HadAnEffectHere wrote:Texas Chuck wrote:If the Jazz give Walker Kessler 5/$175 they will need to fire both Ainge's immediately. Well and sell the team since the governor will have signd off on that. Just no chance he is worth anything close to that nor that they have already a handshake deal in place for that amount.
Let's go through the Kessler contract.
He's about as good as Nic Claxton. Claxton got 4/97. Hartenstein is better and got 2/58.5, but Hartenstein was also kind of unproven as a full time starter. It's also one year later the cap is higher. So, 25m a year is about right for Kessler at this current level.
Now, we have to consider the bump from being a young player. Young players often get better so teams are usually willing to give a premium to players that are still young vs. established vets. So that 25m goes to 30m now.
Now, we have to consider the bump from being willing to throw games instead of being traded to the Lakers without complaining. The Jazz refused to trade Kessler to the Lakers and then sat him for 8 games after the lack of a Lakers trade with "trying to intentionally lose." Kessler's career is badly harmed by all of this and he needs a premium to keep him quiet and happy. We're probably now up to 35m.
Give him 5 years and that's 5/175.
Is this a good idea? No. But the Jazz gave Markkanen a large premium also to bribe him to throw games which was a catastrophe, but not something they've learned from.
That's a ton of conjecture to move Kessler's contract up $10MM/year. Plus there's the new economics of the league to consider; I don't think that teams and players have fully grasped the effects yet. I still think that, if he and the Jazz can agree on a deal, his salary will start at around 15% of the cap ($23MM +/-); maybe a 4yr x $100-120MM. If his demands are well beyond that, I wouldn't be surprised if they let him go to restricted free agency in a year.
