As the years pass I find that I continue to refine my perspectives on building a roster. My new takeaway from this off season is that free agency is almost always a vastly overrated and troublesome way to improve a franchise. I'm not completely comfortable with my new take, and would love to hear arguments to the contrary. The basic idea is this: free agency is a money pit where general managers feel the need to overpay marginal talent to keep up with their competitors. -- Caron Butler at 3 years twenty-four million -- Nene Hilario at 4 years 70 million -- Tyson Chandler at 4 years 58 million -- Deandre Jordan at 4 years 58 million -- Jeff Green 1 year 9 million -- Chuck Hayes 4 years 21.3 million -- Marcus Thornton 4 years 33 million How many of these contracts will sustain value? One of them? None of them? I've seen posters at RealGM state that the Bulls' management fails at conducting free agency because it has not realized that you have to overpay for talent, when so many teams are bidding. The posters' comments are correct to a certain extent: The Bulls have consistently refused to overpay for talent in free agency and regularly are overshadowed by teams willing to make a splash. But how is this a bad thing? I am not going to be upset if the Bulls come away with no free agent signings. Rip Hamilton at the MLE for two years, and only two years, would be a great small signing. But even Jason Richardson at the MLE for four years is problematic. It would be the equivalent of announcing that you have no long term plans to re-sign Omer Aisk and Taj Gibson. The Bulls roster's defining characteristic of this past season was Derrick Rose and vicious big men who came in waves. Both characteristics should, theoretically, only get better. Omer Asik and Taj Gibson have very little NBA experience, and Boozer and Noah were injured for large parts of the season. I don't think you give that up for a Jason Richardson rental. I think you play small in free agency and search for the veteran minimums to supplement your backcourt; perhaps an MLE signing for two seasons, if one is available. You keep your head down in free agency, and let teams chasing the limelight make their own mistakes.
I agree that in most cases middle of the road talent in FA is usually a shit heap. Value comes as the two extremes: guys who's value is artificially capped due to salary limits, and young uns/veterans who you can scoop up on the cheap. The one exception is teams that are one piece away from contending, in which case overpaying middling talent might be worth it to give you an all-in shot at a title.
I think one reason why people are upset is because other teams are making moves and alot of the players that we were rumored to be targeting are being taken. I do agree that its hard to find what need in this FA class, but you dont want to sit still. We're a player (idc if he's a 3) who can create away from being able to have pressure taken off of Derrick in key games like the Conf Finals. JRich can shoot and score (but he cant create), Butler can score (cant create). We need extra scoring, but I think we moreso need a creator who doesnt need derrick to get him the ball. Scoring is good though, and that looks like the options we wouldve gotten with who we were going after. But people are just mad because we could be adding pieces but we're losing out. Although I dont want us to overpay for anyone because if we can get multiple ppl who will help then I'd take that over just signing one person who may or may not do what we need.
It is, but it still has to be the *right* piece, and since we have no cap space, anybody that needs to be paid more than exception money means other players has to be given up......which complicates things. We'll see if management pulls a rabbit out of the hat. If not, two years of Rip is good enough.
There still are a lot of moving parts but it looks to me like one two-year MLE signing puts the Bulls into the tax next season. I'm on board -- the luxury tax is only dollar for dollar for the next year. In 2012-13, teams pay an incremental tax that increases with every $5 million above the tax threshold ($1.50, $1.75, $2.50, $3.25, etc.). That means if the Bulls make two MLE signings, one this year and one next year, they will be paying the incremental tax on the new signing about probably somewhere slightly less than $2.50 for every dollar of an MLE contract. I cam't imagine the front office is willing to pay that, and I don't think we can really expect them to. I see this team as currently constituted as having a two year window, and then you have to begin making hard decisions about Gibson, Asik and free agent acquisitions.
Rose is the cap killer. At a $60m cap, his $20m is 1/3. You can pay 5 more guys $8m and hit the cap. Another 6 at $2m and it's at the LT. Or 10 guys at $5m gets close to LT.
