I think it's the same problem as it ever was. The GM has to understand who are foundational and who are tertiary. Our GM thought that our shooting guard was a max contract player, despite never having made an All-Star team or an All-NBA team. Our foundation was flawed, so everything else he did to build around that foundation was pointless. Atlanta has figured out that their foundation of Trey/Collins is not one that's going to bare any fruit, so they're moving on. I wish our GM had done the same.
Not a bad outlook you have. I'd argue the DameCJ roster problems weren't primarily those two. CJ could be a starting level player. Now I agree he couldn't be part of a big two for a contending team with Lillard as for example LeBron/AD were. But he could've been a part of a big 4 with Lillard. The problem with Olshey's roster is we didn't have any allstar level talent besides Dame; and none of the 3-6 best players were above average starters. Those rosters needed more talent. Sure fit wasn't perfect, but fit could've been solved if we had 2 additional borderline all star level talents. Now maybe the DameCJ Blazers would've been better if Dame or CJ had been flipped for an above average starter at a different position. I could agree with that. But just removing the CJ portion with no additional high level talent coming in, wouldn't have improved anything.
The issue that Dame and CJ were too similar in their strengths and their weaknesses. I think CJ could be an All-Star, and probably would be an All-Star, if he was on his own team. But we decided to hitch our wagon to a pair of guards who didn't play defense and both liked to play iso-ball. That's just not a recipe for success. It doesn't matter who you put around them. We would have needed three world-beater players at the 3,4,5 who played both ends of the court. It just wasn't going to happen. The writing was on the wall and Neil just completely refused to admit that he was wrong. Fuck his ego.
Sure that's your opinion as well as others and I agree with parts of it, just not all of it. First off, the Iso ball was more of a Stotts issue than an Olshey issue. Now if you want to blame Olshey as the boss of Stotts yes he is responsible. But Olshey as the GM assembling the roster no that wasn't his issue. I'd have loved to see Dame and CJ develop their games under Pop. But even Spolestra, Rick Carlisle, even shitty Doc Rivers would've been better. We might've had our Ginobili/Parker level backcourt with even more dynamic scoring. I sometimes think similarly with the Dame trapping issues in the playoffs. I suspect Chauncey will recognize this happening, call a quick timeout, tell Dame how to solve it, and boom the team performs better. Secondly, no the 3,4,5 positions wouldn't need to be world-beaters. They do need to all be good defenders, not Melo or Kanter. When the team had two of those positions as defenders they were 8th in NBA's defense and later made the WCF. Those two were not starting level talent players, they were a clear cut below. Nurk was always injured. Plug average starting level NBA players that were a bit stronger on defense than offense, without being a liability on offense, and we might've seen some very different team success in the DameCJ era.
Collins is still a theoretical possibility. Hart + Winslow + partial guarantee from Bledsoe gets you to Collins' deal financially, and you can fill the roster back with either one or two minimums (depending on what we do with Walker). Dame / Ant Ant / GP2 Grant / Nas Collins/ Watford Nurk / Collins/ Eubanks
Could Collins still be on the radar now that Walker has been signed? Hart, Winslow, Johnson and Louzada for Collins works. The Blazers would be at 12 players, so they could offer a contract to Williams to bring them to 13 and still be under the hard cap. They could even offer another player a contract and still be under the hard cap and then be at 14 players. They could then add 2 two way players to be at a total of 16 players.
I don't think we'd have enough cap space to fill the holes left by the three other players going out.
Hart + Winslow + Keon + Didi = 21.6 mil Collins = 23.5 mil We are currently about 5.3 mil below the apron, so this deal would leave us about 3.4 mil below the apron for two more contracts. So the only minimum guys we could get would have to be very inexperienced. Doable, but not ideal. It's why getting hard-capped sucks. More relevant question -- why would Atlanta do this?
Now if you're talking Zach Collins.... I think it would make a lot more sense than John. Winslow + Keon + Didi for Zach. This cuts another 1.3 mil from our books (send them cash to account for the Didi difference). Then we'd still have the full value of Roco TPE to absorb another guy (Rudy Gay?) without sending anyone back. Dame / Ant Ant / GP2 / Sharpe Hart / Nas Grant / Gay / Walker Nurk / Collins / Watford I think that roster has the requisite depth to be a 50+ win team.
Bring Collins back? All for it! We need his feistiness. We still don't have a fighter on the team. All in on this, great idea!
Any signings outside your own 2nd round picks, count against the cap like they have 2 years of experience. So even if we signed an undrafted rookie, he would count the same as Drew Eubanks does ($1,836,090).
That's backwards unfortunately, the cap hit is the same but what the team has to pay the player is lower.
Close, but this is not really correct. Min Contract players are counted for their contract value, but the cap hit is limited to the equivalent of a 2-year player. We we sign an undrafted rookie to the minimum, their cap hit would be ~$1M. If we sign someone with 2-years experience, their cap hit would be ~$1.8M. If we sign someone with 10+ years experience, their salary would be ~$2.9M but only $1.8M is counted against the cap. The NBA does this so that teams don't shy away from veteran players (Melo, LMA, etc) due to the cost. https://www.hoopsrumors.com/2022/07/nba-minimum-salaries-for-2022-23.html
I always thought that too, until I talked to Bobby Marks about it. Where are you seeing that my statement is incorrect? The team only has to pay the player the ~$1 million for an undrafted rookie but the article says nothing about that being the cap hit, which is what I said.
3c7a0a50-8e11-11e9-875d-3d44e94ae33f-2017-NBA-NBPA-Collective-Bargaining-Agreement.pdf (imgix.net) According to Article VII, section 3, (f): In virtually every other place that minimum salary is discussed, (Article VII, section 3 (j), Article VIII, Section 4 (d) 4, etc) it refers to the minimum salary "applicable to such player" (that would not be reimbursed)--that is to say, if it's less than the 2-year vet-min, it would be the lower amount. Usually I'm loathe to disagree with you (or Bobby Marks) on CBA matters, but the text itself appears to agree with @CJ_is_Gone
There's no reference to the cap hit being different than the actual salary paid in the CBA (that I can find) other than a 3+ year vet on a minimum contract being charged at the 2-year vet price. Unless you can point to something that specifically states that is the case - I'm going to say Marks is wrong about it.
Yeah, if you look at places like spotrac, they show the cap hit like you are saying. For our cap last year, McLemore's salary was 2.39, but the cap hit shows at 1.67. Similar to other veteran minimums on other teams.
