Nemanja Bjelica

[MN7725]

how can we afford to bring him back?

I feel like it should be a priority for us, but not sure how we can make the numbers work

Gotta trade the OKC 1st with Dieng to free up cap space realistically.

considering Toronto reportedly couldn't trade Valuncunias with their 1st last offseason

i'm not sure how realistic that is, to get cap space

more likely could get a shorter contract

its just a loaded position across the league, and there will be far less space league wide in 2018 than there was in 2017

[Worm Guts]

Id be down for that

Guys let's not go overboard on Belly here. He's had a nice run here lately but the larger body of work proves his worth. He's not going to get Dieng money, not even close. His high 3 pt shooting % this year might drive his price up a bit, but teams aren't going to be knocking down his door. It would be nice to get Gorgs off the books but hell no to dumping a first round pick. What would you expect to get back for Gorgs and a 1st that would bring back LESS money? Gorgs is a solid player. You trade a 1st and a solid player you're going to get back probably something better than Gorgs, which likely would cost you MORE than Gorgs...

I like Dieng but do think his contract is crippling us. Getting him off the books should be a priority, especially with Patton waiting in the wing. As far as the 1st round pick, I think I'd prefer Bjelica than whatever prospect we get with a later pick

We really can't just afford to be giving away picks either with the need for cheap talent. I'm not sure about the luxury tax situation, but we may be able to afford Belly and Dieng together next season, although we would definitely need clear some salary next offseason.

[wolfen]

Id be down for that

Guys let's not go overboard on Belly here. He's had a nice run here lately but the larger body of work proves his worth. He's not going to get Dieng money, not even close. His high 3 pt shooting % this year might drive his price up a bit, but teams aren't going to be knocking down his door. It would be nice to get Gorgs off the books but hell no to dumping a first round pick. What would you expect to get back for Gorgs and a 1st that would bring back LESS money? Gorgs is a solid player. You trade a 1st and a solid player you're going to get back probably something better than Gorgs, which likely would cost you MORE than Gorgs...

I like Dieng but do think his contract is crippling us. Getting him off the books should be a priority, especially with Patton waiting in the wing. As far as the 1st round pick, I think I'd prefer Bjelica than whatever prospect we get with a later pick

I don't think it's crippling us. Over-paid, ya, but not crippling. We could sign Bjelly for a reasonable deal, keep Dieng, sign a mid level free agent and still afford to keep our big 3 around long term. As long as you've got some cheap contracts on the team (like Patton), you're ok. That being said, my preference would be to somehow unload Gorgs this off season but certainly not at the expense of a pick around 20 in the draft. The problem is, when you trade a player it has to work salary-wise. Unfortunately you can't trade a 60 million dollar man for a couple of 2 million dollar men. Teams like to hang onto their expirings until the trade deadline comes mid season to bolster their rosters.

[minimus]

I hope this season we make playoff. Then when everybody is cool to end this drought, use next offseason to unload Dieng maybe even JC, re-sign Bjeli to a reasonable deal, sign Amile, A.Brown, MGH, maybe even Bryson to non-guaranteed multi-year deals. Then re-sign JB.

KAT/Patton
Taj/Bjelica/Amile
JB/Bjelica/Brown
Wiggins/MGH/Bryson
Teague/Tyus

P.S. i wish we find a high IQ player in Europe. Watching Satoransky who was too smart for our wings.

[minimus]

Passing, defending, rebounding. I noticed that it was Tyus who assisted Nemanja in 4th qtr.

Watch on YouTube

[TwolvesFanRome]

Last 5 games as starter
15.5ppg
8.6reb
2.8ass
1.2stl
0.8blk
51% - 48% 3p


Amazing Nemanja!

[Merc_Porto]

I hope this season we make playoff. Then when everybody is cool to end this drought, use next offseason to unload Dieng maybe even JC, re-sign Bjeli to a reasonable deal, sign Amile, A.Brown, MGH, maybe even Bryson to non-guaranteed multi-year deals. Then re-sign JB.

KAT/Patton
Taj/Bjelica/Amile
JB/Bjelica/Brown
Wiggins/MGH/Bryson
Teague/Tyus

P.S. i wish we find a high IQ player in Europe. Watching Satoransky who was too smart for our wings.

Nobody wants Dieng without any incentives. And what you mean by re-sign Bjeli to a reasonable deal ?

10M/12M per year is reasonable?
Also, is more than time for this guy to be a starter.

[minimus]

And what you mean by re-sign Bjeli to a reasonable deal ?

10M/12M per year is reasonable?
Also, is more than time for this guy to be a starter.

Good question. I think that the wrong approach would be overpaing without looking at market. We did it with Dieng, Teague and Wiggins. At some degree Taj. Yes, we might lose him, but I dont know if overpaing Bjelica make any sense. Also Lou Williams deal might be a good indicator of what role player can get. He was not injured, he performed well when he agreed on extension. If Bjelica is okay with similar deal, than we need to resign him AND trade Dieng for a wing.

[wolfen]

And what you mean by re-sign Bjeli to a reasonable deal ?

10M/12M per year is reasonable?
Also, is more than time for this guy to be a starter.

10 mill for Bjelly?????

He'll go back to being a bench player next year and revert to the mean with his play dude. Not to mention he'll probably get injured 1 to 2 times a season. I love Bjelly but I let him go if it's anything more than 5 mil a year. Ersan Ilyasova is a similar type of player at the same age and will be a free agent next year. He makes a whopping 565K and gives you similar play to Bjelly. Ersan certainly won't be signing a 10 mil contract this off season, if the wolves sign Bjelly for 10 mil it will be a worse deal than Gorgs, at least Gorgs stays healthy.

I'd dangle 3-4 mil this summer to both Ilyasova and Bjelly and the first one to take it gets the money...

[shrink]

I think that the wrong approach would be overpaing without looking at market. We did it with Dieng, Teague and Wiggins.

The market for Dieng at the time (he extended in the rich 2016 season) included Mozgov, Biyombo, etc, all lesser players, with less room for growth, and bigger contracts than Dieng. In fact, most considered at the time that Dieng had taken a small haircut to stay with the Wolves, because he liked it here. At the time, the thought was that with the TV money continueing to come in from the 2015 deal, the cap would continue to rise, even after the one-time spike with ignoring cap smoothing. MIN (and all the teams at the time) looked at the current market, but they didn't foresee the big decline in cap space the following year.

Teague was one of four free agent "starter-level" point guards available in free agency (Teague, Lowry, Jrue, George Hill), and Teague argueably got the best contract of that market. In addition, with win-now MIN at the risk of starting the season with a true vet starting PG on the roster, Teague was willing to sign his deal on Day One of free agency. Lowry and Hill got max-ish deals that would have kept us from getting Taj Gibson, and Hill, who signed later, has been a shadow of the player he was last season, and carries so much more risk. Teague also took a 1-2 year shorter deal. Dunc'd On recently ranked Teague as the 13th best PG this season.

It is very common for teams to give max deals to highly-touted lottery youth, hoping they grow into being stars. This has gone on since the invention of the max contract. Sometimes they never get over that hump (Rudy Gay, Derozan), and sometimes we are shocked when a player doesn't get maxxed, because it's more common now than ever before. Wiggins may turn out to be a very bad contract, but few people in the actual NBA (not us internet gurus!) had any illusions that Wiggins wouldn't get the full max.


I would agree with you that all three could become bad deals, but all three were in lockstep with what the NBA market was at the time they were signed.

[shrink]

It's very difficult to determine what kind of free agent contract Bjelica will get, but let's look at the situation.

First, there are only seven teams with projected 2018 cap space ...

LA Lakers $58,367,683
Indiana $32,800,518
Atlanta $29,322,094
Philadelphia $22,853,313
Sacramento $20,742,529
Brooklyn $14,218,938
Chicago $12,579,952

This $190 mil generally goes to the very best players, in order right behind LeBron, until it's used up. With this little money available, less than a dozen of the best free agents will get new contracts funded with cap space, and Bjelica is too far down this list. The rest will be looking at exceptions, mostly either the MLE ($8.5 mil), or the tax-payer MLE ($4.2). In other words, I doubt that Bjelica will be offered a deal with cap space, so the highest first year would be $8.5. MIN only has the t-MLE, but since Bjelica is a restricted free agent, they can choose to match any offer he receives. This would not use up their exception, but since MIN will be over the luxury threshold, they will likely be paying lux taxes on any contract they give him - an $8 mil deal could cost them $22 in real money.

So would MIN let Bjelica go if he got that offer? It's hard to say. Bjelica isn't going to provide $22 mil in production to the Wolves, especially as a bench player with Thibs as coach. However, Thibs really seems to admire Bjelica, and has said many times he is just a "good basketball player," that can do a lot of different things on the court, including learning the SF position. Bjelica (and Towns) are the only really good three point shooters on the team, and they desperately need more spacing. I also think Glen Taylor became more committed to the Wolves again after Flip, and as he gets older, I expect him to be willing to pay lux taxes for a team that is actually competing in the playoffs.

My guess is that we would certainly match the $4.2, and may even match the $8.5. However, it's possible even that won't be enough. The wild card here would be if Bjelica decides to just head back to Europe. I hope we see him back on the team.

[Merc_Porto]

And what you mean by re-sign Bjeli to a reasonable deal ?

10M/12M per year is reasonable?
Also, is more than time for this guy to be a starter.

10 mill for Bjelly?????

He'll go back to being a bench player next year and revert to the mean with his play dude. Not to mention he'll probably get injured 1 to 2 times a season. I love Bjelly but I let him go if it's anything more than 5 mil a year. Ersan Ilyasova is a similar type of player at the same age and will be a free agent next year. He makes a whopping 565K and gives you similar play to Bjelly. Ersan certainly won't be signing a 10 mil contract this off season, if the wolves sign Bjelly for 10 mil it will be a worse deal than Gorgs, at least Gorgs stays healthy.

I'd dangle 3-4 mil this summer to both Ilyasova and Bjelly and the first one to take it gets the money...

Let's agree to disagree.

[minimus]

Ilyasova is done. Also he is not Bjelica type player and never been.

[minimus]

https://www.canishoopus.com/2018/3/16/17096846/nemanja-bjelica-stars-as-average-joe-on-defense-nba-timberwolves

[Mattya]

You can never tell with RFAs, but I sure hope Bjelly isn’t getting more than Lou Williams.

[TaylorTag]

For the betterment of the franchise, I think the Wolves should put a premium on retaining Belly. Here's my logic:

For all of this year, Belly has been the primary backup to Gibson. With Dieng being the only other guy on the squad who can play PF (outside Butler when we go small ball), Belly has had to spend significant minutes at the 4. However, I think he is ideal as a 3, at least in our offense. Moreover, he is the perfect compliment to Wiggins.

With Patton coming up to the squad full time next season, Thibs will have more flexibility on where to play Belly. He won't have to be a full-time PF when Butler and Wiggins are healthy.

This will allow Thibs to stag Butler and Wiggins, with Belly coming off the bench to replace either of those two. It's crucial that Butler and Wiggins do not play significant minutes together, because they do not compliment each other well and become redundant. With Belly playing 20 minutes at SF and 5 minutes at PF, Belly could shine and make everyone around him better.

It would be the perfect situation for Belly (and Wiggins).

[AirP.]

I sure hope this thread is taking in consideration the luxury tax by retaining Bjelica without moving one of the bigger contracts. Not just for next year the season starting in 2019 when Butler and Towns may be maxed out. This is what happens when you max out players, you start to loose depth unless your owner is willing to go into the luxury tax. I don't think this current roster will be worth doing that.

Also, Butler is up for a renegotiation this summer to up his next year salary to 31 million.

[Popovich]

Well let me summarize Bjelica's case. He was not happy with the money offered by Minnesota, he walked away thinking on going back to Europe where he is more respected and would get better salary for sure. However Divac called him on the phone and persuaded him to stay in USA. First, Divac was expostulating with him importance of staying in NBA, Divac's argument was that going back to Europe is step backwards for any player who played in NBA. This is information which I got from Serbian media, now everything else written here which follows are only my assumptions and personal opinions.

I suppose that Divac also boosted Bjelica's moral and confidence by telling him how he wasn't used in a right way in Minnesota and he promised to him a very different treatment in Sacramento Kings. Finally Divac offered some pretty money for Belly to come to California and Nemanja did agree. IMO Bjelica is overpaid and Divac is a terrible GM.
I am very thankful for Minnesota as they sharpened Nemanja's 3pt shot , he wasn't such a good 3 pt shooter before and now in Serbian national team we have one more weapon, yet I am still concern mostly about Jokić.

Basically Jokić pretty much secured his future in NBA and his life materialistically observed so now there are no any excuses for Nikola not to join NT for this year second round of qualification games for WC. Beside that If Jokić does not appear in NT soon he will lose much of the Serbian fan base support and believe me that although to you Americans this does not play any major role , for the international basketball world this is a big deal and if we do not see Jokić or Bjelica as represents of Serbia, we fans will be very, very disappointed.

PS

I found a newest interview with Bjelica with local sport channel on Serbian language, I will cut and translate scenes which I think you will find interesting and which are in relation to NBA or where Minnesota is mentioned. Expect this video soon.

[mplsfonz23]

Well let me summarize Bjelica's case. He was not happy with the money offered by Minnesota, he walked away thinking on going back to Europe where he is more respected and would get better salary for sure. However Divac called him on the phone and persuaded him to stay in USA. First, Divac was expostulating with him importance of staying in NBA, Divac's argument was that going back to Europe is step backwards for any player who played in NBA. This is information which I got from Serbian media, now everything else written here which follows are only my assumptions and personal opinions.

I suppose that Divac also boosted Bjelica's moral and confidence by telling him how he wasn't used in a right way in Minnesota and he promised to him a very different treatment in Sacramento Kings. Finally Divac offered some pretty money for Belly to come to California and Nemanja did agree. IMO Bjelica is overpaid and Divac is a terrible GM.
I am very thankful for Minnesota as they sharpened Nemanja's 3pt shot , he wasn't such a good 3 pt shooter before and now in Serbian national team we have one more weapon, yet I am still concern mostly about Jokić.

Basically Jokić pretty much secured his future in NBA and his life materialistically observed so now there are no any excuses for Nikola not to join NT for this year second round of qualification games for WC. Beside that If Jokić does not appear in NT soon he will lose much of the Serbian fan base support and believe me that although to you Americans this does not play any major role , for the international basketball world this is a big deal and if we do not see Jokić or Bjelica as represents of Serbia, we fans will be very, very disappointed.

PS

I found a newest interview with Bjelica with local sport channel on Serbian language, I will cut and translate scenes which I think you will find interesting and which are in relation to NBA or where Minnesota is mentioned. Expect this video soon.

That's cool, but I think most here won't really miss him much. I didn't think he was aggressive enough, and seemed to shrink under Thibs barking. I wish him well, but he's is going to catch hell when he goes to Philly. Good thing it's only once a season.

[LibertyPrime]

I found a newest interview with Bjelica with local sport channel on Serbian language, I will cut and translate scenes which I think you will find interesting and which are in relation to NBA or where Minnesota is mentioned. Expect this video soon.

Thanks man. I thought we should have resigned him but I guess Thibs had other ideas.