Another shot from Simmons

He's always had an inferiority complex because he's never been able to live up to the legacy of his more successful, more famous, better looking twin brother:



BNM

 

Makes you wonder why Simmons calls out Aldridge and the Blazers when a much more glaring example exists in the same division as his beloved Celtics.

BNM

 

so your answer is because he has a 20 per and is a center? i think it was a huge mistake. they could have let him play out the season(in which he was injured again btw) and matched any offer for him. he played 50 games last year and stunk in the playoffs to the tune of a 11 PER. bynum is overpaid, period. he was paid on potential, and hasnt lived up to it yet. 25 million or so into it.

it would be like giving greg 5/75 this summer. and then him playing 50 games next year and stinking in the playoffs.

on to LMA

he is DEFINITELY worth his 5.8 million dollar salary this year.
IMO he is DEFINITELY worth his 10.7 next year. look at other players with similar production.
whether he will be worth his 15 million in 2014/15 is anybodies guess, but criticizing it now because it MIGHT be too much in 4 years seems a little silly.

just searching basketball reference for forwards averaging 16/7/with a PER over 17 the list looks like alot of older in their prime or past it players who will earn ALOT more THIS season than LMA will in 2014/15. i just dont see a comparable, save maybe no defense david lee who is two years older and will likely have a similar contract this summer.

 

no thanks to bynum, but point taken. kinda hard to complain or look for fault when you win the title and are a contender every year.

 

Good point. It does boggle the mind that he's still jealous of Portland even though his Celtics won a title after losing the 2007 draft lottery.

Like you said, impossible to figure out.

BNM

 

LMA is a better defending not as good offensively Al Jeff as far as potential and production is concerned. Contract seems reasonable given that.

 

not even close offensively, and not even close defensively.

 

Aldridge won't make more than $12M until 2012/2013 season, so there's still a chance he improves and earns every cent. As it is right now he's probably slightly overpaid, but not enough to make a big fuss about. It took a little extra to keep him and I'm fine with that.

 

I thought the Blazers were stupid, but what the hell do I know?

 

as of right now, he makes 5.8 million. 10.7 next year. pretty fair imo.

 

That Hedo contract sucks, but the Bargnani signing seems much better now than it did before. You can look at the numbers and say OMG 6.2 RPG, but watching the Raptors play night in night out I am convinced he's a 8 RPG guy easy, small factors come into play with that. I could go on for days about Bargnani but when talking about LaMarcus, from the games I have seen, I am somewhat impressed, though most of it is jumpers.

 

lma still wins using advanced metrics but it is getting closer.

http://www.basketball-reference.com...m=0&p1=aldrila01&y1=2010&p2=bargnan01&y2=2010

 

The biggest thing that hurts Bargnani is still his almost historically bad rebounding. Given the pace Toronto plays at, and the amount of minutes he plays, he should be grabbing a lot more rebounds. He was doing a little better early in the season, but his TRB% has dropped back to 10.5%. Not quite as historically bad as his previous three years, but still embarassingly bad for a 7-footer.

His defense is still pretty bad, but the Raptors as a team play very poor defense. Ironically, he's actually blocking a lot more shots these days than Aldridge - who used to be a much better shot blocker. But, there's more to defense than blocking shots.

BNM

 

Simmons just knows he can get a rise out of the Blazers fan base, so he enjoys striking a chord every once in awhile.

 

If this is the LMA we can expect going forward with little to no improvement, then yes this is probably a bad deal ... if he actually starts playing better interior defense and can get just a little better at drawing free throws or getting into the lane (his handle is pretty bad along with his post moves) then I think it's a reasonable contract (unless a hard cap gets instituted).

 

LMA is overpaid, but not grossly overpaid. I would have liked to see us sign him in the 45-50 million range. I don't think that would have been unrealistic.

 

lamarcus makes 5.7 million this year. he is not overpaid.

david west was at 5/45 or so and has one of the best contracts in the nba, according to simmons the VERY best. and lamarcus beats him in pretty much every statistic. at 5 years younger.

45 million would have been the steal of the century. maybe 60 million or 55 million is a better fit, but at that point we are talking between 1-2 million a year. why even bother?

 

I'm a big Aldridge fan, but thought/posted that they overpaid him this last offseason. I recall many posters being upset at those of us who dared to rain on their LA signing day parade by pointing out that they were overspending. I bet if I were to look up those threads it would be the same posters who are now upset he isn't playing at an all star level.

Bill Simmons is right that Portland overpaid LA, but he's wrong that the "owners need to be saved from themselves." They are big boys doing business... them whining about salaries and the CBA is part of trying to negotiate a better deal. If an owner can't hack it in this high stakes game I'm sure that there are many other rich folks who'd like to make them an offer.

STOMP