Chris Paul Verbal Agreement

[wco81]

What happens when a max player retires or doesn't get an extension from the team at the end of the contract?

Does the team get that cap space back?

So Clippers in 5-6 years would get Paul's $40 million salary in his final year back as cap space? That's a long ways away.

Blake Griffin at the end of his next contract will be 33. He will still play but maybe not command a max contract at that point. Certainly would be folly to give him another 5-year deal at that point, other than for sentimental reasons, possibly to have him play his entire career with the team. So trade him in the last couple of years of his contract to get expiring deals to free up cap space?

If they don't win a title within the timeframe of these two max contracts, team would probably have to look at rebuilding, certainly not giving Paul another deal at age 37 and maybe trading Blake away when he's 32-33 to try to get expiring contracts.

[Captain Ballmer]

If we can't reach to the finals in this playoffs we shouldn't do that commitment. 6 years are enough time to test a team. Champions were grabbed the chance when they saw it and i can't see this core reaching to the finals at all. The time for us is to see that chance.

There are a lot of good guy in the 2017 FA market we can replace CP3 and still easily win 55 games for at nearly half price.
Jeff Teague, Kyle Lowry, George Hill, Gordon Hayward. One of that Jazz players are very practicable to sign. Bolded ones are hard to get but would be clear improvements from cp3 days.

Trade CP3 now and get expirings and draft rights.

Let Austin and Blake shine...

Start with firing Doc Rivers GM and Coach when we see early exit of days of may.

Are you taking into account the salary cap or how is this working if you trade Paul for expiring contracts? Is Redick still supposed to be on the team or are you letting him go? Based on the contracts being signed, what are Hill and Teague making, about $20 million starting at least, right? Why are the Jazz players necessarily practical to sign? Why are they leaving Utah to come to the Clippers, what would be drawing a guy like Hayward when the Clippers just traded Paul and won't really look like a better team and wouldn't be able to give him as much money? Kyle Lowry is going to be looking for something in the range between at least the 25% to 30% max, so we're still talking about $26-30 million starting contract for him. Clippers can't even create that much salary.

Okay, let's say the Clippers trade Paul for all expiring contracts. During the off-season, the Clippers would have $94 million in salary with: Griffin, Jordan, Rivers, Crawford, Johnson, Mbah, Johnson, Stone, Speights (hold), Redick (hold). This excludes holds for Bass, Felton and Anderson, let's say they renounce those. The salary cap is $103 million. Add the roster charges, and this means the Clippers would have about $7.8 million in cap space. If they renounced Speights, and if Mbah opted to become a free agent and they renounced him, it would go up to $10.6 million. The MLE is between $8-9 million next season, so they would be better off not renouncing anyone and just using the MLE to sign a player.

There would be no room to actually sign any player of significance, let alone a max player like Lowry or Hayward. You see this is why people always say crazy things about player signings and decisions whether or not to sign them because people never actually look at the reality of the salary cap.

If the Clippers renounced Redick because Rivers is the replacement at SG, the max cap space they can get is in the range of about $21.2 million which isn't even enough for the 25% of cap max which would start at $25.8 million. Maybe you can get Jeff Teague or George Hill, but now you maxed out your cap on this team:

George Hill or Jeff Teague
Austin Rivers
Wesley Johnson
Blake Griffin
DeAndre Jordan

Bench: Jamal Crawford, Brice Johnson, Diamond Stone, maybe a draft pick for Paul if you got one for next season, minimum players.

You renounced all the other guys, so unless they want to sign for the minimum again, you can't go over the cap to re-sign them for anything more. You had to renounce the MLE to sign that PG you signed. Now you are capped out. Blake will get a contract starting at about $30 million, so your salary is at least about $110 million or so. So now, unless you got picks projected into the lottery, you're not going to improve, problem is that you traded Paul to the team you got picks from, so are they going to be a lottery team? The lottery teams aren't going to be the ones wanting to trade for Paul, it will be the teams who are in the middle and want to move higher, and trading him to one of those teams makes an already mediocre pick and even worse one. So you can now only truly improve with the MLE and minimum contracts. How is this a better situation?

Well, this is really an aggressive respond but OK. Since you ask, i will try to explain trading cp3 and my vision about this team's future as clear as i can. Although I'm not an expert about cap situation like you are but i saw a lot of topics about how salary works when that DeAndre Saga happened. So please correct me if i'm wrong below.

IMHO, our team has been structured around our Point Guard CP3 and his skills. That structure involves players requires to play a lot of off the ball schemes such as JJ.Redick, DeAndre, Luc, Matt Barnes, Mo Speights, Wesley Johnson, Caron Butler etc. even our draft picks has been picked according to that CJ Wilcox, Bullock, Brice. Doc also send Eric Bledsoe beacuse he can't play effectively of the ball. I had no problem with that strategy in 2012 or 2013 or...2016. But not anymore.

It's not working guys. 6 year is a very large amount of time. Today's basketball basically says, you need players who not only can play off the ball but also can create his own offense. we saw that scenario of putting extra pressure on BG and CP3 and whole rest of the teams offence collapses maybe like a hounderds of times. It's wasn't fair for both BG and CP3 to handle that kind of pressure all the time aganist Warriors all along, 2014 OKC, 2015 Houston and Spurs, 2013 Memphis series. That lack of creativity among the rest is the sole reason why Jamal Crawford get those touchs at the beginning. Our structure is basically belongs to 90's area and totally expired like 3 years ago.

Today belongs to Forwards who can make 5+ assist any given night. And good news is that we have one hell of them whose likes to play for us and looks like ready to commit another 5 more years.

The inner motivation of my request trading CP3 is that i believe there is still a lot of improvements Blake has inside if we just let him. We souldn't underestimated that Blake would be a different guy when he is the first wheel. That guy saw himself surrended in a huge expectation and intense wall that Cp3-Billups-Jamal-Butler acqusitions build just after his mind blowing rookie season. I think that's the huge reason his development still ongoing and takes a lot of times according to DeMarcus Cousins and Anthony Davis whose looks much more finished products. Losing teams are much easier for young bigs to develop your skill.

Most important part of this is getting rid of Doc Rivers in the beginning because he's not gonna retool around Blake, he will consider to retooling around CP3 even if he willing to do. He's not good at anything about GM business. He souldn't decide any decision because he's sentimental more than anyone against his players that he cann't even judge them appropriately.

Anyway let's back to the grand vision of mine

Different Blake means requiring different players to surround. So Basically all the structured players needs CP3 must ready to be shipped. Those guys involves;
JJ redick (Love the guy, great pro and still could play with new BG core but the cost gonna be too much sadly so he is a go)
Luc Mbah a Moute (great guy but time to let him go and paid)
Wesley Johnson (Nice guy but most mediocre player i ever see)
DeAndre Jordan (i already wanted to trade him but we should wait for that untill Blake's new contract's ink dry out so 2018 February)
Jamal Crawford (we should trade him regardless of CP3)
and of course CP3 by himself. (thankful for him but not that 40md/year)

The worst contract of those above(Jamal) sould be consolidated with the shiniest name(CP3) so we can get rid of that contract.

My trade partner for CP3 would be NYK. He has a great chance to re-sign with tham since we either gonna take Porzingis and his best friend Melo out from Manhattan. CP3 addition would make that team instantly 50 win team and good chance to see Melo keep his game and attitude up. Phil jackson's tenure is not looking good so far, that move could certainly give him another handsome looks.

In our part, we should also send Jamal and Pierce to shad some salary.

CP3 + Jamal + Pierce for Expiring D.Rose and B.Jennings and cheap rotation players of Kuzminskas and Kyle O'quinn. And of course NYK 17 1st rounder unprotected.

NYK roll with CP3-Lee-Melo-KP-Noah and Jamal-Holiday-Hernangomez-Lance Thomas. They probably hold on to the playoffs even Cp3 is out a couple of weeks too. They are only 3 win behind.

Another Trade idea is trading JJ redick.

Send JJ along with Wesley and sweetener Stone to OKC for expiring Collison, Robertson, Morrow and 2017 first round pick unprotected. OKC gets the shooting they need. We save our cap space with Wesley is going and get a 1st rounder(Lou will just got 1st for Lakers so i think this trade very accessible).

Our roster would be like for the rest of season is;
Rose/Felton/Jennings
Austin/Morrow
Luc/Kuzminskas/Robertson
Blake/Bass/Brice/Collison
DJ/Speights/O'quinn/

That team still makes the playoffs for this year and we would see what Blake and Austin's ceilings are. The Bolded ones are the only ones who has guaranteed money for 2017-2018 season.

We renounced all of FA's except BG and our payroll would be like;
Blake's option for 17-18: $21,323,252
DeAndre Jordan for 17-18: $22,642,350
Austin Rivers for 17-18: $11,825,000
Brice Johnson for 17-18: $1,331,160
Mindaugas Kuzminskas for 17-18: $3,028,410
Kyle O'Quinn for 17-18: $4,087,500
NYK 1st round Pick for 17-18:(some where 13-17 range so basically around 2 million)
OKC 1st Round Pick for 17-18:(Some where 23-25 range so basically around 1 million)
8 players total for 17-18: $67,237,672 give it or take.

According to the new cba we have like $102 million cap space so it lead us like $35 million. Minus the 6 other players cap hold for league minimum so it still like $32 million dolar for a one max. contract.

I think pretty much every one of Hill-Teague-Lowry or Hayward would be available to that space.
Consider getting K.Lowry in there, 2 years younger from CP3, yearly increase only %5.5 not %8.5 like CP3 and most importantly %95 of his career healthy. Obviously my first choice. Capable both off the ball plays along with Blake and creating for others. great shooting and defense.

Hill and Hayward are also on the same them that might be reluctant to give both a max extension, so let's say they keep Hayward for max. contract. Would they pay $25+ million to Hill again? I don't think so they didn't extend him in this January while they can. They have Burks and Exum who showes flashes lately even after injuries.

And after that signage and getting over the cap gets us MLE i guess? we could get Raymond for MLE to extent probably?

The team would be look like for 2017-2018 season;
Lowry or G.Hill/ Felton
Austin/ OKC Pick
NYK pick/Kuzminskas
Blake/Brice
DJ/O-Quinn
Couple of minimum guys and D-Leaguers or Undrafted guys for searching 3rd string players. That team still would be effective for 50 wins and with proper coach who willing to play youngs, well much more younger to expand. Good enough for retooling.

and we can send DJ at the 2018 deadline for more cheaper center and some wings after evaluate our rookies perform.

I just tried to show that CP3 is not our only option. Good GM's always can moves like that above.

Let's go Clippers
Respect and Peace.

[Wammy Giveaway]

People go on with these false conclusions without even realizing they aren't real or taking some time to understand the salary cap.

In all honesty, to the point I can put myself in this group, people just hate to get into the nitty gritty of the salary cap. There's so much math and conditions involved to make a casual NBA fan feel intimidated enough not to create their own trades. That's why the ESPN Trade Machine was created in the first place, in an attempt to provide the average Joe an end result to their idea, and that's all they really want. Skip the details, just see if the player fits.

Let me add a complaint to the Trade Machine: that site is severely flawed. If you've watched an ESPN show where a trade is discussed, you will notice that correspondents have the option of attaching draft picks to a package. The Trade Machine is limited to player moment, trade exceptions, and nothing more.

You know what would help casual fans to grasp the salary cap? If there were a graphical representation. I have begged for a salary cap graph for years to no avail. There would be two graphical bars, the first of which lists the team roster with each player taking up an area of the available salary cap (if there is still cap space left, the portion of that unused space will be left empty). The second bar is a guideline which lists the hard cap, the luxury tax threshold, and any dead weight the team is still responsible for in terms of handing 'em checks. If something like that were made, where a visual took over the hypothetical, maybe the intricacies of the salary cap won't be ignored.

[QRich3]

I don't get why people are inherently pessimistic with existing teams (ie- this team will never do anything), but are hilariously optimistic with imaginary scenarios (ie- a team with Jeff freakin Teague or George Hill instead of Paul), it is really absurd but most fans seem to think that way.

I guess it's something to do with short attention spans and the need for news and change all the time to be entertained. But whenever the Clippers move on from this current core, people are gonna realise how difficult it is to form such a good roster. We'll probably go through half a dozen rebuilds before we get to be this good again, as most teams do.

[Wammy Giveaway]

But whenever the Clippers move on from this current core, people are gonna realise how difficult it is to form such a good roster. We'll probably go through half a dozen rebuilds before we get to be this good again, as most teams do.

Except the Clippers rebuild will be very painful. They've had a stretch where the team missed the playoffs for 15 years straight. Minnesota Timberwolves are right behind them with 13 years, Sacramento Kings on their heels with 11 years (both teams include this season). What are the odds the Clippers have another long playoff drought simply by letting Paul go or losing in the 2nd round, much less losing to the Warriors? In the case of the Dubs, it would be like losing to the Big Brother Lakers on a high stakes match where the loser must vow to never make the playoffs again. That cannot happen.

It all starts with keeping Chris Paul. With him, they've made six playoff appearances straight. At least they can keep that going. A 10-year streak of playoff appearances would prove they've done everything they could to erase 30+ years of Donald Sterling.

[wco81]

Looks like verbal agreements with Griffin and Reddick in addition to Paul.

Stay the course.

Team has to believe it was mostly bad luck that kept the team from breaking through the past 4 years to double down, commit a ton of money.

Or Doc convinced Ballmer to give it another try, though it means committing hundreds of millions. It's a defensible strategy, to retain one of the top teams in the league, for another 4-5 years. Team should continue to win 50-60 games a year and be one of the top 5 or 7 contenders.

Team has the resources to keep it going for another 5 years -- or however long Paul stays at elite levels -- so why not?

[illastrate]

I don't get why people are inherently pessimistic with existing teams (ie- this team will never do anything), but are hilariously optimistic with imaginary scenarios (ie- a team with Jeff freakin Teague or George Hill instead of Paul), it is really absurd but most fans seem to think that way.

I guess it's something to do with short attention spans and the need for news and change all the time to be entertained. But whenever the Clippers move on from this current core, people are gonna realise how difficult it is to form such a good roster. We'll probably go through half a dozen rebuilds before we get to be this good again, as most teams do.

Agreed. What's wrong with being consistently good for a decade? I understand people get tired of the monotony, but we need sustained success. We need to build a winning culture so the future can be fruitful as well. That and Doc depleted all of our assets anyways, so there's no recourse.

[nickhx2]

breaking down what we have would make sense if the team legit was treadmilling (think of the perennial 4-5 seed hawks before budenholzer). or if it was just one all-star surrounded by a bunch of good players. but things happen, players get better, and teams get better. the team still has a ceiling it has yet to reach and we could potentially go far in the playoffs.

i will add, though, if this team had blake or cp3 only, the fans would be foaming at the mouth to add a superstar. somehow we have two and we have fans who take it for granted and want to blow it up. it's kind of unreal

[donemilio21]

We have to resign CP3. We will never ever find a better PG than him.
Despite he seems to get injured often, I'd like to point out that none of his injuries are chronic and almost all are caused by contact.
I think Blake is an incredibly talented player. and he is in his prime. Kings didn't want to give $200 million to Boogie, I'd rather give $400 million to Blake and CP3 than commit $150 million to players like Austin, Crawford and DJ.

The problem is we are spending $120 million a year to form a pretty damn talented team, but we don't have a decent coach to coach them.
If Ballmer is going to commit $400 million to two players, he better swallow 30 that he owes to Doc, and fire his ass.