Post#506 » by Hornet Mania » Wed Jul 9, 2014 12:23 pm
Crazy overpay. Hayward's not a bad player to have, and a good fit for us, but you don't want to be one of the ignorant teams that tosses around the max so easily. None of them have ever prospered from that. And we threw in the trade kicker too. So if I understand how that works, at some point down the road if Hayward is mediocre we can't even unload him without talking the other team into eating the cost of the kicker too? As one of the Jazz fans said earlier, his agent is a smoother operator no doubt about it.
My preferred scenarios in descending order:
1. The Jazz match, we get nothing: We tried to make a splash, it didn't work out, but we also dodged the overpay bullet. Save our cap space for next season when Big Al, Kemba and to a lesser extent Biz all come calling for a raise. This imo is probably in the best interest of the team.
2. The Jazz decline to match, we take Hayward outright: It's a crazy overpay, but hey, he's an upgrade over Hendo. Jordan is a man of his word, this is a big splash in free agency. Team shows commitment to winning. I start praying Hayward makes the doubters eat crow and he puts up somewhere in the neighborhood of 20/5/5 on good percentages.
3. We S&T MKG for Hayward: This is the doomsday scenario, and I cannot stress enough how glad I am at the insiders insisting we've had no trade talks with the Jazz. I know some folks here aren't high on MKG, but you don't send out lottery talent AND overpay at the same time unless you're just begging to regret that move down the road. Swapping Hayward for MKG in the starting lineup could very well be a lateral move, with the offense rising and defense suffering. The only path to true improvement with Hayward, imo, is to pair him with MKG which fixes our spacing issues while also retaining a player to chase around the opponent's best wing. Sending out value, MKG or even Zeller qualify in my eyes, for an overpay would make it very likely we don't improve but pay more for the privilege of idling. That is what bad teams do, let's not be a bad team.
Sorry for the wall of text...I'm going to take a deep breath now. Hope this all works out in our best interests.