monopoman wrote:Even if we were in cap hell which we are not we have an owner who can afford it and in some circumstances will happily pay it. We aren't one of the teams who refuses to go over the cap or take a luxury tax hit, like say The Bulls. Acting like the Blazers are so desperate to save salary we will give up our two picks from this last draft is a joke.
It's funny how many fans of other teams vastly overrate our cap problems.
some of it is people just regurgitating a pre-draft narrative about Portland tax issues; maybe not looking at the situation after the Crabbe trade
that said, I think the narrative that Paul Allen is quite willing to pay luxury tax is completely unknown at this point. The past doesn't always telegraph the future, and PA has said he's going to be very cautious about paying tax. The Blazers worked to avoid paying it last season, and they just executed a trade that's sole purpose was a salary dump. No, they didn't have to attach a pick to move a bad contract. But they definitely made a negative trade in order to dump salary. They gave up the best player of their three bad contracts and have assumed a 2.85M charge against their cap for the next 7 years. That's a significant disadvantage they are assuming; operating at a cap that is 2.5-3M less then the rest of the teams in the league. And that came after all kinds of
BS-front-office-spin reports that Portland wasn't looking to shed salary. What are the chances that they end next season as a taxpayer?...probably pretty small
and of course, then comes the problem of the 2018-19 season....
the tax threshold will be about 120M. Right now, Portland is scheduled to be about 9.5M below the threshold. BUT, that's' only for 8 players (Dame-CJ-Turner-Harkless-Meyers-Aminu-Collins-Swanigan). If Nurkic gets paid 25M/year then Portland is 13-14M over the tax for 9 players. Complete the roster and the Blazers will be in worse condition, tax-wise, that off-season, then they were this off-season before the Crabbe trade
I guess what I'm saying is that Blazer fans shouldn't be so sure PA is willing to pay tax until the Blazers actually dig out of the dumbass hole they dug last summer or PA actually pays some tax. My guess is that there will be more
negative-talent/salary-savings moves over the nest 2-3 years. And if next year's team struggles in the 1st half of the season, those moves may come sooner rather then later
