2024 Free Agency

[KGdaBom]

I think by hook or by crook, Monte and Kyle’s bird rights are simply to valuable to let them walk for nothing.

Let me lay this out for you really simple so you can understand.
We are already at 80-100 million into the luxury tax, approaching 300 million in salary outlay.
Every dollar we give another player is multiplied 4-5 times more in luxury tax.


NO ONE ELSE is getting anything but a veteran minimum from us this summer. No One.
1. Monte and Kyle's bird rights are worth pretty much zilch.
2. If they are back it is ONLY for a 1 year veteran minimum, where they get paid over 3 million and we only get charged 2.1 million for it.

Monte didn't impress me, but he couldn't crack our playoff rotation even when the wheels were flying off the offense.
And that was before we got Dillingham and Shannon.
Why on earth would he take the minimum to not play here?
It would be a terrible career move.
He needs to go somewhere else where he can get some minutes and build his value back up.

I think you're right.

[KGdaBom]

That’s a very eloquent defense. LOL.

We also have a bunch of other advanced stats and even counting stats that show us Rudy was valuable all playoffs, even against the Mavs.

Wolves vs Mavs:

Rudy 2nd on team in D rating.
Rudy 1st on team in O rating.

Open your **** eyes.

Our perimeter D couldn't guard Doncic and Irving. That was the main factor. Celtics kept Doncic and Irving out of the lane with physicality and without helping much. That’s the difference. It wasn’t Rudy’s fault we lost, and the numbers bear that out.

Our scheme is for our perimeter defenders to run Luka and Kyrie off the 3 point line and funnel them into Rudy, and the only part of that which failed was that Rudy Gobert played some of the most atrocious interior defense of his career in the Dallas series.

If his advanced stats are slightly less horrible than the other 2 horrible bigs he was playing with against Dallas that doesn't make him a good defender. And he was a disaster trying to guard Jokic. Naz and Kat were the only guys who even slowed him down.
Luka Garza could have done a better job on Jokic than Gobert did.

And Luka Doncic did the same thing to Rudy, in the playoffs, when he was with Utah.

When you are the quarterback, how you play matters more than the other guys.
And Gobert is supposed to be the quarterback of our defense.

Mike, NAW, Jaden, Ant are all great defenders and did what they were supposed to do for the most part all series against Dallas, but they were let down badly by their bigs.
Especially Gobert, who had no interest in playing the trap scheme we needed to switch to after his disgusting effort at playing drop in game 1.

He's supposed to be good enough on that end to justify turning a top 10 offense with 2 generational talents into a bottom 10 offense.
Regular season, yeah that worked out OK this year.
When the competition got better, not so much.

Thank you for talking basketball.

I couldn’t disagree more.

Celtics knew that it’s suicide to funnel Irving and Doncic inside, so they didn’t do that. Period. And they won with very few lobs yielded as a result.

The Celtics didn’t win by funneling Irving and Doncic into Horford or Porzingis and trapping them.

They played fresh and physical defense and kept them from the middle of the floor, where they can do the most damage. Our guys weren’t there physically for the challenge. Ant himself said they were fatigued, and Ant was targeted.

Stick around. We’re better than Dallas and we’ll show it.

You disagree. Fine.

The Mavs beat us in this years playoffs. My explanation for that is sheet happens and it was a fluke. We will win the west next year and probably win it all.

[KGdaBom]

If Garza moves on, I wonder if we could get Andre Drummond to come here...

Would you like us to get Drummond?

[BlacJacMac]

I think by hook or by crook, Monte and Kyle’s bird rights are simply to valuable to let them walk for nothing.

Let me lay this out for you really simple so you can understand.
We are already at 80-100 million into the luxury tax, approaching 300 million in salary outlay.
Every dollar we give another player is multiplied 4-5 times more in luxury tax.


NO ONE ELSE is getting anything but a veteran minimum from us this summer. No One.
1. Monte and Kyle's bird rights are worth pretty much zilch.
2. If they are back it is ONLY for a 1 year veteran minimum, where they get paid over 3 million and we only get charged 2.1 million for it.

Monte didn't impress me, but he couldn't crack our playoff rotation even when the wheels were flying off the offense.
And that was before we got Dillingham and Shannon.
Why on earth would he take the minimum to not play here?
It would be a terrible career move.
He needs to go somewhere else where he can get some minutes and build his value back up.

I don’t think Morris is getting any offer from us but vet minimum. Anderson I think might get an offer similar to the Conley deal, it’d be a TON of money but we have to go for it this year. Because after that, we will likely lose Naz/Naw with no real way to replace them.

It would be 50-60M to keep him for 1 year at what Conley makes.

[KGdaBom]

Hope we got some scoring from the bench. We loose against Dallas mostly because ANT and Mike play at 70% of their level. I know all teams have injured players but I’m still upset we push too much during regular season and run out of gas against Mavs . West is packed so ending 1 or 5 does not matter but having fresh players to make a run is mandatory. Dallas got exactly the same issues in the final we got against them. East is so weak that Boston came with 120% energy in the final where Dallas was tired. Hope we learn from this year and next year we will the there!

We got the scoring you were asking for and more.

[KGdaBom]

They played fresh and physical defense and kept them from the middle of the floor, where they can do the most damage. Our guys weren’t there physically for the challenge. Ant himself said they were fatigued, and Ant was targeted.

Stick around. We’re better than Dallas and we’ll show it.

You disagree. Fine.

This is exactly what the high wall scheme we played from game 2 onward was supposed to do.
We played drop in game one to placate Gobert and when that was a disaster had to switch.

Our players, especially our bigs, failed to execute it because they didn't know what they were doing.
Gobert up top did not keep the ballhandler out of the middle of the floor, was not aggressive enough, and did not cut down passing lanes or angles AT ALL.
KAT and Naz were late and tentative rotating off the corner shooter to cut off the rolling big but the pass to that guy was made WAY too easy because of the lack of ball pressure.

Our bad hands, feet, and angles didn't cut the floor in half and force bad shots like Boston did because we were fundamentally terrible, starting with the freshly minted 4 time DPOY.

Dallas was not better than us, but they executed what their coach asked of them WAY better than we did on the defensive end, and had a coherent offensive scheme while ours was an absolute failure because of our atrocious spacing.

I'm not an X and O guy at all so I will take your word for this.

[younggunsmn]

I think by hook or by crook, Monte and Kyle’s bird rights are simply to valuable to let them walk for nothing.

Let me lay this out for you really simple so you can understand.
We are already at 80-100 million into the luxury tax, approaching 300 million in salary outlay.
Every dollar we give another player is multiplied 4-5 times more in luxury tax.


NO ONE ELSE is getting anything but a veteran minimum from us this summer. No One.
1. Monte and Kyle's bird rights are worth pretty much zilch.
2. If they are back it is ONLY for a 1 year veteran minimum, where they get paid over 3 million and we only get charged 2.1 million for it.

Monte didn't impress me, but he couldn't crack our playoff rotation even when the wheels were flying off the offense.
And that was before we got Dillingham and Shannon.
Why on earth would he take the minimum to not play here?
It would be a terrible career move.
He needs to go somewhere else where he can get some minutes and build his value back up.

I don’t think Morris is getting any offer from us but vet minimum. Anderson I think might get an offer similar to the Conley deal, it’d be a TON of money but we have to go for it this year. Because after that, we will likely lose Naz/Naw with no real way to replace them.

Giving Anderson a Conley deal would cost us ballpark 65 million dollars in year one.
1. That's INSANE
2. He's not worth half of 10 mil per and he's going to have to take a lot less now because he can't shoot anymore.
3. As a 10 year veteran, the veteran minimum next year will pay him about 3.6 million (a liitle more if the cap comes in higher), and cost us 2.1 million (league pays everything above minimum salary for a 2 year vet).

That might actually be something that ends up working for both sides.
If he likes it here, another team maybe has to start at 5 million just to get him to think about it, which is most of the taxpayer MLE.
We can only get the savings on a 1 year deal though.
But that savings is worth 7-8 million dollars. That's huge.
Even at the veteran minimum, we are paying him 10-12 million in salary and tax. That's the situation we are in.

[winforlose]

Okay there is a lot to respond to, so instead of quoting I will just post it here and hope people see it. Our current rotation as it stands now before the last 3 spots are filled is

Conley, Ant, MCD, KAT, Rudy.
RD, Shannon, NAW, Naz, Miller

You guys assume that we are going into penny saving mode. Maybe you are correct and we are willing to risk a regression this year. But as a rule I don’t think you plan on Rookies being key rotation players in deep playoff runs. The Rookie wall is a real thing and can mess with both RD and TSJ. I do think that Kyle’s lack of offense was a problem for us, and that we are better off replacing him in the rotation. I fully expect us to resign him. I think a Monte had a bad year overall last year, and fully expect us to resign him. The last spot that we traded way down to clear is very likely already spoken for. I am not sure which vet big it will be. But I do expect a PF/C significantly better than Garza on a vet minimum haircut deal trying to win a ring. I can absolutely be wrong about all 3, but don’t underestimate the importance of this year to TC. To keep Naz and NAW beyond this year a KAT trade will likely need to happen. Also we can only afford two years in the 2nd apron and 2 years in the tax before the repeater penalty kicks in. This is not a year to pinch pennies. This is a year to go for broke.

[BlacJacMac]

I could see the Bucks being super attractive to Morris as well.

Lillard isn't the model of health and they currently have no one backing him up.

Clippers and Suns could both really use a PG too if MM is going to sign for the minimum.

[Norseman79]

Conley Jr, Dillingham, Vet minimum FA
Edwards, NAW, Shannon, Clark
McDaniels, vet FA, Minott
Towns, Reid, Miller, Ledee
Gobert, vet FA, Edwards

3 free agents to sign...use two two-way contracts

PG- best minimum vet that could step in if Conley misses time. Some say Morris, I say get Dennis Smith Jr.

SF- Anderson would be great if he takes minimal deal, but if not get some type of 3pt guy (Sam Hauser?).

C - someone needs to be able to be the 10th + guy on the bench that could at least handle size and protect the rim if Rudy gets hurt, needs rest, or foul trouble. Doesn't have to be part of regular rotation. Whoever best fits.

[Klomp]

If Garza moves on, I wonder if we could get Andre Drummond to come here...

Would you like us to get Drummond?

Why not?! Big body.

[KGdaBom]

If Garza moves on, I wonder if we could get Andre Drummond to come here...

Would you like us to get Drummond?

Why not?! Big body.

I was just wondering. So the answer is clearly yes.

[Norseman79]

If Garza moves on, I wonder if we could get Andre Drummond to come here...

Would you like us to get Drummond?

Why not?! Big body.

Drummond is a big body that will rebound if nothing else and take some pounding off of Rudy, depending on matchups. If you could land him for minimum why not?

[Neeva]

I am good with Dennis Smith Jr./Dunn for third pg, Lonnie Walker or Malik Beasley for 10th man:shooter off the bench, and Goga Bitadze or Wiseman for third center.

[karch34]

I think we probably keep McLaughlin on minimum out of any of our FA. Just to have a cheap PG that knows the system and would be less than vet min. If Kyle would take the vet minimum I think you do it, but likely feel that’s a Gallo or Morris Brother type.

[Mattya]

If you can't keep Slowmo, then I'd probably go after Batum. Can't imagine Roco with a chance to pick where he wants to play will pick a place his wife didn't like, but he would be solid too. Then probably Jingles.

Hopefully the market dries up for a movement shooter, I think that is probably the next priority.

As for back up PG, maybe you can get Patty Mills to play 3rd string at this point.

[Neeva]

If you can't keep Slowmo, then I'd probably go after Batum. Can't imagine Roco with a chance to pick where he wants to play will pick a place his wife didn't like, but he would be solid too. Then probably Jingles.

Hopefully the market dries up for a movement shooter, I think that is probably the next priority.

As for back up PG, maybe you can get Patty Mills to play 3rd string at this point.

Roco is washed. I like Batum, but think I prefer younger guys or guys in their prime or about to hit their prime instead of a vet on last legs. Good chances they can still improve.

[Mattya]

If you can't keep Slowmo, then I'd probably go after Batum. Can't imagine Roco with a chance to pick where he wants to play will pick a place his wife didn't like, but he would be solid too. Then probably Jingles.

Hopefully the market dries up for a movement shooter, I think that is probably the next priority.

As for back up PG, maybe you can get Patty Mills to play 3rd string at this point.

Roco is washed. I like Batum, but think I prefer younger guys or guys in their prime or about to hit their prime instead of a vet on last legs. Good chances they can still improve.

I just dont see the forwards that we could actually pay to come here that are better than Batum. Maybe we can get lucky tho.

[KGdaBom]

If you can't keep Slowmo, then I'd probably go after Batum. Can't imagine Roco with a chance to pick where he wants to play will pick a place his wife didn't like, but he would be solid too. Then probably Jingles.

Hopefully the market dries up for a movement shooter, I think that is probably the next priority.

As for back up PG, maybe you can get Patty Mills to play 3rd string at this point.

Roco is washed. I like Batum, but think I prefer younger guys or guys in their prime or about to hit their prime instead of a vet on last legs. Good chances they can still improve.

I just dont see the forwards that we could actually pay to come here that are better than Batum. Maybe we can get lucky tho.

I heard Batum was retiring. Maybe that was just a rumor.

[winforlose]

I would need to check the list of best available, but I would err towards a center as Naz, Miller, Jaden, and others can play PF in a pinch, but only Karl and maybe Naz can back up Rudy.