spurs will always be great in regular season as will Warriors.
Except, it's not - especially when you are a bench player and spend over half your minutes guarding other bench players. Also from 82games.com: C.J. McCollum OPP PER at SG = 13.0 So, is C.J. a lock down defender? Remember early in the season when all the Crabbe fan boys said Crabbe should be starting because his defense is better than C.J.'s. I called bullshit at the time. Crabbe is NOT a good defender. Oh hey, look at this... J.J. Redick OPP PER at SG = 10.9 Why is this man not First Team All Defense? Jamal Crawford OPP PER at SG = 12.4 Did the 37-year old Crawchuck suddenly become lock down defender? Going the other direction... Kawhi Leonard OPP PER at SF = 14.4 Seriously, this guy is in the running for DPOY every year, and this stat says Allen Crabbe is better at guarding opposing small forwards? Draymond Green OPP PER at PF = 17.1 LaMarcus Aldridge OPP PER at PF = 13.2 Which one would you rather have guarding the other teams PF with the game on the line, the perennial DPOY candidate or the old, slow footed softy? Tony Allen OPP PER at SG = 18.5 MEM has one of the top defenses in the league, but not one player in their rotation is better at guarding their man than C.J. McCollum and Allen Crabbe - at least not according to 82games.com's OPP PER stat. I could go on, but when a data set has this many ridiculous exceptions to the widely accepted reality, I tend to question its validity. I'm not sure what methodology 82games.com uses to calculate OPP PER, but I think they need to go back to the drawing board on this one. BNM
We have a good idea that we will be starting at about $5M less than next season, paying 14 players. ($142M - $137M) Nurkic's big payday would kick in the following year, when we'd be paying about $80-90M of our ~$125M luxury tax threshold on just 3 players. I am counting on NO shedding at least $10M worth of salaries (aside from Ezeili, Connaughton, and Quarterman) this summer and trade deadline. Something like Leonard and Davis gone for cap space. That gets us ~$5-6M in room to pay rookies and minimum contract vets and MLE and so on. We will have the benefit of the rest of our players for at least another season. Of course if we become a real contender, I expect paying the LT to be reasonable. It might be reasonable in 2019-2020, buying time until everyone's contracts run out (except Dame, Nurk, and CJ). http://www.basketballinsiders.com/portland-trail-blazers-team-salary/ LT expected to be $122M next season, and $125M in 2018-19.
The numbers are what the numbers are. Explain 'em away, but the numbers are still the numbers. I would say that Crabbe tends to draw the better offensive players to guard, while a Crawford doesn't. Leonard, DPOY, guards the Durants and keeps them to 14 PER. That's downright amazing.
I was using Reddick as an example because its easy to compare. Crabbe got paid on potential, which is what usually happens with young players. You said Redick produces at 1.5x that of Crabbe http://www.basketball-reference.com...r_id2_select=J.J. Redick&player_id2=redicjj01 No he doesn't. Pretty much all Reddick has on Crabbe is the fact he gets more shots and gets one more assist a game. Reddick has him barely in ORTG and DRTG Every other category Crabbe beats Reddick out in, no matter if you look at per 36 or 100 possessions. That is with Crabbes 2 very lack luster starting seasons in while Reddick has 10 years of solid play to outweigh his first three seasons. I think we overpaid Crabbe but I dont' think he will be hard to move especially since teams that want him will look at him as a starter while we have him in a bench roll. The SG/SF positions aren't exactly stacked in todays NBA, lots of teams have a need at one of those two holes and with how valued the 3p shot is getting elite 3p shooters will become more valuable. Hell WoJ said we had teams calling about Crabbe at the deadline so I don't think Crabbes contract is going to be an albatross around this teams neck, I think we move him fairly easily if we need to.
I said Redick IS 1.5x the player Crabbe IS. as in today, right now, not comparing 11 years of Redick vs. 4 years of Crabbe. Compare their last two years and you'll see where the 1.5x came from. Still, even if you compare them over the life of their careers, Redick beats Crabbe in PER 14.9 to 11.4, TS% .597 vs. .578, AST% 12.1 vs. 6.9 and WS/48 .130 vs. .091. Per 100 possessions Redick scores 24.6 points and dishes out 3.8 assists, compared to 18.3 points and 2.3 assists for Crabbe. Redick scores more, does so more efficiently and dishes out more than 1.5x as many assists per 100 possessions. And remember, Redick does that against starters while Crabbe plays most of his minutes against other bench players. BNM
I'm not explaining anything away. I am questioning the validity of a stat that literally makes no sense to anyone who has watched any NBA basketball. There is no explanation of how those numbers were determined., but whatever their methodology is, it needs a LOT of work to have any sort of correlation with reality. Any stat that says C.J. McCollum and Allen Crabbe are better at guarding their position than EVERY Memphis rotation player causes all sorts of red flags to go off for me. Not EVERYONE on MEM draws the Kevin Durant and LeBron James assignment EVERY night, yet every MEM rotation player has a worse 82games.com OPP PER at their primary position that Allen Crabbe and C.J. McCollum have at theirs. Can you honestly say with a straight face that Allen Crabbe and C.J. McCollum are better defenders than Tony Allen, Mike Conley and Marc Gasol? That two bad defenders on a weak defensive team are better at defense than three all defense level players on a good defensive team? And if you think Crabbe is a good defender with his OPP PER of 14.0 against other backups, you must think C.J. is a defensive stud with his 13.0 OPP PER against starters. When "numbers" don't make any logical sense, I question their validity. You should too, and not just accept them as fact. BNM
Opponent PER has always been a flawed metric, but it's particularly flawed these days with the number of switches teams engage in. Even if 82games.com correctly maps who had who every time an assist, basket or turnover occurs (which I'm fairly sure they do not), that player may have had the assignment because the player who was supposed to have that assignment lost their man, blew the assignment or died on a screen. There are no great measures of defense, but Opponent PER is about the last one I'd use. It's a relic from the bygone days when popular sentiment about defense was locking your guy down in mano-a-mano duels. That's really not how defense is played these days, except in very rare situations.
