Post#78 » by German Athens » Mon May 19, 2025 11:46 pm
Value discussion is always interesting to me, because I think, particularly on trade boards, contract value is often grossly overstated.
The value in a player is mostly their ability not their contract.
If you run over to the trade board and search for any Deni thread, you’ll quickly find out from dozens of people he’s on one of the best value contracts, but so many people open with that as a reason why he’s worth way more than ___ firsts. It’s backwards to me.
Remember when Nate Duncan was being super smug in the 2019 off-season about how he’d rather have Brogdon and Bojan than Khris for the same money? Or how Simmons talked about Rozier being 80% of Dame at a third the cost or whatever it was?
You don't get special points for getting the worse player with fewer dollars. You just end up with a TCL NBA team.
Khris was paid the 19th most in 2020, 16th in 2021, 14th in 2022, and 13th in 2023. If we paid him a few mil more, it still would have been good for us. He was a very good player.
Lauri was paid 21st this year, 18th next year, then 25th the following year. I won’t go beyond that, because some extensions will likely eclipse him in the distant future. Next year, where he’s paid the relative highest, if you gave him 2.8m less he’d be the 28th highest paid player instead of 18th.
I just can’t feign outrage over that.
If you think he’s very good, then he’s a good target. If you have reservations about just how good he is, that’s fine, but then the discussion should be about his ability not his contract.
FTR, I know some really like EPM here, he was 16th in EPM two years ago, and then 21st in EPM last year. He was 85th this year. Khris had one season as good as the two best from Lauri, when he was 15th in 2020. The others during the Bud years were in the 40’s and 50’s.
