$65M, OVER HALF OF THE CAP....for a smallish, no-D backcourt. This is way too much like Dame/CJ 2.0. Hope it works out better than it did in the previous 8 seasons.
Cheaper than CJ and hopefully sustains the play he showed last season with some improved defense as well....I would trade Ant or Nas but looks like that's not in the cards.
Ant doesn't play like CJ at all...he doesn't dribble the air out of the ball and chuck. I don't think that's a fair narrative just because they are about the same size...Ant is an athletic freak...CJ....not really.
Sadly, defensively, they are all too similar. And they are both better with the ball in their hands......which doesn't work when Dame is back. Will be interesting to see how this plays out.
Even if Ant is a direct CJ clone (which I do not think he is), you are replicating it at 66% of the cost of the secondary player - and if it does not work, his contract is so much easier to move given his age and amount...
If we were going to pay this much it should have been matching an offer sheet. That's all there is to it. It seems that not every bad thing in the Olshey era left with him. This is obviously bidding against ourselves unless someone furnishes a report saying that Ant shopped around and had offers above or close to this. The easiest way to have known this would have been to tell him if he wants 100M fucking dollars over four years get someone to offer it, sign the offer and we will match.
Yeah these comparisons to CJ aren't fair. Simons is taller (ya I know the old pre draft measurements. Look at them side by side. Ant is taller) and considerably longer. Simons is better suited for SG than CJ, and is a significantly better playmaker. Simons is also one of the absolute best spot up shooters in the world. Sure, defensively, this is still a problem. The optimistic side of me hopes that he improves there (I think he showed improvement there last year). Defense is a similar issue but I think that's where it starts and ends in the comparison. Cheaper, younger, better shooter, better playmaker. Overpay? Maybe? But then again, did you see what Jalen Brunson just got?
and you get stuck instead matching 2 with a player option, and he walks in 2 because we treated him poorly. good plan.
The fact is we don't know how good Ant is at all because his great streak was such a short sample size and we most definitely don't know who he is a shooting guard. If you want to say we do, then what we know is he's worth nowhere near this much... no where fucking near it. Now I'm counting on him playing a lot better than we've ever seen him at the 2 but this is such a stupid gamble without our hand being forced.
https://stathead.com/tiny/Ahmw7 One player makes 7 million more than the other for the next 4 years Yet it is a good deal, he is already better and powell's contract was trash. No. I'm a huge believer in Ant. You can't have it both ways. Powell was not a bad contract and we got nothing for him in return.
Them are the rules of NBA free agency for all teams, especially small market teams. You have to gamble and you will not hit on all of them. The Blazers do have enough data from practice, being around him and seeing him and we have seen the signs before, there was that 37 points game as a rookie, there was this longish lead guard period. There is never a guarantee, but this was a very reasonable investment in a young, super athletic, very good shooting player with 4 years of information on him.
It's a business. You tell Ant that no matter what we're keeping him but that 100M is too much for us not to have to match it but we'll gladly give you 80 and we'll gladly match whatever you get on the open market. That's not devaluing that's just doing business with a guy that has very little success under his belt. If Ant had done what he did for two months for the last two years, at the position we're signing him to play, of course we'd offer this much and probably more but he has not done that. This was a stupid ass deal when you have a RFA... what's the fucking point of having restrictions on your free agents if you're going to overpay them without an offer making you do so. The fact that people don't get this after CJ and Meyers is fucking ridiculous.
Lol. I can think of a number of reasons we didn't "wait for a team to sign him to an offer sheet" - and we have no clue if another team offered him or not. It could've easily went: Agent: This is what the offer sheet in front of us is. It is formatted like this: (Insert outline). Blazers: Ok, dont sign it. We'll match it. Or we'll give you a little extra to not sign it. Or we'll give you a little extra to give up your player option, etc.
This is the thing, what if it becomes painfully obvious that Ant only hits the level that we saw from him this year when he's playing the point like he was when we saw it. Now he's worth less on the trade market because we outbid ourselves.
Yes, we do. There are only 350 or so NBA players. I'm fully convinced he would have gotten more money if we waited on offers. I don't mind this deal at all.
