$27 million luxury tax bill and climbing for '17/'18

I like plumlee, but from a value perspective yeah. Also should have resigned rolo to a 13 millionish per year deal because that contract for him would actually be good value in todays nba.

 

I wanted RHJ more than anyone on draft day. But the only reason I see wanting him over Plumlee NOW is Plums might be too expensive to keep. Which means he is better right now than RHJ. I would not undo the trade. Hustle sf"s who can't shoot are not that hard to find. Look how easy it was to get Harkless. Centers who can dribble and chew gum at the same time are not.

 

Especially if the Blazers keep Harkless, it's tough to see how there isn't some type of consolidation trade at the deadline or next summer. There are just too many players who have been or will be starters that leaves little or sometimes maybe no playing time for some of them.

Plumlee - starter / Ezeli - could start / Leonard - has started some
Aminu - starter / Vonleh - started quite a stretch as an experiment
Turner - been a starter / Harkless / started in the Playoffs
CJ - starter / Crabbe - more than starter money
Dame - starter

That is 10 players right there and not even necessarily in the order of the amount of minutes they will play. It doesn't include Davis at all who was the best 'big' off the bench last year and Napier, Connaughton, Montero and Layman. If you are a title contending team, you really don't worry too much about rookies and 3rd string players (unless you are the Spurs) but Portland isn't to that point yet. So they should be a Playoff team that isn't quite a contender that has too many players that it's not developing the younger talent.

Plumlee - 24 / Ezeli - 24 / Leonard - ??? ($10M/year for no minutes)
Aminu - 34 / Davis - 14? / Vonleh ??? ( 'zero' minutes for the raw kid who is probably the closest to an actual 'power forward' on the team)
Turner - 24 / Harkless - 14/ Crabbe - 10 / Montero ??? / Layman ???
CJ ----- 28 / Crabbe - 20 / Connaughton ???
Dame - 34 / CJ - 6 / Turner - 8 / Napier ???

That is Leonard, Vonleh, Davis and Harkless with a combined total of 28 minutes. Not sure how that works out long term.

 

Great breakdown. There will be action this deadline.

 

[QUOTE="TBpup, post: 3953887, member: 27981"

]Especially if the Blazers keep Harkless, it's tough to see how there isn't some type of consolidation trade at the deadline or next summer. There are just too many players who have been or will be starters that leaves little or sometimes maybe no playing time for some of them.

Plumlee - starter / Ezeli - could start / Leonard - has started some
Aminu - starter / Vonleh - started quite a stretch as an experiment
Turner - been a starter / Harkless / started in the Playoffs
CJ - starter / Crabbe - more than starter money
Dame - starter

That is 10 players right there and not even necessarily in the order of the amount of minutes they will play. It doesn't include Davis at all who was the best 'big' off the bench last year[/QUOTE]

On one hand we need 11 quality players over the course of a long season..... with inevitable injuries. It is true a couple of those players will not be happy with their playing time, but I think Vonleh will be the only one that gets cut out of the rotation IF all front court players are healthy.......assuming we keep Harkless.

If Harkless goes, 10 players is manageable. Davis and Leonard might become situational role players based on the opposition.
Injuries will happen though and we will be glad we have extra bigs.

 

Depth is a good thing. Let the coach do his job and figure out rotations. The pieces will fall where they should a few months into the season.

It's not as if Plums' value will change much between now and trade deadline. If anything, it might improve-- who knows?

I just hope we don't lose talent in an ill conceived effort to consolidate and save PA money. There is no reason to do that without seeing how all of this will work.

 

I feel like some of your mins breakdown is off. There is no need for ET to play 32 mpg on this roster. Same with Aminu and 34 mpg. Ezeli's career high in mins was last season at 16.7 mpg and he played only 46 games. I also feel like Harkless is gone, which is unfortunate, but not too big of a loss as he was our 10th man. Patty C, Noah, Jake, and Shabazz are fine as reserves who get spot minutes.

Here's what I see as a bit more realistic and in line with what guys have been playing in their careers.

Dame - 34/ CJ - 14
CJ- 20/ AC-20/ ET -8
ET- 20/ Aminu 8/ AC- 8/ Patty or Jake take the remaining 12
Aminu - 20/ Ed- 14/ Meyers 14
Plums 24/ Ezeli - 20/ Meyers 4

That brings the breakdown to:
Dame - 34
CJ- 34
AC- 28
ET- 28
Aminu- 28
Plums- 24
Meyers - 18
Ezeli- 20
Ed -14

There's your 9 man rotation right there.

 

Not necessarily. If you deal him now the team gets an entire cheap year to evaluate if they want to keep him. And cheap production for the one year.

 

So are we assuming Harkless is gone?

Edit: Oh you did say that in your post. Losing Harkless would hurt this year on the defensive side of the ball, but if they have faith in Layman, he could be a nice 10 minute a night player.

 

Wow, do you really want to give Pat or Jake 12 minutes a game ? Even if you consider Harkless gone, I would much rather give them to Vonleh, sliding 12 of Aminu's minutes to SF

 

That's fine as well and it works. Patty and Jake were just throw ins for spare minutes -- I don't expect Terry to have an 11 man rotation

 

Trades are coming.