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Whether the Wolves pull a trade for Iggy, sign a Batum or Wallace, or whatever else they are still going to have to "fill in the rest".

Rather than overpay for non-all stars, I think it's a much better strategy to underpay for young players who are already very solid role players that will improve with age. Let's call them "value players". Another version of "value players" are veterans off a down year that you can grab on the cheap and reasonably expect to improve.

Here is a list of value players I would love to sign or trade for.

Sign:
Jodie Meeks - My personal favorite SG option at the moment. Very good defense, very good 3 point shooter, does absolutely nothing to hurt you and plays the role you ask him to. He's a Bruce Bowen type of contributor with a better 3 point shot. Love his game right now.
Estimated cost: 4 years, $18 mil

Danny Green - Unlike Meeks, Green does not have a long history as a great outside shooter. His "fluky good" 3 point shooting is likely to drop down to a more reasonable 37-38%, which is still pretty solid. He's not as good offensively or defensively as Meeks, but he's got plenty of potential to get better and likely won't cost as much.
Estimated cost: 3 years, $9 mil

Delonte West - Solid player on the court....idiot off the court. What can I say, he's a great fit but doesn't really have much potential to get better (outside of improving his 3 point shooting anyway). Unlike Meeks and Green, West is a natural ball handler and probably makes Kahn look like an idiot if we sign him (plays PG, but better at SG). He's a capable SG, defends the position well enough, and fits very well into Adelman's offense. He's not spectacular but I just don't see a down side to him anywhere.
Estimated cost: 3 years, $10 mil

Marco Belinelli - I almost didn't add him as a "value player", but he just came off the worst (statistical) shooting year of his career outside of his rookie year (and who counts that?). As a #3 option, Belinelli is a .560 TS% scorer who doesn't do much else.....but that's ok. He's established as a great outside shooter and can create his own shot if he needs to....but his TS% drops to about .525 instead of .560 if you make him a primary scorer instead of a complimentary one. His defense is rather poor, so he fills out the bottom of this list. He's basically a poor man's Kevin Martin.
Estimated cost: $3 years, $11 mil.


Trade:
Chandler Parsons - fantastic defense at SF. His offense is raw and, quite frankly, will never be great. But he is a 3 point shot away from being the next Battier. Love his hustle and D. If Houston is willing to trade him for the #18 pick + Memphis pick I do it in a heartbeat.
Salary- 3 years left on a 4 year, $3.7 mil contract. Yeah.

Thabo Sefolosha - Very good defensive player. Good role player. Plays well off others. Pretty much as good as it gets for us trading for a SG. If OKC trades Harden, they will keep Sefo (and his presence on the team is one of the reasons I think they will trade Harden). But if they elect to keep Harden, we might be able to trade Ridnour + #18 for Sefo as OKC will want a combo guard to play with Westbrook/Harden and Ridnour is about perfect (except for his defense). It's a long shot, but worth looking at considering he'd be a damn solid starter if he wasn't behind Harden.
Salary - 2 years, $7.5 mil

Larry Sanders - I liked him a lot when he was drafted. And while his offensive game has done very little to progress, his help defense would look awful nice off the bench next to Love/Pekovic. Not sure what it would take to get him, but I can't imagine it would take much. Long arms, athletic, fantastic shot blocker, ok rebounder, fouls WAY too much. I think a change of scenery would do him some good and if he gets his fouls down he could turn into a nice surprise. And a team with a couple of scoring PF/Cs like Love/Pekovic is where he needs to be.
Salary - 2 years, $5 mil


Who am I missing? Who am I wrong about? Who can we trade for that has more value to us than what it would cost to trade for them?

To give you an example of what is not a "value player", I left Kevin Seraphin off this list because I thought he would cost too much to trade for. Larry Sanders, on the other hand, would take next to nothing to trade for. The idea is to find value for cheap not find cheap players we have to overpay for.

Input welcome.

trade ridnour for landry fields

A. Paker is the guy I would like to see in Minny.

Why? He's a vet who understands defense, and can hit 3's. He's played for a contender. He's always handled himself with class. He's a former euro super star who could help Rubio. He'll be cheap.

He might not come because if he doesn't retire I could see him trying to find a team closer to contention.

He also might hit that Fisher season and just become useless, but even if that's the case he'll still be an improvement on Johnson.

Rudy Fernandez would also be a good fit

My lord, did Jodie Meeks just get compared to Bruce Bowen with a better 3 point shot?? Jodie Meeks is the one player on an 8th seed playoff team that the fan base wants to replace.

Jodie Meeks is the greatest basketball player of our generation and I'm sorry, I truly am, that you all can't see that she is.

As the good book states; "The Meeks shall inherit the Earth." Embrace Jodie.

I'm all for signing someone like Meeks to a Tolliver-level contract, but let's not engrave his name into the Hall of Fame just yet, okay?

Ha, I didn't realize that "he's a Bruce Bowen type contributor" means "He's as good as Bruce Bowen in his prime and the best player in the world".

Either that or it's just Krap being Krap. Whichever.

FTR, if Wayne Ellington was a better 3 point shooter with better defense we wouldn't need Meeks. Basically that's what Meeks is. Does 2 things very well, defend and shoot 3s.

Narf wrote:Ha, I didn't realize that "he's a Bruce Bowen type contributor" means "He's as good as Bruce Bowen in his prime and the best player in the world".

Either that or it's just Krap being Krap. Whichever.

FTR, if Wayne Ellington was a better 3 point shooter with better defense we wouldn't need Meeks. Basically that's what Meeks is. Does 2 things very well, defend and shoot 3s.

"Bruce Bowen type contributor with a better 3-point shot" sure sounds like you're comparing him to Bruce Bowen.

Maybe what you were going for is, he's a role playing SG with a good three point shot and solid defense.
Bruec Bowen "type contributor" certainly sounded like you were implying he was an elite level defender to me.

Krapinsky wrote:

Narf wrote:Ha, I didn't realize that "he's a Bruce Bowen type contributor" means "He's as good as Bruce Bowen in his prime and the best player in the world".

Either that or it's just Krap being Krap. Whichever.

FTR, if Wayne Ellington was a better 3 point shooter with better defense we wouldn't need Meeks. Basically that's what Meeks is. Does 2 things very well, defend and shoot 3s.

"Bruce Bowen type contributor with a better 3-point shot" sure sounds like you're comparing him to Bruce Bowen.

Maybe what you were going for is, he's a role playing SG with a good three point shot and solid defense.
Bruec Bowen "type contributor" certainly sounded like you were implying he was an elite level defender to me.

I don't think anyone actually takes "sounds like to me" seriously from you anymore Krap.

You've gone to the well one too many times. Why not stop antagonizing all the time and relax for a while.

Narf wrote:You've gone to the well one too many times. Why not stop antagonizing all the time and relax for a while.

Or you could admit that you made a terrible comparison. Wes Johnson is closer to being Bruce Bowen than Jodie Meeks is.

Narf wrote:
You've gone to the well one too many times. Why not stop antagonizing all the time and relax for a while.

Narf wrote:Who am I missing? Who am I wrong about? Who can we trade for that has more value to us than what it would cost to trade for them?

Narf wrote:Input welcome.

You're wrong that Jodie Meeks is anything like Bruce Bowen, except for the fact that they are both role players. Bowen was one of the best role players of all time.

Klomp wrote:

Narf wrote:You've gone to the well one too many times. Why not stop antagonizing all the time and relax for a while.

Or you could admit that you made a terrible comparison. Wes Johnson is closer to being Bruce Bowen than Jodie Meeks is.

Outside of a terrible PER, how is Wes Johnson closer to Bowen?

Bowen was a late bloomer that did 2 things well and played on a team where he had to do absolutely nothing else. He basically sat in the corners on offense and shot the 3 and then played hard-nosed 1 on 1 defense. I thought it was a pretty apt comparison personally, that's what Meeks does well. Meeks takes over half his shots from 3 and plays tenacious 1 on 1 D. I don't think Bowen's defense is legendary either, for that matter, I think he's glorified because he was on the Spurs and the refs let him get away with way too much hacking. The "and a better 3 point shot" is because Meeks can actually hit it anywhere not just in the corner like Bowen.

And FTR, I'll take Meeks 1 on 1 defense over Wes Johnson's anyday. I guess we can agree to disagree.

I saw the title, saw Narf made it, and immediately knew this was going to be a Jodie Meeks thread.

That said, I like Belinelli for around $4 miilion per. I don't think Parsons or Thabo are going to be pried away for cheap. I think Sanders is gettable, though.

Krap, you kill me sometimes. You jump boards to insult me for a couple weeks then expect me to actually take anything you say at face value. Once you flame someone for a while your criticism loses any credibility.

Anyway, Klomp's probably got a Klomp-stomp of my post. So don't worry.

Narf wrote:Krap, you kill me sometimes. You jump boards to insult me for a couple weeks then expect me to actually take anything you say at face value. Once you flame someone for a while your criticism loses any credibility.

Anyway, Klomp's probably got a Klomp-stomp of my post. So don't worry.

Are you talking about the one trade forum thread in which you wanted to trade Williams for Parsons? I don't know that I've ever insulted you personally, but I do strongly disagree with most of your posts/takes.

Back on topic, one guy that could be a value player is playing right now -- Mahinmi. He would be a nice fall back after the Asik dream dies.

I felt like Mahinmi is a big that a lot of teams would target and overpay.
If he comes cheap he's clearly a value player...but someone is going to post their hopes on him.
Ironically Anthony Randolph would make this list if we were another team.

This thread is completely derailed from it's original intent.
Here's it's original intent:

Narf wrote:The point of this thread is to identify players that
1) Are good role players that will help us win
2) Are good or neutral value
3) Have a good chance to improve from their current value.

So Larry Sanders has a value, but his value is as the player he is (can't stay out of foul trouble, can't score). The reason I targeted him is because if we sign him to an extension today he'd be cheap AND he's got a good chance of becoming a better player by the time that contract is up, making him a high value player on a good contract.

Don't focus too much on one player, it's about finding players we didn't think of and saying "that'd be a good guy to get on the cheap".

Greg Oden.

We'd likely be able to sign him for almost nothing, and if he can ever stay healthy, he'd be an elite backup.