Bridges so far is way more than twice the player Ant is. Hell, Meyers had done more to earn $10M per year than Ant has done to earn $12-14M per.
This season the team has just over $90 million invested in Dame/CJ/Powell. Ant is behind those 3 on the depth chart and it is being suggested we pay him as much or more than Nurk and RoCo. I'm sorry - but there is no feckin' way that is a sensible way to manage the cap or build a roster!
let's see, Bridges had an 8.0 winshare mark last season, Simons had 1.8. So, by that gauge Simons is worth 5M a year. Bridges has 15.7 winshares in 3 years; Simons has 2.0. By that gauge, if Simons gets 13M/year, Bridges is worth 102M/year Bridges had a +3.0 BPM last season while Simons was at -1.3. Bridges career mark is +0.7 while Simons is at -3.2. Bridges has a career Value over Replacement of +4.7; Simons has a -0.6 Everybody went gaga about Simons shooting .426 from three last season; well Bridges shot .425. And while Simons was shooting .402 on two's, Bridges was shooting .647. Simons had by far his best TS% last season at .589. That's significantly lower than Bridges career mark of .618; and Bridges had a mark of .667 last season. and Bridges is doing this as a starter playing against 1st unit defenses, while also always guarding the other team's best perimeter player. So no, Simons is not close to being worth 13M/year based upon the Bridges contract. Cut that number in half
I'd say cut it by 75%. $6.5M per year is more than the tax payer's MLE--there's no way I would use the full TPMLE on a free agent Ant.
Is this a joke? One is a quality starter on a finals team. The other is a shitty backup that might be out of the NBA soon.
I don't know how "soon," but it looks like Crabbe is out of the league before turning 30. I think people would have been similarly dismissive of that prediction at the time that discussion of extending him came up. Simons is just as unproductive and one-trick.
Simons not getting an extension (because he needs to prove he's worth keeping) is another reason we can't afford to do the CJ-for-Simmons-and-3-first-rounders-and-3-pick-swaps that was rumored. We currently have zero young players that we can genuinely get excited about (I refuse to have hopes for Nas until he can prove he can stay off the injured list for at least ten games in a row). The only kind of teams (like the Clippers) that can mortgage their futures like that are teams in big markets with super-committed owners who can attract FAs.
Crabbe and Simons are not even remotely the same type of player. We're the same fan base that gave up on Trent after his 2nd year, many people believes Collins wouldn't receive a decent contract, and he did. Maybe we're not the best judge of talent on here?
Isn't it crazy how ALL of Crabbe, ML, and Turners are all out of the league after the contract we handed out in 2016? Bet they never imagine the biggest contract in their lives will be the last contract they will ever get. Mo as well, but he is hanging on with Minimum deals for now.
the same can be said of quite a few deals given out that summer. no excuse, but we weren't the only ones handing out these contracts: Drummond-- 5yrs 130 mil, on a minimum now Batum -- 5 yrs 120 mil, on a minimum now Whiteside -- 4 yrs, 98 mil, on a minimum now Dwight -- 3 yrs 71 mil, on a minimum now Parsons- 4yrs, 99 mil, out of league Bazemore -- 4yrs 70 mil, on a minimum now Ryan Anderson -- 4 yrs 80 mil, out of league Biyombo -- 4 yrs 72 mil, minimum Mozgov -- 4 yrs 65 mil, out of league Luol Deng -- 4yrs 72 mil, out of league Noah -- 4 yrs, 72 mil, out of league etc etc etc. the market was out of whack that year. Just a shame that we had most of our FAs up for contracts that summer. Similar to what I foresee happening with Simons and his eventual retention here, most of this was an asset play of not wanting to lose homegrown talent for nothing. (i realize we did that with Zach, but were it not for his injury history, i think he woulda received a contract here. Dude is STILL in a walking boot).
