People are ridiculous. This is about what I expected for Ant. Sure hoped for 20, but figured that was low. Ant will outplay CJ (which is the real metric here) at 66% of the cost, next season. Ant will be one of the best guards in the league in about 2-3 years and this will look cheap. This was a totally fine signing and ya'll got your panties in a bunch and are showing a real lack of faith in Ant. Cronin clearly has trade targets in mind and my guess is he's going for KD and Simmons in that order with a smaller possibility he goes for Ayton. Any of those three will help the team a ton and the overreactions on here are just ridiculous. Let's give Cronin until Summer League before we crucify him. He deserves that after his pick of Sharpe, the steal of the draft. Yes, I thought the LAC trade sucked. The CJ trade could have been better, but it's looking Ok about now as Grant and Hart, I also think Hart is likely on the move as part of an upcoming trade based on the Gary Payton II signing.
No actually it doesn't at all. Ant is WELL worth that price and will look cheap in a few years. I would be willing to bet Ant had similar offers that were just slightly lower that we beat from other teams. This was a good signing.
I bet there were teams who would offer more but Simons wanted to remain in Portland and we paid him what they thought was fair to both parties.
You're wrong, we are paying him much less, he's a better player and has tons of room for improvement. Holy smokes guys. This is the 2nd best player on the team and we locked him up for 5 years on what will, I promise, look like a cheap deal.
Finally, some sanity in this dumpster fire thread of meltdowns. Also hat tip to Illmatic for also seeing this as a totally fair deal.
How do you and blazerkor like your crow served? I'd like to know ahead of time because you BOTH will be eating it next year. Ant is going to be a star. There are more trades coming.
Simons is going to be overpaid by $16/yr based on comparison to the $5M/yr salary increase that seems appropriate. As a 23 yr old with a lot of skills (especially D) to add he would have been offered 4 (present) +5 (increment) = $9M salary and the opportunity to continue to be mentored by Dame, Hart, Winslow, and Payton, with a probability for 3 or 4 rounds of playoffs with the growing talent and masterful coaching by Chauncey and the new added talent. This extra $16M will be a liability to the Blazers if Simons does not develop to be worth 2X what Hart provides, which seems more likely than not. $25M/yr is too much!
Blazers didn't pay Ant based on what he did last season. They paid him based on what they think he will do next season. Sure we all wish it was 20 instead of 25, but they needed to lock him up.
I hope you are correct. But no where where the actual points of my posts answered or even acknowledged.
I keep seeing that premise thrown around, but have yet to hear of any team that had cap space that was remotely interested in offering Ant close to that amount.
No it wouldn't have. I would have had him sign an offer sheet and told him that we will match the highest offer sheet he could get. He was restricted. There was no reason to give him 25M a season unless we had to in order to keep him which you have the luxury of finding out for sure when a free agent is restricted. I would have told him we want him to get the most money he can and stay with us but that we aren't going to bid against ourselves because that hasn't turned out well for us in that past but it has nothing to do with how committed we are to keeping him.
The pressure is on for him to continue that level of play he showed last season, and take it up another notch. There's no turning back. If he can handle it, he'll be worth every penny.
