Au contraire, mon frere. NO could clear enough salary under the LT to sign Plums, if that's what he wanted to do. NO could clear enough salary under the LT to re-sign Noel, if that's what he wanted to do.
You and I have very different opinions on how tradeable those contracts are. If you think Crabbe, Turner and Leonard are extremely tradeable contracts, fine, we disagree. I've had those debates plenty of times, with you and others. I was arguing a different point, that the space between the cap and luxury tax was "use it or lose it." It wasn't--there were other ways Portland could have used it rather than re-sign Crabbe and Leonard. Even if you think those were the right moves, it's certainly false to say that the space could only have been used for those players.
Of course they're tradable. We have 3 #1 picks to sweeten deals if the worst is true about how tradable our players are. Without salary cap exceptions, or already being over the cap and trading players for like salary, there are only ways to get over the cap by tiny increments.
Like re-signing other free agents of one's own, like Plumlee if Olshey hadn't been able to find a good trade, or trading for someone who's cheap now but due a big salary jump extension, like Noel. Those aren't tiny increments. The only way that space between the cap and the luxury tax was "use it or lose it" was if this season was the last one the franchise was ever going to play.
We might have had to let Plumlee go regardless. Meyers got 9 million last year. I have no idea what the market will be this year. Will teams tighten their belts? Maybe. Maybe they won't. I don't know yet what will happen, but Plumlee was a bargain at his current price. His limitations as a player would make it extremely difficult to swallow a large pay increase. I still think Crabbe is tradable with his current contract, and getting something out of him is still better than getting nothing and letting him walk. The jury is still out. If we are either unable to trade him this summer, or unable to make a move that brings him into the starting lineup, then I will concede that the decision was probably a bad one, but I do not think the contracts of Crabbe/ Leonard were the dictating factor on whether we would have kept Plumlee. I do not believe that Paul would pass on an upgrade because of the financials. If we wanted Noel, we could have made a move for Noel. I don't think the money would have changed their minds. And if we HAD traded for Noel, why couldn't we have cleared cap before free agency to make his contract more palatable?
We got over the cap by resigning our free agents. NO could go over the LT to re-sign Plums if he were to choose that route. Or he could clear the salary space by trading the players you say he shouldn't have signed. If we didn't sign those guys, we'd have gone from a surprise 44 win team to one that shed several contributing players in exchange for vet minimums. All to carry a boatload of unused cap space. That's a rather silly strategy. Trading for a cheap contract that turns into a Bird extension to go over the cap is still an exception, as I said. If anything, maybe YOU overvalue Plums. I liked him fine, but never saw him as much more than a reserve getting lots of PT for lack of anyone else. To pay him some outrageous amount at the expense of those we kept would have been terrible.
I guess I don't see the logic that says that paying Crabbe $18M+/year this past summer made sense, but paying Plumlee something similar this coming summer would not. Plumlee seems significantly less "limited" than Crabbe.
Yea, I doubt he would have received a huge contract seeing has how cool the trade market was for him up to the deadline. They could have cleared cap to make it work. I think they want a PF that can both shoot and defend and they are probably going to loo for it with their own pick in the draft. Noel has had plenty of time to show the league what he can do, and the answer was a resounding "meh."
Who says that those are the players the Blazers plan to trade? I think there's a good possibility that it's CJ that is planned to be used this summer as trade bait to bring back a scoring PF or SF and that the plan is to keep Crabbe and Turner, along with Lillard, in a 3 guard rotation. We've all bloviated around here about how defensively challenged our current pairing of Lillard and CJ is. Do we somehow think that the Blazers haven't noticed this as well? By waiting until CJ's PPP is gone, they open up a whole universe of highly-paid players that he can be traded for. Do that and use the draft picks this summer to grab some real prospects to groom for the future and things could well be on the upswing by next fall.
If you think Allen will pay an unlimited amount of money, even when the team is nowhere near title contention, then I agree that it really doesn't matter who they pay or by how much. I just don't think that's plausible. Maybe if the Blazers were the Warriors, with a title in the bag and more titles possible, he'd be willing to spend any amount of money. But for a team that's still well below .500? I doubt it. I doubt he'd have gone into the luxury tax for the likes of Plumlee or Noel (nor would I really blame him for that). I think that, as long as the team isn't a title contender, money will matter. I think Allen will be fine spending up to the luxury tax line, but he isn't going to want to go into the tax and start triggering repeater penalties.
I don't care one iota if the Blazers "couldn't" keep Plumlee due to cap considerations. Trading Plumlee for Nurkic and a pick was a good move, with or without his pending big payday or our cap and luxury tax situation.
Trading McCollum doesn't change much, unless they're dumping his salary which is obviously not going to happen. Presumably, if they trade McCollum, it'll be for similar value, either in another highly-paid star who fits better or else a couple of players who add up to about the same. I don't think it's plausible that the trade McCollum for, like, draft picks or unproven players. That would be tantamount to starting all over in building around Lillard and I don't see the team doing that. So if they do end up trading McCollum for similar value and similar salary, Portland is still in the same financial situation in terms of building out the rest of their roster as they are now.
CJ for Embiid (or Ben Simmons) probably works, because Philly is way under the cap. Huge difference in salaries. It's not a horrible trade if we were to give up CJ.
The Blazers were never going to be a contender with Plumlee as our starting center. Backup, sure. We needed a big body down low with some offensive game. Nurkic is not a sure thing -- no one is -- but I'm glad we're giving him a shot.
Conventional wisdom states: Guards who can shoot the three > centers who can pass the ball. Plumlee is talented, but he's a weak defender and a poor scorer. He has no outside shot to speak of. He's not an exceptional rebounder so he doesn't really excel at any of the things that you want in a center. Crabbe will always have a more marketable skill as a shooter. He's still young. He has good size. There is the illusion that he's a decent defender. If there's a team out there who wants a starting shooting guars, I think we can make a trade.
As I said, I doubt Portland is going to trade McCollum for an unproven player like Simmons. Nor do I think any team is going to trade a cheap, emerging star like Embiid for an expensive star in McCollum. Having a star that is currently cheap is a gigantic advantage, because it allows them the cap space to add more salaries around Embiid. They'd give up that advantage by trading him for someone like McCollum.
