If Crabbe gets a max offer - do you match?

I think we will only keep 2 of the 3 RFAs and if we sign a big, the answer to which two is pretty easy.

 

That's this year. We've got this guy on the team that goes by "CJ".....

 

Crabbe strikes me as a guy who would really, really like to stay in Portland. If anyone would take less money to stay with his team, I think it's Crabbe. I'd offer him about 44 mil for 5 years

 

I keep hearing about cap space, but I'm of the mindset that if it moves the needle...Paul Allen will not hesitate to pay some luxury tax.

 

8.8 million? That's NEVER going to happen. That's a good 4-5 million less per year than what we have been hearing. This is a guy who has been playing for peanuts for the past three years. He's not going to take a discount, and certainly not that much of a discount.

 

yeah, but that's worth a shot..he said money wasn't that big a deal.

 

Please. Lol.

 

Hey...you never know. He'll probably get 16-18 a year but haggling is fun.

 

I understand, but if there were a season to dip into luxury tax payroll, this would be the time. Dame won't be in his prime forever

 

assuming that when Neil is done, we're still that 2nd tier team...we may not be. With the tax would have to come a huge upgrade in talent

 

Crabbe is Restricted. It's not obvious he gets an offer at all, especially if we sign someone (HW) early.

 

How many teams have cap space? I think some team will throw a big offer at him just to see what we'll do.

 

Crabbe will get paid. I like Crabbe & believe he will get better BUT for how much it will probably cost to keep him... let the market determine Crabbe's value (which again most likely is too high BUT bring him back IF the $ is right) but put more of our eggs in the replacing him w/ Bazemore basket; I've been promoting Bazemore (pay the man some good coin & lock him up for as long as u can) for a while now Bazemore is ~3yrs older vs. Crabbe BUT it's known what he can give you now AND I believe Baze will cont. improve also

 

If we sign HW first, then zero teams will throw $12 mil at Crabbe. We'd just sit there with their $$$ tied up for THREE days, and then match. Nobody wants their $$$ tied up for no good reason. However, if we sign HW first and Crabbe would get an offer, it would have to be in the $16 mil range. That would make us hesitate.

OTOH, if we haven't signed a FA yet, then MAYBE a team will will throw a $12 mil offer at Crabbe. That would give us 3 days to come to an agreement with an outside FA, Neil would be under some serious pressure. However, it would be a big risk for the other team, because Neil could sign someone and then match. Again, the opposing team would have their $$$ tied up for the first 3 days for Free Agency.

The final scenario is really the blazers nightmare: someone signs Crabbe on the first day of Free Agency for $16 mil/year. I don't think it will happen, but if it does, we could be locked into paying a backup huge $$$, which is not where we want to be. As YOU (and others) have said, I think in this scenario we sign him, and then trade him later.

 

Or we sign him and trade CJ. If we strike out in free agency, we will have to seek another star player through other means. Trading CJ might be the only choice.