basketballwacko2 wrote:R-DAWG wrote:loserX wrote:
My thoughts exactly. If the Hornets believe Ball is the real deal (regardless of whether others agree: some do and some don't) then a wing who can shoot and serve as secondary playmaker is exactly the kind of piece you want next to him. In that sense it's a good move.
But not for $30M/yr for 4 years. Yee-ikes. Charlotte is *just* kicking off a rebuild and this is absolutely not the right time to pay that much money, for that long, for that age.
In fairness to Charlotte, their books are pretty empty going forward. Going into next season, they have 8 players under contract, including Hayward for $71MM, so about $37MM in cap space to play with, less whatever hold for their first round pick. Rozier is their only non rookie scale player outside of Rozier, and is expiring. So even if they are overpaying GH by 5-7MM per year, they have so much flexibility going forward that it likely won't matter for offseason 2 and 3 of the contract (this being offseason 1). The last year can be some cause for concern, but it's an expiring deal at that point.
Don't forget about cap holds, they'll need to resign Devonte Graham the way he played in 2020 I'd think he should be resigned. I don't know why they drafted Ball and didn't trade down. I think they could have done a lot better. Then there's this crazy signing.
I said in a thread last week that the fiscal idiocy of NBA GM's should not be underestimated. It reminds me of the Govt spending billions and trillions of someone else's money. Treat it like it's your own money and you become a lot more careful with it.
Good point one the cap hold. Not sure how high Graham's is because his salary is low, but bird rights have all sorts of quirks. Still though, could have offset that with a Rozier dump which shouldn't have been too hard in the last year of his deal.
IDK, with Zeller and Batum each being expire feels like there was definitely a chance to do this without the stretch provision. If you're signing Hayward then you're at least going for it on competing to some degree and think they could have set themselves up better to do so.