ConSarnit wrote:Truthrising wrote:I’ve been complaining to trade Siakam and FVV years ago due to cap restrictions and fit. I can clearly see the future wasn’t so bright, I can’t believe ppl are coming to this conclusion now. They should’ve trade both of them a lot earlier to gain the most value but this management are too late to figure things out and are mostly reactionary.
The biggest issue is timing and the value of each player. Having 3 key free agents all expire within a year of each other was, imo, too risky to let play out. Especially with players who were primed to be overpaid (FVV and OG). The upside just wasn’t there.
FVV: good player who fits everywhere but not a player you’d want to max. All it takes is one team to outbid you and then you’re screwed because a) you have to match and you’re stuck with a bad contract or b) you lose him for nothing. We saw that play out with HOU
OG: similar to FVV. Don’t want to max him but someone could and then you’re stuck with a bad deal if you match. Also wasn’t extendable so it had to go to free agency
Siakam: don’t want to supermax him so then you open yourself up to all bidders. So now instead of having an incumbent advantage everyone with cap space is on equal footing and Siakam might be mad at you for not maxing him.
The odds on keeping all 3 guys as free agent signings must have been very low. And to do so with all on fair value deals? Even lower. If you have 3 good players go to free agency the odds have to be in favor of losing at least 1. The odds of overpaying 1-2 of them also have to be high. There was no path to retaining all 3 on positive value contracts and total salary would have become an issue once Barnes extension kicked in. The front office should have realized that retaining all 3 was going to be incredibly difficult given all could have commanded huge salaries and the general league sentiment of “it only takes one a**hole” (in our case Houston).
IMO it wasn't even just the odds of retaining all 3, but rather what does your team look like with them. It's been pretty evident that it results in an ok to above average team at most, sometimes the issue isn't the players themselves, but rather the cost, fit, flexibility, and timelines.
Our FO grossly mismanaged those aspects and moved forward with the assumption that we could make due with those 3 players eating up massive chunks of the cap. There was no world where you could pay market rates for all 3 of them, and still field a team that would end up with any real accomplishments.
Treadmill doesn't always have to mean a .500 team, you can be a treadmill team in the 2nd round. The Joe Johnson/Josh Smith Hawks are a perfect example, a couple peaks but never a real threat. Good for business since the fans always have that twinkle of hope, but realistically they go nowhere.