kodo wrote:DWhiteMamba wrote:If DeRozan had this kind of value, why didn't he opt out and take that sort of pay day a year early?
Chicago's starting salary is at $26M, Derozan was getting $28M w/ San Antonio.
His agent correctly gauged how much he would get in FA, at his current contract level. No reason to opt out. You need to be extremely sure you will get significantly more to make opting out a good play.
Derozan is a bad fit in San Antonio, but you have to realize this is more about San Antonio than Derozan. Your team is the absolute worst 3P shooting team in the league, in an era where 3P shooting is the dominant strategy. Derozan is the player who initiates an attack and then passes to the shooters. San Antonio is 30th in 3s made, 30th in 3s attempted, and 24th in 3 point accuracy.
Definitely Derozan didn't make sense there and that money should be used on shooters. Chicago has Lavine, Vucevic, Lonzo, White all as 3P shooters. Chicago is worst in the league at another category, drawing FTs. Derozan is 7th in the FTs in the league and makes as many as Giannis and more than Luka or Zion. The players that could solve Chicago's FT issue are largely unattainable... Trae Young, Steph Curry, Lillard, Kawhi Leonard. Derozan was the only player Chicago had a prayer of getting.
San Antonio having no need for Derozan makes sense. Chicago really wanting Derozan badly makes sense. The area where the two teams need the most help are totally opposite. For example, Chicago fans would have rioted if we spent $14M per year on Doug McDermott.
I think what a lot of people don't understand is that Pop coaches to the talents of the players he has. In 2014 we were bombing away from 3, because it fit the talent of the team. In 2017 we had Green and Kawhi bombing away in the starting line-up, we made Pau into a bench 3pt shooter because we understood we needed speed and shooting. Pop actually got LMA to gradually develop his 3pt shot, but when he first got here and refused to shoot 3s Pop had to work around that. When DDR was here, Pop had to work around his total non-shooting as well, but you can see he understood 3pt shooting was important because he was sitting better players to try and find enough shooting in the starting line-up (e.g. benching White for Forbes, which was a big mistake actually). In the 2019 playoff run when LMA and DDR were still refusing to shoot 3s, Pop made sure the other starters could shoot 3s even if they weren't technically speaking the "best" players. Forbes and Rudy Gay started that year, both dead-eyes from 3, and White was decent when he was open.
Now that Demar is gone, we can finally play properly again and have more shooting and spacing to maximise the talent of our young players. I expect us to be better without him. He was the reason we were a bad shooting team, not a victim of us hating shooting.
There is a difference between being a good 3pt shooter, and being an ok 3pt shooter from a set shot if the other team leaves you way, way open. Vuc, and to a lesser extent Ball, are in the latter camp. White and Lavine can flat out shoot, but one of them is coming off the bench. And before anyone complains, Ball's inability to create separation and his weird low release form mean he needs to be open. Other than that he's become a good shooter, and I actually like the Ball signing for you. I just think it's totally counteracted by the DDR pick up. Your guys will be less wide open, because nobody will guard DDR out there. Trust me, I've seen it. Nobody does.
As for the salary thing, that's ridculous. The whole reason to sign a long term contract is to mitigate the risk of an injury, etc, so you have security. The idea Demar had multi-year offers starting from $26 mill last year and turned them down to opt into his 1 remaining year with the Spurs because $27 mill is $1 mill more than $26 mill is laughable. There was no interest last summer in DDR for anything like that money, and we can see the same this summer until you guys spent on him (long after every other team had used their cap space, and passed on him). His other offer was the exception from the Clippers. It is obvious he had nothing like the value you assigned him.
