Wizenheimer wrote:Dame Lizard wrote:As much as I'd love Nurkic @ $8m per annum and Simons @ $12m per annum, I think Nurkic will get $13-14m per and Simons $25m per.
I'd say your number for Nurkic is probably right...maybe even a bit high
for a little bit I was thinking Ant might get 25M. Then I started to think about the reality that his hype is way higher in Portland than it is elsewhere; and that Blzer fans are a lot more excited about Ant than NBA front offices. And that 25M for 4th year guard who has only had a 25 game stretch of good games when the games didn't matter to his team.
so I revised my estimate downwards. Then, I actually took the time to look at teams that might have 25M in cap-space (there are only 2-4, at most, maybe less). Then I looked at their rosters....
for instance, at guard:
* San Antonio has Dejounte Murray (all-star PG), Keldon Johnson, Lonnie Walker Jr, Josh Richardson, Joshua Primo, & Devin Vassel
* Indiana has Malcolm Brogdon, Tyrese Haliburton, Buddy Hield, TC McConnell, & Chris Duarte
* Orlando has Cole Anthony, Jalen Suggs, Terrence Ross, RJ Hampton,, Markelle Fultz and say they want to re-sign Gary Harris
* Detroit would have to renounce the rights to Marvin Bagley to even approach 25M in space (he has a 28M cap-hold). But if they re-sign him for say, 15M, the Pistons would only have 12-15M in space. Besides that, They have Cade Cunningham, Killian Hayes, Cory Joseph, Hamidou Diallo, & Frank Jackson at guard
right there, that's the potential market for a 20M+/year deal for Simons....those 4 teams. Every one of those teams are absolutely loaded at PG. So they'd have to want to offer a major contract to an undersized SG who plays poor defense and only flashed 25 games of semi-brillance, for a bad team, in 4 years in the league. I wouldn't make sense. Now obviously, every off-season some team does something that doesn't make sense and all it would take is one GM to go bonkers about Simons and Billy-King-Allen-Crabbe Portland.....but that is very unlikely
something else too: say what you will about Cronin's deadline trades, but one thing they accomplished was clearly demonstrate that Portland had every intention of re-signing Simons. The first couple of days of the off-season are critical and I have even more doubts that any team would want to tie-up their cap-space for 3 days only to have the Blazers match
personally, I don't think Nurk's market is much more than the full-MLE; and I think Ant's is less than 20M (and I could be completely wrong). What I'm hoping is that Cronin doesn't repeat the mistake Olshey made, several times, and that's bid against himself
You've outlined really good logic Wiz, which I agree with. However, I feel that Simons and Nurkic wouldn't have agreed to rest out the remainder of the season (helping the tank) if they hadn't agreed an in-principle contract with the Blazers, as it's not a good look for a free agent to have missed the last third of the season with injury.
So if that is true, the contract would also have to be attractive enough for them to 'accept' then. Unless Portland offered them a reasonable floor and said "we'll guarantee you an offer of this no matter what happens this offseason, but feel free to entertain other more lucrative offers too".
