Bill Simmons RIPS the Raptors roster and salaries. (UPDATE Zach Lowe & Rob Mahoney go in on Raptors)

[tsherkin]

Likely need to make a move with RJ or one of the smaller deals on the roster.

You do nothing now...see how the team plays and how the season shares out.

We could be buyers at the deadline where we consolidate and take on a little less $.

We could be sellers to take on a little less.

No need to rush into anything now. The amount we are over is easy to get under later in the season.

for sure, there's no rush to do it now unless a deal makes sense

Yeah, we all want to immediately FF to being better, but sometimes you need some patience. We need the RIGHT deal, or we'll just carry on doing our usual routine.

[artsncrafts]

Purtle countract seems really fair. IQ was overpaid. RJ is whatever..I guess fair value if he fit on a team.

But why are we discussing what a Boston Celtics fan thinks of the raptors roster? Thats like making a post on a Yankee forum about how a Jays fan views the Yankee roster.

[ciueli]

Even if all these guys were 5-10 million dollars cheaper, it's still the same team. It's still built the same way. Let's say we had 50 million in cap right now, where was it going? Don't we want these young kids to prove themselves off the bench? I know this is realgm, but people celebrate and complain way too much in July when the games aren't played, about trades and signings that may or may not work.

This is not a team that ever wants to pay the tax so having a bunch of players making a little more than they really should be hurts us on the aggregate, it squeezes the margins and makes it harder to fill out the bench or keep our draft picks once they are past their rookie contracts. It all adds up, when you are a non-tax team you have to pinch every penny to keep up with the rest of the league. It might be different if we had an ownership willing to dip into the tax every now and again just to retain players, but we don't.

Bit for the 100th time, you can't pinch pennies on every contract ESPECIALLY being the only team in Canada.

People forget this, but on that Open Gym behind the scenes of FVV and his contract negotiations he said something in the car while talking to his agent.

Don't quote be because it's been awhile, but his agent told him what Tor and another team.offered and Fred said that Tor had to BEAT the other offer or he was leaving. He said if it's a match, he was leaving.

So here we had a "home grown, leader of the team, that the Raps gave him his chance AND a has won a Championship in Tor", and matching some random team wasn't enough. We HAD to beat it to get him. He showed his true colors that day.

*this was the negotiation on his last deal he signed with Raps, not the Houston deal.

And as history has shown, we rarely have bad immovable contracts on the books. And often deal that at times were viewed as overpay, ended up underpays.

The example you're using is not really indicative of the other contracts we've signed though, Fred obviously wanted to leave if the numbers were equal because it's Canada tax vs. Texas no state tax situation, not a surprise, throw in the losing situation in Toronto and it was a no-brainer for him, I don't blame him at all for leaving.

Players who are looking for contract extensions or who are RFA don't have that flexibility, there is no reason to overpay players when they have no leverage like they did with IQ, they were just bidding against themselves. It might even have been better to let him leave if another team overpaid him because we had a drop in replacement in Davion Mitchell who looked really good in Miami after we traded him and is on a significantly cheaper contract going forward. Every team has to make hard decisions about where they spend their money and you need a few solid guys on cheap contracts so you can pay your stars the big bucks.

[djsunyc]

just win baby!

[Merit]

Every starter being paid a 20% premium. Change Bill's mind.

Nah. Don’t change bill’s mind. Kendrick Perkins will slap some sense into him.

Bill Simmons is a sad Celtics fan. I’ll leave it at that.

[DG88]

My question is what's the big deal? It's not like the contracts that our starters have are untradeable. Just look at it as percentage of the cap it makes things simpler. Bill seems to be ranting on probably due to the gross cap management of the Bucks to appease their MVP in Giannis.

Even if all these guys were 5-10 million dollars cheaper, it's still the same team. It's still built the same way. Let's say we had 50 million in cap right now, where was it going? Don't we want these young kids to prove themselves off the bench? I know this is realgm, but people celebrate and complain way too much in July when the games aren't played, about trades and signings that may or may not work.

This is not a team that ever wants to pay the tax so having a bunch of players making a little more than they really should be hurts us on the aggregate, it squeezes the margins and makes it harder to fill out the bench or keep our draft picks once they are past their rookie contracts. It all adds up, when you are a non-tax team you have to pinch every penny to keep up with the rest of the league. It might be different if we had an ownership willing to dip into the tax every now and again just to retain players, but we don't.

It's not like we're the Suns who went into the second apron. We're just above the tax line. That can be easily rectified before seasons end just chill.

[dhackett1565]

The Raps have a full 15 man roster with solid depth and with a little maneuvering during the season, will be under the tax. Isn't that the goal for a non title contender?

In the end, if they win, they will shut people up. That's the only way. People dumped on the Pistons and Magic for years until they didn't. People dumped on the Raptors with Lowry/DD until they didn't.

Aren't we currently 1.4mil below the 1st apron? What is our path to getting under the tax?

I have us 500k over the first apron, assuming we sign Martin to an NBA deal. But worth noting the apron is calculated differently from the tax, we are about 2M over the tax line.

2M is pretty easy to move off of, though I personally would be doing so during the summer to reduce the cost of doing so. There is some argument for not doing so - if we have a successful season, some of our players might be hitting incentives, in which case the move to get under the tax would need to be more significant, so making a smaller move now and then having to make another later could be doubly expensive. In other words, if they are going to be in the tax, might as well be IN the tax.

[Tripod]

This is not a team that ever wants to pay the tax so having a bunch of players making a little more than they really should be hurts us on the aggregate, it squeezes the margins and makes it harder to fill out the bench or keep our draft picks once they are past their rookie contracts. It all adds up, when you are a non-tax team you have to pinch every penny to keep up with the rest of the league. It might be different if we had an ownership willing to dip into the tax every now and again just to retain players, but we don't.

Bit for the 100th time, you can't pinch pennies on every contract ESPECIALLY being the only team in Canada.

People forget this, but on that Open Gym behind the scenes of FVV and his contract negotiations he said something in the car while talking to his agent.

Don't quote be because it's been awhile, but his agent told him what Tor and another team.offered and Fred said that Tor had to BEAT the other offer or he was leaving. He said if it's a match, he was leaving.

So here we had a "home grown, leader of the team, that the Raps gave him his chance AND a has won a Championship in Tor", and matching some random team wasn't enough. We HAD to beat it to get him. He showed his true colors that day.

*this was the negotiation on his last deal he signed with Raps, not the Houston deal.

And as history has shown, we rarely have bad immovable contracts on the books. And often deal that at times were viewed as overpay, ended up underpays.

The example you're using is not really indicative of the other contracts we've signed though, Fred obviously wanted to leave if the numbers were equal because it's Canada tax vs. Texas no state tax situation, not a surprise, throw in the losing situation in Toronto and it was a no-brainer for him, I don't blame him at all for leaving.

Players who are looking for contract extensions or who are RFA don't have that flexibility, there is no reason to overpay players when they have no leverage like they did with IQ, they were just bidding against themselves. It might even have been better to let him leave if another team overpaid him because we had a drop in replacement in Davion Mitchell who looked really good in Miami after we traded him and is on a significantly cheaper contract going forward. Every team has to make hard decisions about where they spend their money and you need a few solid guys on cheap contracts so you can pay your stars the big bucks.

So you don't think Can taxes come into play unless it's for UFA'S? Come on.

And really? Davion? He was a cap dump last summer coming off a 5.3pt seasons. It would have been asinine to let IQ go and put Davion in as our starting PG.

Yes Davion had a bounce back year, but what he did in Miami is not sustainable. He is not going to shoot 44.7% from 3 again. And he was still a 10 pt player averaging less assists.than IQ despite playing 4 minutes more a game. You are comparing a starter to a backup.

[dhackett1565]

Contract value is based on a reasonable estimation of what the player is capable of currently and in the future. At the time of his 2020 extension, FVV was looking like a solid starter and not an All Star. 5 years later, I'd say he's not an All Star. Solid starters make around 15% of cap and that's what he was getting. IQ is getting paid like a borderline All Star (19% average) and he isn't that. Add the fact that he wasn't a UFA and it was definitely an overpay. Is there a Canada premium? That could be the case, but it's just as likely to be a Bobby/Masai premium.

Curious, where are you getting 19% = borderline all-star? How many borderline all-stars are there? 12 slots per team, 24 all-stars. Maybe half that many borderline all-stars? So something like the top 40 or so?

The 40th highest paid player this year is making 38M. IQ is down at 53rd. Or is your argument that there are 30 guys who qualify as borderline all-stars (after the 24 guys who are actual all-stars)?

As for Poeltl, if 15% is an average starter, and he's an average starter, then he's underpaid the next two years at 13% and 12% of the cap. So we should be happy about that, right?

That said, average starter should be between the 2nd and 3rd highest paid player on the average team. 2.5x30 is the 75th ranked salary. That's 25M, or more like 16.5%.

So Jak at 13%, 12%, 15%, 15%, 15% over the next 5 years is straight up a steal by your standards.

This all ignores that some rookie scale guys would actually be in the top portion of those lists and push some more expensive guys down into those spots, increasing the expected salary for veteran guys in those roles.

[WuTang_CMB]

I expect us to make a move to duck under the tax. lets see. Salaries being where they are sit fine with me. Team just needs to make a jump next season

[ciueli]

Bit for the 100th time, you can't pinch pennies on every contract ESPECIALLY being the only team in Canada.

People forget this, but on that Open Gym behind the scenes of FVV and his contract negotiations he said something in the car while talking to his agent.

Don't quote be because it's been awhile, but his agent told him what Tor and another team.offered and Fred said that Tor had to BEAT the other offer or he was leaving. He said if it's a match, he was leaving.

So here we had a "home grown, leader of the team, that the Raps gave him his chance AND a has won a Championship in Tor", and matching some random team wasn't enough. We HAD to beat it to get him. He showed his true colors that day.

*this was the negotiation on his last deal he signed with Raps, not the Houston deal.

And as history has shown, we rarely have bad immovable contracts on the books. And often deal that at times were viewed as overpay, ended up underpays.

The example you're using is not really indicative of the other contracts we've signed though, Fred obviously wanted to leave if the numbers were equal because it's Canada tax vs. Texas no state tax situation, not a surprise, throw in the losing situation in Toronto and it was a no-brainer for him, I don't blame him at all for leaving.

Players who are looking for contract extensions or who are RFA don't have that flexibility, there is no reason to overpay players when they have no leverage like they did with IQ, they were just bidding against themselves. It might even have been better to let him leave if another team overpaid him because we had a drop in replacement in Davion Mitchell who looked really good in Miami after we traded him and is on a significantly cheaper contract going forward. Every team has to make hard decisions about where they spend their money and you need a few solid guys on cheap contracts so you can pay your stars the big bucks.

So you don't think Can taxes come into play unless it's for UFA'S? Come on.

It worked pretty well with Gary Trent, he wanted a big contract, we said no, he signed on a minimum contract and he's probably not getting much more than minimums the rest of his career. We have plenty of other players that can fill his spot on the roster, that's one example of when they made the right move instead of just coughing up the money to keep him.

And really? Davion? He was a cap dump last summer coming off a 5.3pt seasons. It would have been asinine to let IQ go and put Davion in as our starting PG.

Yes Davion had a bounce back year, but what he did in Miami is not sustainable. He is not going to shoot 44.7% from 3 again. And he was still a 10 pt player averaging less assists.than IQ despite playing 4 minutes more a game. You are comparing a starter to a backup.

Davion will be a starter in Miami. Did you watch them in the playoffs? He was playing starter minutes and averaged 15PPG while shooting even better on 3s than he did for them during the regular season. When push came to shove and they needed to play their best players, Davion was one of those players, maybe even the 3rd best player on their team. The league is changing and defence is becoming more important, meanwhile our team has three below average defenders at the starting 1, 2, and 3 spots, somehow I don't think that will end well for us.

[PushDaRock]

You do nothing now...see how the team plays and how the season shares out.

We could be buyers at the deadline where we consolidate and take on a little less $.

We could be sellers to take on a little less.

No need to rush into anything now. The amount we are over is easy to get under later in the season.

for sure, there's no rush to do it now unless a deal makes sense

Yeah, we all want to immediately FF to being better, but sometimes you need some patience. We need the RIGHT deal, or we'll just carry on doing our usual routine.

Some people are just in a rush to get under the tax.

We helped the Pacers duck the tax last year and got back a bit of cash and traded them a top 55 protected SRP lol. The cost to get under is not high.

[littlerock2277]

Bill Simmons is a fool, his agenda towards the raptors has always been a werid one. He is complaining that we spread our cap space between 5 players but then talks about us giving up OG and siakiam? Does he not realize they both got max contracts? If they stayed with us imagine our cap being tied to 3 players OG , pascal and Barnes. That situation would have been a lot worse. All of these contracts are moveable if that time ever comes up. They should have waited until the season began clearly we are trying to compete.

[sidsid]

What makes you think they wanted to do more this off season? After the Ingeam acquisition i wasn't really expecting any big moves. Sure they were shopping RJ, but thought they'd only move him for the right deal

That's the whole deal, though. The "right move" is looking more and more like attaching an asset to get off his salary.

Denver has been waiting many years for a "right move" on MPJ, who has killed their ability to retain other valuable players, or add more. And that's with having a bargain contract in Gordon on the books. That's not because they didn't want to move on from MPJ, they just couldn't get anything other than garbage contracts until they were able to attach an unprotected 1st to move off his cap killing deal.

These are costly constraints on team building. They're not as easy to identify because we're not privy to all the "can't do this because of that" discussions, and they're not all as obvious as Bradley Beal.

MPJ makes $10 million more annually and has a much more significant injury history. His 3 point shootingvmakes him fit as role player but im not dure hes better than RJ (RJs efficiency plummeted with Scottie on the bench this year, just like MPJ falls apart without Jokic). Plus Denver is in win now mode and can't afford to wait. Next off season RJ is gonna be an expiring.

This is more of an example, and yes, being contenders heightens the consequences (we're talking about maneuvers under the tax as a lottery team as opposed to blowing a hole in it and trying to sign veterans for a chip run).

But we already have threads about the potential consequences of the salary bloat. Whether to keep/move Ochai, Gradey or Walter. Ochai, a useful 3&D guard needing a contract next year can very well be the consequence of the salary problems this FO created. You don't want to be forced into actions if you're an FO, you like to be able to dictate and pick and choose.

[StopitLeo]

You can’t look at absolute dollars or even AAV because of how contract salaries are tied to the cap when signed. The more meaningful comparison is looking at what %cap the salary represents.

Poeltl’s current salary is 11.8% of the cap. The extension takes it to 14.3% of the cap and it tops out at 15.1% in the final year. A starting centre being paid 15% of the cap is completely reasonable.

The Raptors are actually quite smart with how they structure contracts because they are often flat or with less than maximum raises such that the %cap they represent decreases over the term of the contract. Take IQ’s deal—his $32.5M salary it 21% of the cap this year, which one can argue is on the high end based on what he has produced, especially given the injuries. However, his salary %cap declines to a projected 15.8% in the final year.

[Dalek]

I expect us to make a move to duck under the tax. lets see. Salaries being where they are sit fine with me. Team just needs to make a jump next season

Not just tax, but we have severe roster imbalance:

Is Jamal Shead really the back-up PG? He isn't a great playmaker, and overrated as a defender.
How do we give minutes to Gradey, RJ, Ja'Kobe, Ochai, Alijah, Jamison and AJ who all are SGs?
The Mamu signing is fine but he is a PF and not a C full-time. Poeltl sits we are tanking.

[WuTang_CMB]

I expect us to make a move to duck under the tax. lets see. Salaries being where they are sit fine with me. Team just needs to make a jump next season

Not just tax, but we have severe roster imbalance:

Is Jamal Shead really the back-up PG? He isn't a great playmaker, and overrated as a defender.
How do we give minutes to Gradey, RJ, Ja'Kobe, Ochai, Alijah, Jamison and AJ who all are SGs?
The Mamu signing is fine but he is a PF and not a C full-time. Poeltl sits we are tanking.

Guys, we are an unknown team at the moment. We just started adding young players to the roster. We added a few more in CMB and AM. Let's really see where we are at this season and hopefully we stay healthy.

We need the depth. I agree with Bobby we are still in talent acquisition mode. In 12 months, we re-evaluate.

[canada_dry]

Yeah but that's kinda his shtick. Even when we were good. It keeps ratings and interactions high.

I like his podcast. Hes a good listen. I just dont take anything Raptors related he says seriously.

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[MEDIC]

Here are some notable PGs near quickley's salary range

30-40m
-Derrick White
-Fred Van Vleet
-Tyler Herro
-Jrue Holiday
-Jalen Brunson
-Jalen Suggs
-Lamelo
-Tyrese Maxey
-Darius Garland
-Ja Morant


I dunno - his production shows he isn't exactly an overpay like an OG Anunoby is.

The real danger is really on Barnes, Ingram and Quickley, if they are failures next season we will have 3 toxic contracts we won't be able to get rid of.

Barrett has gotten unnecessary hate from this board for reasons I will never understand.

I would take most of those guys over Quick though. I am sure there are also guys in the next tier down that I would also take

[Mack11]

None of our contracts are untradable. We thought the bargnani contract was toxic and we managed to get rid of it..theres always gonna be takers in the NBA. It seems like Booby's strategy is to lock everybody up and if they dont work out, he thinks he can get max value for them. Lets see how the cap guru can get outta this one