and his agent will have to deal with a whole Bosnian nation of Blazer fans with Nurk fever......including this guy
Figure it out Neil or this cat is gonna be on your neck... And I bet you won't say SHIT about his pink shirt...
That's not how business' work. The blazers themselves generate profits I'm guessing the difference is negligible to him if the team is worth it.
It just screams, I don't give a fuck....Papa Nurk is the original grunge star! Then again that pink could just be faded blood stains in the wash....
Learning from me would require you to be teachable, which if the level of dementia shown in your posts is any indicator, you are incapable of.
The reason is you would then have that salary to trade. You could trade large expiring contracts for a quality players who need a new home. We're not going to have cap space, regardless of what we do, so we have lost that flexibility. Having large expiring deals on the books can actually give you more options than being right below the luxury tax threshold. If the owner buys into that. I don't think Paul is sold on that... Actually I think he's close, but just not there yet.
Nurkic is really unproven for any duration. So it would be a mistake to give him a big payday yet. Let him play out the season make him a RFA then negotiate a fair contract. If he gets a bigger offer elsewhere you match.
This is the same strategy that cost Utah Hayward. If you want your good players to stay you have to show them that by paying them what they are worth. Nurk's ceiling is all-star level and he should be payed as such without any hesitation or arm twisting by another team.
There's a middle way, which is to let him play out this season and then offer him a max deal before free agency opens assuming he actually proves that last year's 20 games wasn't any sort of fluke. That way, Portland minimizes their risk, but doesn't tell a star player to hit the bricks and find a max somewhere else before Portland matches it. If just making him play out his first contract is the problem, then that's tough luck, I guess. I wouldn't be comfortable handing a max deal to a player who's had injury issues and only 20 games of max level play. It would be different if he had unrestricted free agency coming up, but giving up the chance to ensure he is what he appears to be would be more risky than the good feelings would be worth, IMO.
