jfs1000d wrote:Salary. This is all about salary. Wright was a salary dump, we saved that salary for a guy we don't want. Rivers? We aren't dumping him and adding salary for 15-16 and if we can trade him for a Tuy cheaper, we will do it.
This. By dumping Wright for no returning salary, and hopefully spinning Rivers to the Clips for a little less salary, we're putting ourselves in a position to use the entire Rondo TPE
this year, to take back salary and get assets in return, and then still clear that taken-back salary as early as possible.
andy582 wrote:The [Wright] TPE was probably part of it-
A bigger part than most realize. It's been mentioned many times before, but TPEs are the new expiring contracts. Went into some detail about their efficacy
here. Danny's ahead of the game here - keeping a stable of moderately sized TPEs as often as possible allows you to engineer all kinds of trades that normally wouldn't be legal. They just let you explore trade options with a much wider variety of teams and a much wider variety of terms than you normally could.
Ainge is in straight 2k mode. Wheeling and dealing like it's fun. We're so many trades away from this all being done. Trades involving Bass/Thornton, etc. Trades involving the Rondo TPE. Trades next year making use of the Wright TPEs and whatever other TPEs he picks up along the way. Consolidation trades to use several of our picks to move up in drafts.
How do you put a value on a TPE? When you get a 12.9mil TPE from trading Rondo, what is that worth to you, when you can't even be sure what it will cascade into down the road? The Pierce TPE (an, at the time, apparently nice little throw-in from a trade with seemingly much larger consequences), netted us Zeller, a 1st, and Thornton. What if Thornton becomes part of a trade to take back longer term salary for assets? What if Zeller becomes a factor in a trade later to bring back someone we want? What if we draft a player with that CLE pick who becomes a keeper, or an asset in a later trade? It's going to take years to suss out just how much value that TPE actually had. What if we manage somehow to get a TPE for Thornton, and keep the cascade flowing?
Ainge is diversifying his portfolio. He's trying to keep some of his assets cascading from one to another indefinitely, so that even after we're back to being competitive, some of these pieces are still maturing and paying dividends. The process never stops, if you're doing your job right.
Edit: Anyway, I'm a little intoxicated right now, and that puts me into geek mode. Sometimes I feel weird when I think that I enjoy CBA convolutions and front office gamesmanship more than actual play...