Interest yes. Not for full MLE. He produces stats when he plays, but not as impactful for wins. I think I might just rather bring back Kanter for the minimum for our backup C.
We wouldn't even have to sign nurk and ant to do it, although obviously we would want to, but their cap holds and the tpe and Bledsoe is enough to out us over the cap.
He's definitely my current #1 target over any other PF options. I prefer OG to Siakam because of his low usage production, but think Toronto would rather move Pascal's salary. 2 lotto picks + an expiring deal for Siakam. I highly doubt Toronto can do better than that if they want to move him . We still would have our full NTP-MLE to fill out the roster, as well as that TPE to play with at next deadline.
I understand Spotrac still shows the guarantee date as 6/25, but why are we discounting Bobby Marks' reporting that his guarantee date was pushed out to after the moratorium? Are we just assuming he was wrong/lying? Isn't he usually pretty credible about these things?
Marks report would make keeping Bledsoe around and not buying him out more understandable. 4m vs 18m is pretty significant lol.
that would be it. I think RR7 may have underestimated the rookie scale for 8 & 10 a bit. I think it's higher and almost always, picks sign for the max 120% of scale. But all the Blazers would have to come up with is about 26.9M in trade credit to bring back Bledsoe. Bledsoe's guarantee date shouldn't be an obstacle because the trade would have to be done prior to the draft anyway. The biggest hitch may be getting Bledsoe to agree to extend his deadline into August. Portland would want the option to waive Bledsoe and his 19M salary in case the deal fell thru. But, what Bledsoe would be looking at, likely, is a vet minimum contract if he becomes a free agent, so the chance he could get and additional 12-13M next season should make him receptive to a much later guarantee date
When I'm realistic and drunk I think of what my ideal off season might just be, it will take my ideal rest of this season to happen. After Dame and Ant show they're great together and making the playoffs for the ninth straight season, the longest streak in the league and scare the first seed a little before losing in the first round. The Pelicans pick conveys and we then draft the BPA with the pick, let's say after workouts that's Jovic. With two future firsts of our own that are probably just top 4 protected we trade for Jerami Grant and fit him into our huge TPE. We draft a true big with our second round pick, maybe that's Adji. We would re-sign Nurk to a deal around 17M a year and we would re-sing Ant to something close to a max deal and opt out of Bledsoe's non-guaranteed money for next season. We would sign the best player we could get with the full MLE who would be Montrezl Harrell or maybe I'm just fascinated by the way his first name is spelled. We let Bledsoe go, we opt into the next season with Hart and re-sign Elijah and Trendon that are RFAs. Dame Ant, Keon, Dido Hart, Nas, Justise, Jovic Grant, Trendon, GB3 Nurk, Harrell, Adji I honestly think that if Dame and Ant are complementary and just one or more of our young players pop we will be a contender. Dame, Ant, Hart, Grant, Nurk, Nas, Harrell, Justise and Jovic could win a championship if they played complementary ball. That's the ideal situation for next season.
welcome back from the 'it's-hopeless-time-to-give-up-won''t work-so-trade-Dame' darkside even though it might just be a short visit since you're sharing your fantasy, I'll take the opportunity to adjust-and-improve it. I've been a Blazer fan for nearly 50 years so I've had lots of practice at 'if-only' and 'would-this-work'; also at 'fuck-it-where's-the-vodka' the first thing is, I don't think Portland should risk bidding against itself by offering Ant a near-max deal before the market sets his price, if it even does. Now, RR7 made a good point last week by suggesting that the "market" might be a team that will fuck with Portland by giving Ant a quick-out-player-option offer after 2 years. Yeah, that's a risk but I don't think it's a big one, and IMO, it's one they should take. A max contract for Ant is 35M a year if the cap is set at 121M. That number is scary as hell to me, especially considering that right now, we're looking at him having played like a high paid rookie extension for about 25 games out of 200. I'd hope a lot closer to 25M than 35M but I guess the history of rookie extensions is that most are over-paid. Nurkic at 17M? I guess it's ok but I'd sure like to see it lower because of his injury history. In the first 3 years of his last contract, Nurkic only played in half of Portland's games. Portland should not overpay to keep Nurk, IMO, and 17M is approaching the edge ****************************************************** some bookkeeping: Dame 42.5M Simons 30M Nurkic 17M Grant 21M Hart 13M Winslow 4.1M Little 4.2M Bledsoe 3.9M 1st round pick 6M Nicholson 2.9M Johnson 2.7M Louzada 1.9M Brown 1.6M Watford 1.4M 2nd round pick .9M TPE 6.6M TPE 3.3M full-MLE 10M 173M......yikes!! With a 121M salary cap, that would put the tax line at 145M and the apron at 151M. Now, if you delete the two TPE's (waste them?) that drops the Blazers to 163M. That's 18M over the tax line which results in a 38.5M tax bill. Does anybody believe Seattle would give a green light to a tax bill that high? I sure don't if Ant is at 25M and Nurk at 15, that takes 7M off the cap and drops the tax to 23M. There might be some other ways to reduce * the bottom line is that Portland can't allow themselves to be hard-capped. And that means they could not use the full-MLE. They'd be restrained to the tax-MLE which would be around 6M. That would drop the tax down to 14-15M. But again, that depends on the salaries of Ant and Nurkic after everything the Blazers did to shed 2M in tax this year, under obvious mandates from Seattle, I question if there is much appetite at all for the Blazers to jump back into the tax frying pan next season. Pretty sure the threat of repeater tax was part of this. If the Blazers had been over the line this season then they would have been a tax team in 3 of the last 4 seasons, meeting the criteria of repeater tax is they are over the line next season. Being under the line this season means they have reset the counter so they are in no threat of paying the repeater tax in the near future. Still, I think it may be a mistake to overestimate Seattle's willingness to pay tax. Maybe some to see is the Dame/Ant combo sets a different dynamic than the Dame/CJ combo anyway, too much verbiage just to say that if you're planning on an MLE addition, you should count on a 6M MLE rather than a 10M MLE by the way: "realistic and drunk"...?
Joe Ingles will never play for the Trail Blazers. His purpose, or his contract's purpose, is to put the Blazers over the salary cap to be able to use the TPE ($20.86 million, created in the CJ trade) in the off-season in a trade. This is according to Mike Richman. "The Blazers are not going to use the cap space to sign a free agent." "The Blazers this summer, their plan to get better is a trade. And that traded player exception is their number one vehicle to get better, and Joe Ingles money makes it happen. Because Joe Ingles caphold is about $20 million bucks, and if they keep Joe Ingles caphold on the books, they will remain over the salary cap." "This is why Joe Ingles is so important." Go to the 22:40 mark on this video:
let's see: Dame 42.5M Hart 13M Bledsoe 3.9M Winslow 4.1M Little 4.2M Johnson 2.7M Louzada 1.9M Brown 1.6M Nicholson 2.9M (dead salary) Nurkic 18M (cap-hold) Simons 11.8M (cap-hold) Elleby 2M (cap-hold) McLemore 1.7M (cap-hold) Hughes 4.5M (cap-hold) 1st round pick 6M (estimate) TPE 20.8M TPE 6.5M TPE 3.2M that's well over 150M which is 29M over the salary cap, and that doesn't include the 9.9M MLE or 3.8 BAE which would also count against the cap unless renounced it sure looks to me that the Blazers can be nearly 44M over the salary cap without the Ingles cap-hold which begets the 2-part question: am I missing something? if not, what the fuck is Richman talking about?
Throwaway comment, but SI wrote a large piece on Miles Bridges and mentioned this: As far as personal glory goes, Bridges is in line to be recognized with a healthy payday this summer, either from Charlotte (which can match any offer he receives) or another team with cap space. Could the Blazers, trying to retool around Damian Lillard, make an offer? What about the homestate Pistons? There is no shortage of teams who would be interested in Bridges’s varied skill set. Comparing him to other players at his position salary-wise, it’s possible Bridges earned himself in the neighborhood of an extra $30 million by playing out the last year of his current deal. Ask Bridges about his incredible foresight and he instead makes it clear he never meant to make this season some massive gamble on his talent. His desire to improve his game came more from wanting to make the playoffs than anything else. He says he may have even accepted Charlotte’s contract offer over the summer if not for his agents. “If it wasn’t for them I probably would’ve taken the deal,” Bridges says. “They got more confidence in me than I have sometimes.” Bridges’s success in the midst of his contract situation—particularly as someone coming from Flint, where Bridges says you “take risks every time you walk outside”—is not lost on Green, who knows how ruthless the business side of basketball can be. “I’m sure he could have taken some extension for way less than what he’s worth,” Green says. “You’re talking tens of millions of dollars. These aren’t small differences. Let’s say he turned down $30 million. There’s a certain level of stress that comes with that. There’s a level of pressure that comes with that. Miles has two young kids. It takes someone super elite at what they do to deliver under that pressure. “It’s great to see guys win from a player perspective. You could’ve taken less money, and it would’ve been celebrated for the general manager. He bet on himself, and it’s going to pay off for him tenfold. It doesn’t always go that way."
Bridges is a Klutch client as well, fwiw. And Charlotte will prolly match any deal he get. Would be tricky to land him especially considering how much MJ seems to love him.
