What free agents should we retain?

[DRK]

CP3, Torrey, Payne and Nader.

[Blonde]

Really CP3 and Payne are the only critical pieces. Players 8-15 come and go and we can live without any of them.

[Saberestar]

First and foremost we need to sign CP3.

Then Cam Payne.

After them there is no clear path with the rest of our FAs.

Personally, I would try to bring back most of our bench players, I think they are good and cheap and the team has great chemistry.

Obviously I would try to sign some upgrade , but I would not do lateral moves.

[Calvin Klein]

I think only Chris Paul is essential. He is still very good, he is vital for Ayton and he has developed great chemistry with Booker. You don't break that up.

I get the Cam Payne love, but to me he is repleacable. And I do not think he is starting material. As a bench guy, I'm all in.

[BobbieL]

I think only Chris Paul is essential. He is still very good, he is vital for Ayton and he has developed great chemistry with Booker. You don't break that up.

I get the Cam Payne love, but to me he is repleacable. And I do not think he is starting material. As a bench guy, I'm all in.

Yep - Paul is key

And I do like Cam Payne -- but I think James Jones/staff need to see who else is available on the market for the MLE range of 10m. Can their be an upgrade? Though, with Cam Payne, have to take into it - how much he has improved from the bubble to now with room to grow. With this being a multi-year deal - that needs to be part of the signing.

As for the rest of the bench - same thing, Jones needs to see what other options are out there. Though I do like Craig and at the BAE - that seems feasible.

[darealjuice]

I think the problem with losing Cam Payne would be that there's not very many of upcoming free agent backup point guards that we would want and could get for the minimum/MLE, much less that would be upgrades to him. Might have to figure it out if he got offered more than the Early Bird, but that'd surprise me a bit.

[Jarlaxle0204]

I picked CP3, Payne, and Craig.

CP3 is obvious. I'd like to keep Payne but he might have priced himself out of our range. Craig I think is pretty important. He didn't have a great finals but he was great in the prior series when we put him on Paul George. You need guys like that.

[bwgood77]

I seriously doubt Payne is too expensive and we don't need to use the MLE to keep him. Keep him and use MLE on someone like Noel and something else maybe if Noel isn't that expensive (only made $5 million this year).

[Saberestar]

I seriously doubt Payne is too expensive and we don't need to use the MLE to keep him. Keep him and use MLE on someone like Noel and something else maybe if Noel isn't that expensive (only made $5 million this year).

My prediction after watching him closely and knowing that he loves Monty Williams, the fit on the team and all of that is that he signs a $18M/3 years contract with us this summer.

He probably can get $1M more per year on another team, but I would be surprised if gets better offers than that.

$18M looks fair money for him.

[Saberestar]

Looking back to this thread I think we can be happy with how James Jones managed our own FAs.

Fans here basically ignored Moore, Galloway and Ty-Shon...and all three are gone.

Fans wanted back badly CP3 and Payne and both are back on a friendly long-term deals.

And we showed in the poll interest in bringing back Craig, Nader and Kaminsky...and James Jones signed two of them.

Craig is the only "wanted" FA not coming back and makes sense for the Suns because he got a too nice offer from the Pacers. Overpaid IMO.

So all in all, four from our five favorite own FAs are back and all of them on a good and fair deals.

[ImNotMcDiSwear]

Looking back to this thread I think we can be happy with how James Jones managed our own FAs.

Fans here basically ignored Moore, Galloway and Ty-Shon...and all three are gone.

Fans wanted back badly CP3 and Payne and both are back on a friendly long-term deals.

And we showed in the poll interest in bringing back Craig, Nader and Kaminsky...and James Jones signed two of them.

Craig is the only "wanted" FA not coming back and makes sense for the Suns because he got a too nice offer from the Pacers. Overpaid IMO.

So all in all, four from our five favorite own FAs are back and all of them on a good and fair deals.

I don't think Craig is overpaid. I think we just liked Nader and think that if healthy he's about as good. Craig looked great guarding PG in the WCF (better than Bridges, I thought) but he really looked like a bonehead in the few opportunities he got against the Bucks. Had he stepped up in that series I think we might have kept him. The other thing with Craig is he's a mercenary, and while we're happy to add guys like that when a need arises mid-season, going into camp I think we very highly prefer to grab high-character professional types. Not saying he's low-character (I don't really know), I just got the impression he's not what we're looking for in the way that Payne, Shamet and Nader are.

We still need to replace his skillset - defensive big 3, small 4. I think we plan to.