Some people say that the better we do the more likely we are to sign top tier free agents. Mind you, I am not one of those people. Also, even though I think it goes without saying that we'd be better had we kept Nic, the thing I keep coming back to is that I believe we could have gotten a better trade offer had we waited longer. Maybe not, and there's no way to prove one way or the other, but I feel we sold low on him.
I have mixed emotions on international play. On one hand I am not sold that they exert any more energy each day than they would playing in summer league in Atlanta, Houston, or Los Angeles every year. However on the hand, the Euros are a little more fanatical about their yearly completion. It would be one thing if it was just played every 4 years, but these guys go at it hard every summer. And in a way I applaud them for being so patriotic. American Players have it easier because they can take off a year and always have ample replacements available. So it's no big deal if they miss a year. But I do agree with OB in the sense that at some point you have to put the team who actually pays you a head of your country. We have seen Tony Parker and Dirk do that when needed. There are other things in their contract that they are not allowed to do because they could get hurt. They all have guaranteed contracts and should be practical about it. If you keep getting hurt or just plain worn down every season, then you need to be responsible for your body and take the summer off and rest.
Yeah its basically a game of musical chairs. Think of the salary slots as chairs. There's a lot more chairs than people. If we plug a player in one teams chair it opens up a chair with another team. Our Blazers are in a unique group with the Thunder, Warriors, Hornets where we like our own free agents and can just bring back the same roster and have a decent offseason. But many teams aren't so lucky with quality incumbent free agents. Say teams all keep their own free agents if that players is worthy of their cap hold. We still have teams such as the Lakers, Celtics, Nets, Knicks, Magic with way more cap room than value in players under cap holds. There will be a half dozen teams with a musical chair and nobody sitting in it; that's when very undeserving players will all get max contracts.
A year ago the question was, who should ineffectively take a third of the dribbling away from Lillard...Batum or Barton? This year, the answer was...neither. Let a real shooter do it, McCollum. We replaced Batum with McCollum. With Batum still here, McCollum would have to play catch-and-shoot like Crabbe.
Which by definition is the opposite of loyalty. If you are a mercenary, expecting you to be loyal to the "cause" is against the definition of being a mercenary. So either way, Nic was right to play for his country in his "free" time.
We probably did sell low, but if you noticed, there was not much of a market at the trade deadline this year, especially for expiring contracts. I mean, would you have preferred something like what Orlando got for Tobias Harris--an old Ersan Ilyasova and a broken Brandon Jennings?
Introduce your son to the concept of Montero. Montero is already better than a rookie Barton, and will soon be at the rookie Batum stage. The Dominican hails from a warm island.
I get that, but I don't think we can be sure that the trade will be a long term gain, and I'm one of the people who thinks being better should always be the goal.
McCollum plays catch and shoot with Lillard, and is lethal. McCollum is 47% shooting the three in the 3 month period from March-Present, and being assisted on over 80% of those shots. He's JJ Redick on threes right now.
Eventually we'll lose every player on this team. There isn't anybody from 4 years ago on this roster. There's a balance between looking at what a player provides in the moment and what future value they could have down the road. Just because a player may leave for nothing doesn't mean they should be traded for anything of the smallest value.
Memphis got a first round pick for crappy Jeff Green. Batum could've got more than that. Vonleh seemed like a reasonable acquisition at the time. Just sucks he's had such a disappointing season. It's a gamble with these prospects and this one we appear to have lost.
Guaranteed: $21,109,000 Lillard $7,680,965 Aminu $6,666,667 Davis $3,219,579 McCollum $2,751,360 Vonleh $2,328,530 Plumlee $874,636 Connaughton $2,029,199 Varejao (stretched) $46,659,936 Guaranteed Non-Guaranteed: $874,636 Montero $874,636 Alexander $1,749,272 Non-Guaranteed Cap Holds: $9,000,000 Henderson $7,689,700 Leonard (restricted) $7,235,148 Harkless (restricted) $6,520,800 Kaman $3,711,422 Roberts $1,215,696 Crabbe (restricted) $35,372,766 CAP Holds Assuming the CAP is at $92M: - If we bring everyone back except Kaman, we'll have $14,738,826 in room. - If we bring everyone back except Kaman and Roberts, we'll have $18,450,248 in room. Approximate max salaries: 0-6 yr vet (25% of CAP): $21,564,143 7-9 yr vet (30% of CAP): $25,876,971 10+ yr vet (35% of CAP): $30,189,800 If we want to get to that $25,876,971 spot to make a max offer, we need to find another $7.5M. Of course everything depends upon timing. Crabbe will get more than his CAP hold, so his signing would need to happen after any other max offer we try to make, since we can go over the cap to match offers for our restricted free agents.
Neil had a good idea of what was coming, and knew he needed a big athletic SG to replace Wes, and a young PF to replace LMA. So he traded someone who was coming off a bad year, for both. No doubt we still have holes on this team, but again...we can still re-sign Hendo AND go after Nic this summer. And as for Vonleh.....how many PF's in this draft are better? Maybe two? Granted the Clippers are going to trap the hell out of us and we will be screaming for some help from our SF, but they trapped the hell out of us the last two years and we had Nic. So although he might be better than what we currently have, we would still need an upgrade at that position in order to get to the next level. And I am not sure we would be willing to dish out 20 million for him this summer if he would have played for us this year. Why? Because rarely are we totally satisfied with any of our players. We certainly bitched about him all last year.
Thanks for posting that. So one of the top 3 cap holds is sufficient enough to renounce..... in order to get in the 25 million range.
Agreed, but GS got those guys for a bargain price, even Curry makes pennies compared to what he should be making. We can't slice the salary pie like that with Batum and his agent.
So after all those years of playing NBA and international basketball and all his past injuries you predict he'll be healthier after age 28? Injuries are part of any players' identity. It's not only about his injuries too, when you look at the amount of effort guys like Aminu and Harkless put out there every night how can you really miss Batum?? And about his upcoming salary: Nic is having great stats this year and is perceived to be the guy who made the Hornets a lot better. Keeping supply and demand in mind, it is totally reasonable to predict a max offer thrown at guys like Batum,Barnes and Ryan Anderson.
You are fully aware that high stock players are usually getting more money than predicted during regular season.
