didn't realize neil took a hammer to Zach's foot. i blame neil as much as anyone for the 2017 draft, but this is just bad luck for Zach. He can contribute if he plays.
Maybe offer Zach a 2-year, $10million contact. This is below the qualifying offer yet doesn’t use up our Vet minimum. This gives Zach two years to get 100% healthy. If he doesn’t, chances are his career is over but he made around $20 million cheering the team. He gets paid to rehab. If next season he breaks out and plays often and awesome, we can present him with an extension offer. I think it fair of the team and very fair for Zach to accept such a generous offer. I’ve never been overly impressed however I see potential / upside to keeping Zach at $5 million per for a couple years. I might even offer $5 million for next season with a team option for a second year at $8.5 million to sweeten the pot and reduce the risk!
Obviously has nothing to deal with what Neil did to Zach. The post references a Neil specialty.....players leaving or ending their time with Portland and us getting zip/zero/nada value for them. A wasted asset. The list is quite long.
I do think , with the Blazers investing in him, that he will recover and potentially be a key contributor off the bench. Modern medicine is so far ahead of where it was when Walton was here, it's worth the continued investment, IMO. But the money has to be at a place where it doesn't hurt potential moves.
Separate from what the Blazers should do--what should Zach do? If the Blazers extend the QO, should he accept it? If they don't, but they offer a short 2-year deal, should he take that? Or is he better off being renounced, rehabbing away from the team, and trying to come back healthy in 2022?
It's really shitty because I was hoping he could be our defensive stretch center... but foot injuries don't just go away in big men. This could ultimately be the end of his career.
Renounce his rights, Re-sign him to 2-year, vet min deal with 2nd year not fully guaranteed. Is this possible?
Powell isn’t coming back unless CJ is traded and Olshey overpays. His natural position is SG and I don’t want to see a 6’3” SF again this year. Dame, CJ, and Powell all 6’3” and under obviously doesn’t work. Somebody will pay him $20-22 million as a starting SG and he won’t have to try and defend much taller players because CJ and Dame are worse on defense. Neil doesn’t have a lot of trade assets and needs all he can get. Why just let a $6-7 million expiring contract leave when it could be used in a potential trade, and the other team even keeps the Bird Rights for a talented young player if they want to keep him? Letting Zach walk makes a big trade that much more difficult.
It is possible, but he will also have 29 other teams to choose from and Neil loses Zach’s expiring QO contract as a piece to make a trade work. The QO is the only way to go IMO. Those who want him gone perhaps don’t understand that in this case, his contract is more important than his play because it’s a valuable trade asset. If you want major roster changes, then you should also want Zach to be extended the QO because Neil needs every trade piece he can keep at this point. Also, would Zach re-sign here when he can get the same contract, or even a better one, from another team, after just being dumped by Portland? I doubt it.
That $7M contract for Zach is effectively costing the Blazers $~21M (due to Lux taxes) for the HOPE he comes back healthy enough to trade him. Not sure the risk/reward is balanced enough
This. Zach is a better end-of-bencher wearing a cast than some of the castoffs and never-will-bees the Blazers would end up signing instead. And he might actually be all healthy and useful and shit in a couple of years. Worth the minor gamble.
Healthy or not, it would be his expiring contract that could be used in a trade as filler. His contract is more valuable to Olshey than he is as a player next year.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Try and fool me three times, and you're Neil Olshey.
You keep saying this...but this notion is predicated on the idea that there will be some team out there that wants to send us a quality player in a firesale deal, while we are simultaneously interested in increasing our luxury tax above what it already projects to be. That relatively remote possibility does not seem worth the millions it would cost to keep him at his QO. This, by the way, was the same logic Aaron Fentress trotted out for years in opposition to everyone saying that Neil screwed up the summer of 2016. "When those deals are expiring, they're going to be great assets, and he'll be able to use them to make a big trade". And we saw that Crabbe was traded for a millstone, Meyers/Harkless were traded for Whiteside, and Whiteside was traded for nothing. Only Turner technically turned into something, via Bazemore, then Ariza, and 2 firsts for RoCo. Yeah, I'm not buying the logic on keeping Zach for future trade flexibility.
he had the 1st revision surgery in December and was still in a walking boot 5 months later. Optimistically, he would have been ready to start full practice a couple of months after getting out of the boot it's now less than 4 months before the season begins. Why would anybody expect him to return to action in less than 8 months after his latest surgery? It defies common sense and I suspect it defies medical sense. Next year's playoffs are only 10 months away. at a certain point, extending that QO might be a real case of: is Portland past that point?
