theonlyeastcoastrapsfan wrote:Can I just say that front office habitual water carriers constantly deflect any criticism of the fit, contracts, financial impacts as unfair hate at the players and make appeals to giving the players a break and not piling on, when its not really them that's being critiqued. It's the people who made the decision to give them the contracts, and the people complaining are asking those in charge to fix it. I saw one person say they hated Quick, but that was really atypical. Most of the criticism's are actually at Masai and Bobby. Like If RJ is so important, and IQ not a true PG, why'd we give IQ a five year deal and leave no money for RJ? Why did we draft two SG's while trading OG for two shooting guards.
Why did we extend Poeltl a year earlier than we needed too? Did he and his agent know his back was messed up? why sign Temple at all if we have to cut money?
These are legit questions and important because while process wise present as an ascending team, we already have to cut money. Meaning if IQ and Poeltl's deals can't be moved, where does the money come from to keep RJ, or give extensions to our rookie scale guys? How to de keep building if we're capped out with talent we have. How do we see ourselves improving once we get to the playoffs?
Oh, and Battle should be on the list and may be leading it if Darko wasn't doing Webster PR in his minute management.
It's because a lot of the criticism lacks any real context of current NBA salary structures. People are constantly overstating our bad our cap situation is and how 'toxic' our players are as assets. We don't have a single toxic contract on our books, and everyone is fairly (if slightly over) paid for their production.
We have the 10th best record in the league and we're 12th in total cap allocation. There are 12 teams within +/- $6million of what we're spending, so we're firmly in the middle of the pack spending. We're 24th in the league in spending for next year and have our entire starting five and key bench contributors (aside from Mamu) under contract. We're one Ochai trade away from getting under the cap, and we'll be one of the few teams to have the full Mid-Level exception available in what's looking to be a fairly promising free agent class.
We have all of our picks, and every player on our roster has salaries that are easy to trade in combination for an upgrade, or for multiple lower-level salaries if we need to clear space down the road. People talk about being over the cap like it's some kind of malpractice while ignoring the fact that 28/30 teams operate above the cap. We can afford to keep this same core in place through the whole of next season without worrying about the tax, or we can pivot at any point. We're in a pretty solid place
