payitforward wrote:Leaving aside the other 26 of those franchises, I'm not suggesting we should make a radical decision right now to take the team apart totally. I'm just noting that I can't see a path to contention in this group of guys. (Actually... you seem to agree w/ that in the para above!)
Well the good news is that we only have to worry about the road to the Finals from the East. I see a path to the EC Finals. Beyond that its hard to imagine getting further without significant breaks. But I think this goes for every other team in the conference. Even Cleveland's chances of beating GSW again is rather small but I guess it's in the realm of possibility. I don't think you could make the same case for Toronto, Boston, Chicago or anyone else.
payitforward wrote:Those 4 guys, sure -- w/ the slight caveat that Beal has not proven he is worth the $$ he's making (or anywhere near it). He may be, but that's still to see. For that matter, I'd add Gortat who is playing well and has a contract that would make him pretty easy to trade.
But I don't look at the problem side as "guys" -- I look at it as "contracts." In that sense, I'm a little more positive than you on the one hand, and a little more negative on the other. I.e. I'm not worried about Thornton, McClellan, Ochefu, House or even Burke -- all those contracts can be jettisoned at no cost next off-season. I'm not worried about Satoransky either. It's no surprise that he's going through a painful adjustment to the NBA game. If he establishes himself, great. If not, I'd be willing to bet he goes back to Europe where he can make more $$, be at home or near home, be a star, etc.
We have $36m+ a year in 4 guaranteed multi-year contracts that are complete boat anchors: they can't be traded away except for an equally big problem: Mahinmi, Morris, Nicholson & Smith. And we have an enormously expensive contract for Beal who, as I say hasn't proven he's worth it. Right now I'd say his contract is also untradable except for someone else's problem. That's 5 guys/$60m. Add another $35m+ for Wall, Gortat, Oubre & Satoransky. To me, at this point those are fixed costs for next year -- $95m for 9 guys. Of whom there are 3 (Wall, Gortat, Oubre) we can be sure we'll want and 2 (Beal, Mahinmi) of whom we hope that's true.
That's going to make it hard to max Porter -- and he will command a max salary. But, lets assume we do max Porter. We'll also have a high R1 pick to add to our roster and (I would hope) a high R2 pick as well. That's 12 guys for North of $120m.
At the moment I'd agree that Mahinmi, Nicholson & Morris are 'boat anchors'. A stretch of good health & solid play may change that for Mahinmi. He is an impact defender on the floor but until he's healthy, that contract looks pretty bad. Nicholson & Smith are very bad deals and likely would require incentive to move but at $6 mil & $5 mil respectively it's not impossible to see a scenario where they are successfully moved.
As for Morris, at $7.4 mil... I'm confident a team would bite. He's got the physical tools to be better than he is (unlike Nicholson & Smith) and he's been a rotation player and starter for a number of years now. I know you don't think much of him and neither do I at the moment but he is movable IMO. Not likely for what Ernie gave up for him but an expiring or another minor asset is a possibility.
payitforward wrote:Yup. Only given the above, we certainly wouldn't be able to add 3 guys like Thad Young, Garrett Temple & DeWayne Dedmon -- total salary @$24m/year. And that's the problem. Yes, my abstract exercise kind of showed that...
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... but it's not obvious how we can acquire them.
Dedmon was acquired for less than $3 million. Temple was originally a D league player that worked his butt off to be decent. Young was acquired by Indy for a late 1st rd pick.
We have what will likely be a decent 1st round pick next off-season. We'll have the MLE & BAE. We have hope that Oubre will continue his assent to quality rotation player and that Porter and maybe even Beal will continue to improve. Satoransky may even become a passable reserve. He'll certainly get another shot or two this season. Maybe even McClellan gets a shot. It's much easier to build a quality bench on the cheap than rebuilding and hoping to draft players as good as Wall or Porter.
We'll have better than a "decent" R1 pick, we'll have a pretty high one. And we have way more than "hope" in the cases of Oubre & Porter, & I think in Beal's case too -- though I wonder whether he may not always be more of an up and down player than one would like. Even so, the "up" is way "up" when you see it.
