How else do you judge a player's contract? Superstars make 40+, All Stars make 30+, fringe guys make 29-35 depending on the year of the deal. CJ may be slightly overpaid, but his deal is not nearly as egregious as others. This isn't 2015.
Blake Griffin is the 8th highest paid, K Love is the 20th highest paid Where did they come in on ESPN's top 100 player list?
Guys on that list who I would not want at those numbers over CJ: Westbrook, Wall, Griffin, Klay, Conley, Kemba, Tobias, Kyrie, Love, Wiggins. Iffy: CP3, Middleton, Lowry, Porzingis. That's 11-14 of 26 ahead of him. Really puts things in perspective.
My criteria? If CJ is your 2nd best player does his contract interfere with you building a contender around Dame? I believe it does. YMMV.
And it's mitigated by Nurk making only 12. Our top three consisting of a superstar + 2 fringe stars add up to 72 mil. That's peanuts in today's NBA, and does not hinder our ability to build a solid/contending team around Dame whatsoever.
Just playing Devil's advocate here, but how many guys are on that list due to injury issues? Was Brandon Roy over-paid?
I would take all those guys on a team (operative word being a as I’m not talking about just Portland) over CJ outside of love,Wiggins, and possibly Griffin. And two of those are only because of injuries.
Exactly--I think NO drafted Elleby as a potential replacement for GTJ if he gets like a max offer next year and it's just too much for us to match.
Several, but you could make lots of spin-off arguments like, how many players not on the list have higher value? The point was simple, CJ represents better value than roughly half of the players paid higher than him. You're changing it slightly to just preferred players, rather than weighing contract and impact. There's a big difference between CJ's $29M and Russ' $41M, for example.
Giles actually had some decent numbers last season, and was a lot better as a starter. I don't know if that really means anything his wingspan is 4" longer than Zach, so at least the Blazers have a couple of PF's with height & length, even though one is still injured
