Carmelo's contract is actually not that bad at all depending on the team. He's only 32 years old. He only has two more years on his contract. Again, his no trade clause and the offes teams like the Clippers were able to make are not representative of his value. If he was actually available on the open market to everyone the offers would have been very different. So the comparison still doesn't work how you used it in saying "you will get offers with taking another bad contracts just like Phil Jackson tried to trade Melo and in return proposed Jamal Crawford's awful contract. "DieHardFan wrote:I used carmelo comparison because of his contract that makes him one of the worst in the league. CP3 will be next Carmelo the moment he got his 200M+ contract with or without trade-clause. He's aged and severely declining, injured and league-wide well known that he's not the player take your team deep in the playoffs. So typical.
He's on a way to became a very expansive role player. Expensive like biggest in the history. As you said very well, yeah there are a lot of suitors with the way contracts been spreaded around the league last 2 years. A lot players got big contracts but it's not that big compare to the salary cap rate. Some of them have great value, some haven't.
But still l i don't see a way those teams trying for CP3 since he will be the most expensive player of all time while only returning a top 30 player value for maybe one year? or 2 year max. Then at 2019 summer, he may not even a top 50 impactful player when there is still 3 year remaining in his contract. Eating like %40 of Cap. By far the worst situation. You can handle 23M of Parsons yearly much easily according to 40M of CP3. Next year at 2020, 43 M? When 2021 summer came up, there is gonna be 47M reason of CP3 is a worst contract!! incredible... Even for 102M salary cap.
I don't think any teams with actual value buying that at all. Maybe there are some senaky gm's trying to getting some several 1st round picks from us and dumping some Parsons type smaller bad contracts along with another role player.. which is a definition of bad move that puts as cripple the last 3 or 4 year exactly. There is no good to Clippers with CP3 and 200M together.
On the other hand, JJ.Redick even for 18M per year could be moved before CP3 imo. Some veteran teams could find some young rookie and free themselves from the veteran who holds the starter role before kind of type deal and can generate a needs like Shooter JJ. At the and JJ is a role player and can be traded with another one. CP3 looking to paid like one of all-time greatest while he is just strictly becoming another role player in this team.
I have difficult times searching for optimism and just couldn't found any.
I do agree that a 5 year max contract on Paul will be a lot. That will end when he is 36 years old. While Chris Paul could likely seek the max starting salary, will he be able to get the maximum amount of years at his age? Probably, but who knows. It's maybe possible that if he wants the maximum amount of years he will have to settle for a lower total / yearly contract, and if he wants the maximum yearly amount he will have to settle for fewer years, but if he has a good agent that won't happen. The agent will just cite the examples that I'm going to point out soon.
You have to think of the logic teams will apply. A team with few large contracts or a team with two role players on decent contracts will say "what's the difference between paying Chris Paul $40 million to win us more games than paying Deng and Mozgov $34 million?". Or paying Asik, Solomon Hill, Ajinca and Moore $34 millon? Most teams will be paying a combined amount of Paul's contract to multiple players who don't give the equal on court value. For the Clippers, you leverage that and trade Paul and then ask for a draft pick or two back.
Also remember that the salary cap is not staying at $102M. This is how Chris Paul's contract would work:
17-18: 32 years, $36.05M - 35% of 103M cap
18-19: 33 years, $38.75 - 36% of 108M cap
19-20: 34 years, $41.46 - 38% of 109M cap
20-21: 35 years, $44.16 - 39% of 114M cap
21-22: 36 years, $46.87 - ???? (not sure about projections for this year)
Paul is a skills player, his game is not based on athletic ability, but father time catches up to everyone. In terms of longevity he will be in the mold of players like Steve Nash, John Stockton, Sam Cassell, and Jason Kidd who extended his career by becoming a good shooter. Based on similar skills based PG's he can be at the same level he is now until 34-35 years old, and even at 36 years old he would still be good. Remember that Nash and the Suns won 54 games and made the WCF when Nash was 35 and he put up 17/3/11 in the season and averaged 18/3/10 in the playoffs. Remember that Sam Cassell was 36 years old when he was the second best player on the 05-06 Clipper team and was 34 years old when he averaged 20/3/7 and helped Minnesota get to the WCF. The question though is of course whether you want to pay him that much money for that production, and it certainly would depend on the team and their situation.
History shows that a player like him would not untradeable though, and while you would have to take back another contract or two in order to at least match contracts, you would be the ones in the drives seat when it comes to asking for extra value. Let's give an actual real life example of the exact same situation.
- Jason Kidd in 03-04 at 30 years old signed a 6 year / $103.6M contract with New Jersey. The salary cap back then was $43.8M. Kidd's salary started at $13.2M which was 30% of the salary cap. In 07-08, Kidd was 34 years old. He was making $19.7M. The salary cap was $55.6M, so he was making 35% of the salary cap. Kidd was traded to the Mavericks for Devin Harris and two first round picks (among other players, but this was the main part of the trade). The Mavericks traded for two more seasons of Kidd with him making 35% and 36% of the cap at 34 and 35 years old and the Nets got the extra value, not Dallas. The Nets didn't have to "dump" him to them because he was going to be making 35-36% of the cap the next two seasons at 34/35 years old.
The issue is that you're thinking of the big number of "dun, dun dun" 35% of the salary cap, but you have to remember that an MLE player is taking up 9% of the salary cap right now. Teams only have to trade 120% of the players contract. When Paul is making $41 million, a team only needs to send out $34 million. A team willing to improve for a year or two to try and win it all will trade an Allen Crabbe type player making $19-20 million, an MLE level player like (Solomon Hill, Austin Rivers, etc) making $10-11 million, and a guy like Wesley Johnson making $6 million (combined $36-37 million), and a draft pick or two for two more seasons of a Chris Paul who is probably still putting up 16-18 ppg / 9-10 apg with a TS% >58% even if he can't keep up with all the young PG's anymore. Actually as the Clippers you're also asking for a decent young player like Devin Harris who Dallas got along with matching contracts and picks.