Zombie Fire Olshey

I find all the squabbling over whether Harkless would have received more if the Blazer had more to offer boring. But some of the comments made me think about the way it went down, and I do wonder if Harkless' contract was suppressed by the fact we matched Crabbe's offer. Basically, Neil proved to the other GMs that he was going to match offers on his FAs, so other GMs didn't waste time in tying up money in an offer to Harkless that would be matched. If Crabbe didn't receive an offer from BKLYN, or if it had come later, or if we hadn't matched, then perhaps Harkless gets a $14M offer from some other team...which we would have matched.

 

I like to use this site for team salaries, but not sure it is 100% accurate.
http://www.basketballinsiders.com/portland-trail-blazers-team-salary/

It has the Blazers @ $129.5 million in guaranteed salaries, and $141.6 million if we bring everyone back, including Plumlee for $3.4 million, which is too low. And that is with Verajao @ $2 million.

 

In the scenario(s) I laid out it would actually force Neil to choose what to do with Crabbe/Meyers. My theory was that it was Crabbe's early offer, and our match, that may have suppressed Harkless' contract. And maybe if Harkless had received an early offer, then it might be that Harkless/Crabbe swap contracts, with our match on Harkless scaring off BKLYN from signing Crabbe. I think there'd be a lot fewer complaints if Harkless was making $18M and Crabbe making $10M.

 

We will have nearly $90M commited to Lillard, McCollum, Turner and Crabbe next season, won't we? That's a bit dreadful. The way our salaries should be balanced, not a single bench player should be making more than $10M - $11M (since $50M is commited to backcourt it does not leave much room for other big money players). We have to be shopping Crabbe soon I imagine and preferably for someone who won't make anywhere near that for 2 years. Nurkic fits the bill but Denver will want nothing to do with Crabbe. Okafor it has to be (Noel will get $15M+ in 4 months).

 

Leonard at $10M a year will be very hard to get rid of.

 

Your math occurs after your bullshit and math built upon a foundation of bullshit is still bullshit. I'm using the term bullshit in the same vein as you accused me of doing: stating something as fact when we have no way of knowing for certain what the fact would have been.

You assume that, absent the signings of Turner, Crabbe and Leonard, Harkless would sign the same deal that he ended up taking. There's absolutely no way of knowing that or even of assuming it's a reasonable supposition. Your opinion seems to based on the fact that he had no other offers so he had to take whatever the Blazers were willing to pay him. But that's not the way it works in reality. Agents and GMs track what other free agent players in similar circumstances are signing for and use those signings as a basis for the money that is offered. Last summer there were the following signings of guys who are at a similar point in their careers as Harkless was:

Bradley Beal: 5 years, $128M
Harrison Barnes: 4 years, $94M
Kent Bazemore: 4 years, $70M
Miles Plumlee: 4 years, $52M
Jordan Clarkson: 4 years, $50M
Solomon Hill: 4 years, $48M
Jon Leuer: 4 years, $42M
Dwight Powell: 4 years, $37M
E'Twan Moore: 4 years, $34M

So you immediately cross off Beal, Barnes and probably Bazemore as more accomplished/prized players. The $40M that Harkless signed for puts him just above Powell and Moore, but below Leur, Hill, Clarkson & Plumlee. You can argue that Plumlee gets more as a big man, but I don't see any way that you justify Clarkson or Solomon freaking Hill getting more than Harkless. Absent the luxury tax constraint, I would expect that the offer would have been more in the $12-13M range than the $10M he signed for.

You can still insist that Olshey could have tried to stiff Harkless because there were no other suitors, but the Blazers have never been known as a stingy team. Frankly, they can't be. The only thing that they have going for them in trying to get free agents to sign here is a rich owner with a reputation of being generous with the paychecks. Further, without Leonard, Turner, and Crabbe, the Blazers would have had a really lousy roster and there would have been more of an incentive for Harkless to take the QO, play out that one year, and look for a better deal in the next summer.

Sure, my statement that Harkless would have demanded more money is bullshit in that it's not backed by a link to some statement that he or his agent made. But my statement is backed by a pretty good understanding of how things work in the NBA from years of observation.

 

This really isn't that bad. Just wait til 2017. So many teams will have payrolls that look worse.

Meyers has a contract that is slightly above mid level. It's not an albatross.

 

Seriously. If Meyers' contract is an albatross, what the heck is Miles Plumlee's?

 

If your site adds in Plumlee’s salary, the total comes to $141.6 million, the same as my site. Both sites match each other and have the same salaries for each player. So they both must be close to accurate.

I understand now that your $82 million cap idea was a hypothetical if we could go back and change last off-seasons moves. Not sure why everyone is spending so much time on the past. It is done and over, time to move on, not dream about what could have been.

We need to find realistic ways to improve this team. Given the huge cap mess we have to work with, how do we do it? How does NO get this team under the cap so he can sign FAs?? Please note I said realistic.

 

I think the answer to your question as to why people have been kicking around past moves is given in the title to the thread. Some folks feel that Olshey's recent record of player moves demonstrate that he's not fit for the job. I'm not one of those folks.

 

trade players with large contracts for draft picks?

 

Exactly right. And the salary dump doesn't even have to come before being able to re-sign Plumlee. As long as the dump occurs before the last regular season game of next season, the Blazers wouldn't get hit with LT.

 

Actually, I think you're (we're all) overvaluing Harkless. To the rest of the league he was a guy who only started 14 games, averaged 6.4 ppg, 3.6 rpg and was one year removed from being given away for a top 55 protected future 2nd round pick. Doesn't exactly sound like a $14 million dollar a year man to me.

I think we all are a bit in love for Mo for those same reasons. We got him for nothing. Which made it easy for him to exceed expectations, and he was one of our few summer signings that has actually been worth what we gave him (I say C.J. is the other).

I seriously doubt he would have gotten a $14 million a year offer regardless of the Crabbe situation. If anything, I think the willingness to match a toxic offer went down after we'd already overpaid for Turner and Crabbe. A GM offering Harkless a four year deal starting at $14 million would have really been holding Neil's feet to the fire. Matching would have put us into LT territory this year and repeater tax territory in future years.

Either way, that severely ties our hands. Either we face severe penalties. Not just financial, repeater status reduces your MLE, takes away your bi-annual exception and also puts additional restrictions on trades. Or we jettison some of those "assets" we overpaid dearly to retain.

No one else thought Harkless was worth $14 million a year, or he would have gotten an offer.

BNM