Bensational wrote:Wait... As a team that has emerged out of the lottery and into playoff contention with largely the same core from our rebuilding years, how can any Magic fan look at Atlanta and believe that's beyond them? Vuc, Gordon, Fournier, DJ, Ross - they all learned how to win eventually, despite several seasons as bottom feeders. Vuc was 27 before he experienced his first winning season since his rookie year.
And trying to criticise Atlanta for having cap space is one of the most absurd things I've ever heard. "Check out this stupid team with their cap flexibility! Idiots!". WTAF?!
There are few things there pulled from context from my post:
1) Magic are clearly superior to Hawks right now as they win almost twice as many games. What time brings? Well i'm not Nostradamus.
2) Where you have luxury of knowing how Magic roster shaped to be after failed rebuild, Atlanta has benefit of a doubt,despite already being in year 4 of rebuild, with zero progress in most important column made ( win -loss record).
3) salary cap issue is actually legit issue and direct result of poor planning in advance when to have money.
Having $50 000 000 of free cap space in year Derick Favors is best FA ( or fullshing money on Derozan ) you could get isn't smart salary menagment by any streach of imagination. By the time 2021 FA comes around, Hawks with extension of Collins, 2020 and 2021 pick will already be on trajectory of $90-100M without adding
anybody this year, with pending RFA Trae Young. So their roster of the future is already being shaped by salary they are commiting today. ( Much like Magic future was destroyed after comminting salary to Biyombo, Ibaka, Harris and moving Oladipo).
Once again, having "young exiting" roster is all fun and games until they get "they are too young " excuses playing on $6M a year for few years. But 4 years pass by fast, and most rebuilding teams are left with flawed, and not so young,yet overpayed lottery selected players.
If you look just last year who signed max exstension from rookie contracts, it's:
• Ben Simmons, Sixers (5 years, $170 million)
• Jamal Murray, Nuggets (5 years, $170 million)
• Pascal Siakam, Raptors (4 years, $130 million)
Towns 5 years $190M, Booker 5 years $158M, Ingram ( not sure he signed, but has $166M,5 years exstension option).
And most notorious among them, Wiggins 5 years, $150M of dead cap.
It's crazy money for mostly unproven players with most of them having no team sucess whatsoever. ( Siakam won championship behind Kawhi, this year showed he really isn't that guy, Murray is enjoying sucess now, but mostly behind Jokić). Towns, Wigigins, Booker and Ingram combined for 1 playoff win ( and 5 games total) in their careers, despite being in nba for 4,5 and 6 years.
I was one of people who was famming over "sucess" of 76ers, and lot of people agreed. Look what happend to their "sucess" with 2 stupid decisions. And how they got there? Simple. By flushing salary cap to Embiid and Simmons (perenial allstars), and missmenagment of rest of the assets. Being in position they have no cap space to sign anybody but to overpay players sto stay ( and that God-awful Horford FA decision).
Note * Embiid and Simmons are better basketball players than Trae and Collins*
Once again, having 20-47 record, trajectory of 24 wins season ( not because injuries, but players being suspended for steroids, and taking on injuried players on purpose ), is couple of light years away from having 41-41 or anything close to that record -season. Pretending they have bright future because of inflated stats, cap space they have nobody to use on and lot of unnamed ,yet undrafted players with picks isn't smart. Long term they are betting that 6'1, 180 pounds guard will be healthy and not be black hole on defense and development of players that show virtually nothing in year 1. While within 3 years literally everybody are eligiable for exstensions. Good luck with menaging assets that will devalue each other in battle for personal pockets.
Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans. -John Lennon