Yep. Joe justified his lopsided trades by saying it brought us flexibility. If he just sits on his hands while many teams and agents are aggressive it will be very disappointing.
In that case Joe will probably sell it as we got the flexibility to trade Duren for Grant. One of the problems with the Clippers trade was this Bledsoe contract. It doesn't have much if any value. The Blazers could just sign and trade Ingles if they need to match some salary that is an expiring. With the $4 million guarantee it could have less than zero value, since the Blazers could have to attach an asset to get rid of it. Lets say the Blazers need some of that $4 million space under the luxury tax/hard cap. Would've been much better just letting Roco walk, which was the worst case return of value for him. Joe's moves were basically all fine except the Clippers trade. It was horrible at the time, horrible a week later at the deadline, and is still horrible today. The people arguing for its benefit are the Neil pitchfork crowd and the blind Blazer homers.
if they re-sign Ingles for much and reserve the ability to use that 6.6M TPE at the deadline, it's pretty tight
technically, teams only have one MLE with an allowable max. Tax teams are limited to the tax-line of the MLE. Non -tax teams can exceed that but get hard-capped. I'm not sure what the exact level of the tax-MLE is...I think a little over 6M I'd be a little surprised if the Blazers use the full-MLE, but it's entirely possible
the trades did bring flexibility. Absorbing Grant into a TPE is about as flexible as you can get every year, some teams have cap-space; and every year, most teams without cap-space could use the full-MLE but don't because they don't want their flexibility restricted by a hard cap. That does not mean the teams are just sitting on their hands edit. I just checked and I count a grand total of 11 players in the league signed to full-MLE contracts and that is over the last 3 seasons. Using the full-MLE is actually kind of rare: https://www.basketball-reference.com/contracts/players.html
They really should change the rules on it, such as teams are only hard capped for 30 days, must renounce cap holds, etc. Still would prevent the big money spending tax teams from using it, but would allow nontax teams to use it without such strict restrictions for an entire year. Similar with sign and trades.
either that or go the other direction and expand the hard cap rules. Of course the player's union would never agree
I don't want Kyle Anderson. He did have some decent games later in the playoffs but early he was terrible. turnovers, bad shot selection and poor defense. Want somebody better.
I think I would like Otto Porter. Not much reason for him to leave GS though, is there? I found this stat site that likes him, although looks as if they use career stats so it's hard to know how they are trending. https://craftednba.com/players/otto-porter-jr.
Now that Danilo Gallinari is available would we be interested in him for the MLE? Ideally I'd want a better defending forward. But he at least has proven starter level talent.
Maybe for the BAE. I think there are better players for the MLE. He's already going to be paid $12M this season from the Spurs.
What if this guy is right? A long wait? Keith Smith: Talking to folks around the NBA the belief is that everything is going to pause with the opening of free agency until Kevin Durant’s next home is decided. Every team and player will sit mostly still until Durant is traded. Then the flood will happen.
