NBA Offseason: Oklahoma! Where the MVP Free Agents Come Falling From the Sky

[DunderMifflin]

27 minutes ago, briantw said:

Curry and Durant taking max salaries isn't overpaying them.  It's them accepting what they're worth.  If the Warriors refuse to give it to them, any other team in the NBA will open up their wallets.  Championship teams sometimes get role-players back at a discount, or if they have aging stars sometimes those guys take a pay cut, but guys in their prime historically just do not do that.  

People always use Tim Duncan as an example of a guy taking less money, but he didn't take a significant pay cut until his 16th year in the league.  He took a minor one in his 14th year, but he was still making 18 million, which was max money back then.  That significant pay cut came when Duncan was 36 years old.  The point, of course, being that stars in their prime don't take cuts, even guys with a rep for being selfless and team first like Tim Duncan.

Seems like you are saying that if it's only a few million less than they could make elsewhere then it doesn't count as a paycut. 

Your criteria for playing for less seems to be a lot higher than what I'm talking about. Of course every star is going to expect some sort of fair deal.

A prime Tim Duncan could have gotten historic paydays on any number of teams if he wanted.

There's never going to be this logical - talent determines salary chart.

Lebron last year should have made a minimum of 20 million more than the next highest paid guy if there was any real logic to players being paid according to their actual on court worth.

 

[StefCurry]

7 hours ago, Calibandar said:

I agree with your basic point. I think it goes to far say Durant is a coward or a beta bitch, but where your assessment matches mine is that we've now been able to read and hear the backstory to his decision, and it is very much born out of wanting to join an even stronger team than he already has. He was never an alpha dog dominant type of leader like I mentioned a few days ago, and as such this move really confirms what is in his heart. He wants to be a cog in the system, he is not a Lebron, he is content to play with excellent guys and be one of several. This fits with what he established in OKC. It would have been great, and natural for a leader, to pick up the gauntlet with an excellent OKC team and challenge once more, but Durant is not that sort of guy, evidently.

And I do agree the LeBron situation is different. Similar, in the sense that LeBron wanted a better team just like Durant wanted.

Different, in that LeBron went to a team that could not win without him, badly needed him, and as such we now look at him as someone who did not jump on the bandwagon because he made it happen. Durant goes to the best team in the league.

 

I like hearing this, Golden State has absolutely zero depth for now. Pachulia is a weak piece in my opinion, and at this point he may have to start, and David West looked like a shell of himself at San Antonio last year.

Actually Gasol is going to be ecstatic.He already wanted to leave, and the sort of team they are now gathering in Chicacgo will not make him regret that one bit.

Especially not considering he is moving to spend his final years at a much, much better team in San Antonio. They look really good already, and Gasol is a very good pickup for them.

I agree with you, after Dunkan's retire, Gasol is the right substitute for Timmy in Spurs, with his experience in NBA and being great teamplayer and great ability to pass the ball!

[DireWolfSpirit]

Well it will be even more entertaining now when GS fails to win the 2017 Championship.

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

21 minutes ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

Well it will be even more entertaining now when GS fails to win the 2017 Championship.

Eh, barring injury, I don't see that being terribly likely. What I think is much more likely is having that victory be rather short lived. And maybe helping to promote a lockout. 

[The Mother of The Others]

football has the competition committee; basketball should immediately convene something like that.  The Commission on How We Just Boinked Our Sport.  

They killed the drama.   Lay people (those not obsessed with basketball but who watch it sometimes when they're not getting laid)  will tune in next season to see the first 5 games this Warriors juggernaut plays.  But after that, boring.   Same for the playoffs, maybe I'll check out the first couple games of their 3rd round series, but then I'll tune out because I won't want to be a part of their championship "run" or walk, because they're getting a trophy no matter what speed they move at.  It's going to hit them in the head even if they're standing still.  The engraver is already done etching their name on it.   Dumb trade.  Why watch the NBA now. 

[sperry]

3 hours ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

Eh, barring injury, I don't see that being terribly likely. What I think is much more likely is having that victory be rather short lived. And maybe helping to promote a lockout. 

 

Zero bench, zero inside presence.  These are real, and exploitable weaknesses.  Obviously not going to happen, but I think they'd be a lot better off if they traded Klay for a king's ransom of role players.

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

6 minutes ago, sperry said:

Zero bench, zero inside presence.  These are real, and exploitable weaknesses.  Obviously not going to happen, but I think they'd be a lot better off if they traded Klay for a king's ransom of role players.

 Yeah, I think it's going to be more interesting than some. I imagine it will be a bit like what happened this season, where you could see a handful of teams that seemed to figure out viable strategies for slowing them down. 

 Still, you're being hyperbolic. Iggy/Livingstone/West are a pretty nice first 3 off the bench. Inside defense is going to be tough to come by for sure, but I think this teams best defense will be an absolutely insane offense.

 It's bound to take some time for this big 4 to gel, but I have to imagine they'll have that ironed out long before playoff time. 

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

 Holy shit, pretty cool speculation on Bill Simmon's podcast today regarding how the Warrior's pursuit of KD (which supposedly started as early as February) may have affected the mindset of Harrison Barnes and led to his meltdown in the playoffs. Apparently Draymond had been sending KD texts during that time. This bit starts at about 58 minutes in.

 

 

 

/Wheels within wheels

 

[aeu]

First off, briantw is right about virtually everything he said and you guys arguing with him are all wrong.  It is actually spooky how consistently he has been right. (Well, other than the "beta bitch" comment.)

Particularly:

- Wiggins is a really bad defender. (From way back, but I always wanted to point this out when people are commenting about the Love trade).

- No comparison between Lebron's situation and Durant's.  Lebron's move was weak too (and he was killed for it) but this is on another level.

 

On 7/6/2016 at 3:48 AM, Relic said:

Ibaka wasn't going to come back. neither is Westbrook. End of an era in OKC.  I wouldn't be surprised to see Russ in a Celtics uniform at some point next season. 

 

I would be shocked if Russ commits to signing long term with Boston (and consequently, shocked if Boston gives up good assets without that commitment).

Dude was born in Long Beach, raised in Hawthorne (as in Hawthorne, CA.  Beach Boys, baby!), went to high school in LA, went to UCLA.  If he is leaving OKC, he is going to Lakers, no?

Re: GS bench:  They resigned Ian Clarke.  I thought he was pretty good in limited time last year and seemed ready for more minutes and responsibility.  Add Iggy, Livingston, David West's corpse, they still have a decent bench.

The key is:  If they have extended injuries to their core guys at the same time, there will be a huge drop off.  If they are as healthy as they have been the last two years, they should be fine.  They are really running low on big guys though.  If they run into injuries there or face foul trouble, they would be forced to go small much longer than ideal.

Re: GS's salary cap:  Unless the rules change significantly with a new CBA, they can definitely bring everybody back since they have bird rights for everyone except for Durant.  I don't think the luxury tax bill be that high even for the first couple of years.  It can really go up 3-4 years down the line though.

 

 

 

 

[briantw]

14 hours ago, DunderMifflin said:

Seems like you are saying that if it's only a few million less than they could make elsewhere then it doesn't count as a paycut. 

Your criteria for playing for less seems to be a lot higher than what I'm talking about. Of course every star is going to expect some sort of fair deal.

A prime Tim Duncan could have gotten historic paydays on any number of teams if he wanted.

There's never going to be this logical - talent determines salary chart.

Lebron last year should have made a minimum of 20 million more than the next highest paid guy if there was any real logic to players being paid according to their actual on court worth.

A prime Tim Duncan never took pay cuts from the Spurs.  They paid him the max he was eligible for.  He only took a pay cut once he was already in his mid-thirties.

And while there is little logic to how players are paid, especially with the current cap spike, expecting Curry and Durant to sacrifice their max contracts for the good of the team is a fool's errand.  Curry particularly isn't going to take a dime less than the max after the bargain deal he's been on for the past four years or so.

[briantw]

By the way, this comic seems prophetic now:

http://slamdumb.com/images/new_comics/c91.jpg

[Slurktan]

6 hours ago, aeu said:

Re: GS's salary cap:  Unless the rules change significantly with a new CBA, they can definitely bring everybody back since they have bird rights for everyone except for Durant.  I don't think the luxury tax bill be that high even for the first couple of years.  It can really go up 3-4 years down the line though.

 

 

 

 

It depends on how much the cap will go up next year.  The was a report on Monday or Tuesday that the cap will not go up as much as expected.  Bird rights cover all the people on the team but not Durant.  In order for them to resign Durant next year they will have to be 35 million under the cap which means they will not be able to resign everybody.  Iguadala is assuredly gone in that case and they will likely have to shed Thompson too.

[Fez]

24 minutes ago, Slurktan said:

It depends on how much the cap will go up next year.  The was a report on Monday or Tuesday that the cap will not go up as much as expected.  Bird rights cover all the people on the team but not Durant.  In order for them to resign Durant next year they will have to be 35 million under the cap which means they will not be able to resign everybody.  Iguadala is assuredly gone in that case and they will likely have to shed Thompson too.

I think it would work out if Durant gets resigned before Curry or Iggy are resigned. So long as the cap goes up by enough still so that its increase + Durant's cap hold (equal to what he makes next year) is at least $35 million, they can resign him. And then they can use bird rights on Curry and Iggy after that. But the order of operations is important here; if Curry or Iggy get resigned first than their cap hold will be equal to their new contracts' annual value rather than their old contracts' value. And of course the team needs to be okay with going into the luxury tax and all that entails.

But from what sounds like, its going to be real close on whether the cap will still go up enough to do that.

[Jaime L]

7 hours ago, aeu said:

- No comparison between Lebron's situation and Durant's.  Lebron's move was weak too (and he was killed for it) but this is on another level.

So you're arguing it's a difference of degree instead of kind. If you want to say that want Durant did is worse, fine. But briantw's original comment that spurred this whole debate was that he'd never seen anything like this which, I mean, c'mon. We're really going to argue forming a superteam from scratch is somehow a more honorable move that joining an existing one? That we should give Lebron kudos for not joining the Celtics in 2010?

I think people's memories of this are clouded now because Wade fell off so quickly and both Wade and Bosh subsumed their stats when Lebron became the clear alpha. At the time he joined, these were the two best players in the NBA (based on PER) and Bosh was #4. God knows who else they would've added if the cap was as friendly as it is in this year. I get that he couldn't stay in Cleveland if he wanted a reasonable chance at a title, but he didn't have to go to that extreme anymore than Durant had to jump from one title contender to another even better title contender. 

I have no problem with people calling Durant's decision a weak move but let's not act like this is unprecedented in any way. 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

@Jaime L

I think the funniest hate KD has received is from Barkley, who also left a good team to join a back to back champion. 

[Jaime L]

Just now, Tywin et al. said:

@Jaime L

I think the funniest hate KD has received is from Barkley, who also left a good team to join a back to back champion. 

I always enjoy Barkley's rants about the modern NBA though in a lot of ways he's the one who created it.

The other thing about old NBA guys who complain about superstars joining up with other superstars instead of trying to beat their brains in, so many of them played on superteams of their own. The old NBA just had superteams as a matter of course because of fewer teams with only a few truly invested in winning. Kareem played with the Big O before Magic and Worthy. Wilt played with West and Baylor. Bird played with McHale, Walton, Parrish and Dennis Johnson. In a 30 team league it's way harder to be that lucky so I get why the players with the power try to engineer it themselves (even if I don't always like it).

[Maithanet]

8 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

@Jaime L

I think the funniest hate KD has received is from Barkley, who also left a good team to join a back to back champion. 

The Rockets were back to back champs in '94 and '95, but in the '96 season Jordan was back and obviously any championship went through Chicago.  The '96 Rockets still had Hakeem, Drexler and a young Robert Horry, but the two stars were already getting old.  The Rockets only won 48 games, and got swept in the second round by the Sonics in '96.  The Suns in '96 were 41-41, and looked to be past their early 90s form.  Then Barkley was traded to Houston for the '97 season.

So I don't think it is really all that comparable.  Both Phoenix and Houston in '96 were clearly behind both the Jazz and Sonics, and both those teams were playing catch-up against the Jordan Bulls juggernaut.  If I would compare Barkley's move to anyone recently, it seems pretty similar to Aldridge going to the Spurs, which created a very good team, but hardly something throwing off the league's competitive balance.  Plus, Barkley was traded.  Yes, he wanted to be traded, but the Rockets gave up some good young talent to get him. 

[briantw]

2 hours ago, Fez said:

I think it would work out if Durant gets resigned before Curry or Iggy are resigned. So long as the cap goes up by enough still so that its increase + Durant's cap hold (equal to what he makes next year) is at least $35 million, they can resign him. And then they can use bird rights on Curry and Iggy after that. But the order of operations is important here; if Curry or Iggy get resigned first than their cap hold will be equal to their new contracts' annual value rather than their old contracts' value. And of course the team needs to be okay with going into the luxury tax and all that entails.

But from what sounds like, its going to be real close on whether the cap will still go up enough to do that.

That is incorrect.  They don't need to be 35 million under the cap to re-sign Durant.  Any player that is already on your roster, even if you don't have their Bird rights, can be given a 120% raise.  This is the same reason the Cavs were able to re-sign LeBron last summer despite being capped out, as they didn't have his Bird rights either.  I believe after two years you have early Bird rights, which means you can give a player a 150% raise.

The only real question here is how willing Lacob is going to be to pay a big luxury tax bill, because that's what's going to need to happen to keep that team together.  The Cavs just had the highest payroll in NBA history last season, and will more than likely be right up there again this year.  But then, Dan Gilbert is worth over ten times what Lacob is, so I'm not sure the situations are comparable.  Fifty million to a guy worth four billion is change.  Fifty million to a guy worth 300 million is a sixth of his net worth.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

16 minutes ago, Jaime L said:

I always enjoy Barkley's rants about the modern NBA though in a lot of ways he's the one who created it.

The other thing about old NBA guys who complain about superstars joining up with other superstars instead of trying to beat their brains in, so many of them played on superteams of their own. The old NBA just had superteams as a matter of course because of fewer teams with only a few truly invested in winning. Kareem played with the Big O before Magic and Worthy. Wilt played with West and Baylor. Bird played with McHale, Walton, Parrish and Dennis Johnson. In a 30 team league it's way harder to be that lucky so I get why the players with the power try to engineer it themselves (even if I don't always like it).

I agree with this completely. 

13 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

The Rockets were back to back champs in '94 and '95, but in the '96 season Jordan was back and obviously any championship went through Chicago.  The '96 Rockets still had Hakeem, Drexler and a young Robert Horry, but the two stars were already getting old.  The Rockets only won 48 games, and got swept in the second round by the Sonics in '96.  The Suns in '96 were 41-41, and looked to be past their early 90s form.  Then Barkley was traded to Houston for the '97 season.

So I don't think it is really all that comparable.  Both Phoenix and Houston in '96 were clearly behind both the Jazz and Sonics, and both those teams were playing catch-up against the Jordan Bulls juggernaut.  If I would compare Barkley's move to anyone recently, it seems pretty similar to Aldridge going to the Spurs, which created a very good team, but hardly something throwing off the league's competitive balance.  Plus, Barkley was traded.  Yes, he wanted to be traded, but the Rockets gave up some good young talent to get him. 

I didn't say it was identical, just that it's kind of hypocritical in a funny way on Barkley's part. 

[Maithanet]

3 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

I didn't say it was identical, just that it's kind of hypocritical in a funny way on Barkley's part. 

I think the situations are sufficiently different that charges of hypocrisy ring hollow.  Durant left one of the four best teams in the league to join the best team in the league.  Barkley was traded from the #7 seed in the West to the #5 seed in the West.