Rich4114 wrote:yosemiteben wrote:MasterIchiro wrote:
Okay, disagree. Kupchak shopped him everywhere. He's unmovable because of the contract he signed under Cho not because Kupchak failed to move him. As far as I'm concerned, Kupchak leveraged 18 million (27.5 - 9) to sign Hayward. I'm relieved Kupchak didn't let Cho's unmovable contract stand in the way of adding a player who benefits our rebuild by making everyone around him better. No need to reply. I'm out.
There is no such thing as an immovable contract in the NBA. Time and time again these allegedly immovable contracts are moved, it just takes planning and knowing the market. Mitch knew he was targeting Hayward, knew it was possible he'd opt out, yet had absolutely no plan for what to do with Batum. That's just poor cap management, plain and simple.
Well sure. The Batum contract could have been moved but it would’ve cost us at least a first round pick. I sure as hell wouldn’t be up for that, especially on an expiring and when we aren’t contending which means our picks will at worst be just outside the lottery.
This feels just like the Kemba situation, where we waited until our hand was forced and we lost control of the situation before we looked into how to preserve value. There was no evidence that we had even looked into moving Batum until after we signed Hayward - Bonnell reported that we planned to stretch Batum and we all were sure that stretching Batum was posturing, but now it appears that was the primary plan and then we canvassed the league to see if maybe we could move Batum but we hadn't looked into it in advance and no team was going to help us out when we were desperate.
Would we have needed to send a first if we weren't in a terrible leverage position? Maybe, maybe not, but I'm not willing to accept with the information that we have today that stretching Batum was part of our broader plan that was put in place before FA began. There clearly was no contingency plan in place for the situation where we needed space this FA cycle. That's my problem here. I would be more forgiving and willing to give the benefit of the doubt if it wasn't the second time this has happened under Kupchak.