dougthonus wrote:League Circles wrote:We're probably saying different things here and you're ignoring my comments on sequencing. You said waiting til rfa would make it more likely that he signed our deal. All I'm saying is once AK knew that Patrick would agree to this deal before rfa, unless he was willing to risk tons of reputation damage by potential withdrawing the offer and downgrading it to an Okoro type offer, AK could only do worse for the Bulls by letting Patrick go into FA relative to the deal he signed. Maybe you're saying he should have done that (pulled the offer and replaced it with a lesser one). I've always said the Bulls just shouldn't have offered /agreed to the deal they did at all. But I don't think they should have lowered the offer after it was made.
Withdrawing the offer isn't relevant. The problem was making any offer at all. If he made no offer and let it play out, we get an Okoro like offer. Whatever risks there were in letting it play out seemed minimal up front and with hindsight seemed like they definitely wouldn't have panned out.
Letting Patrick go, at this point, would not be worse than what we did. As it stands now, the only thing worse we could have done was sign Pat to an even bigger deal. That of course could change around in another year if Pat improves, but right now that seems like the only worse outcome.Believing on a player or not is never a binary thing. I think the Bulls, like you, believed Patrick could be a rotation combo forward in a 3 and D role, and that if that's all he ever was, they could grudgingly live with his new contract at least marginally over losing him for nothing. I said I didn't think they've been a "big believer" in him since his rookie year. They obviously thought he could be a star when they drafted him. I see no evidence that they've felt this way for the last couple years at least. Teams including the Bulls have been giving out 4 and 5 year deals forever to guys they don't project to bein their top 3. The list is very long.
I agree it is not a binary thing. However the extent of belief is generally considerable to go 5 years. As a comparison, they clearly didn't believe in Coby / Ayo enough to go 5 years. It is generally not common to go 5 years / Player Option of a player in Pat's price range as a percentage of the salary cap. In this past year, he was the only such player.Again, belief in a player isn't binary. The Bulls and every other team have pre-negotiated with non core rotation guys forever. You have no evidence that he "bent over in every way possible."
I have the evidence of the factual outcome of every other free agent last year and the actual decisions of every general manager. Your belief is based on things you have decided philosophically are true and backed up only by your philosophical beliefs.I'm actually not sure who or what you're referring to lol. IMO, here are all the bona-fides that the Bulls have brought in to potentially compete with Patrick in recent years after they drafted him at #4 overall and started him all 71 of his games as a rookie:
Demar Rerozan
Alex Caruso or Lonzo Ball (it was never possible that both of them and Patrick would all be starting)
Matas is the first meaningful asset that as brought in to compete with Pat. Caruso, Lonzo, DeMar ended up sort of competing with Pat in some ways, but none were brought in to compete with him. They all maybe took some minutes because Pat was lousy, but he started along side all those guys.Agreed. I don't think his strategy is to deliberately sign guys to top of market. I think he had unwarranted fear that 18 mil flat for 5 years wasn't going to be top of market. He also thought Vuc's current downsized deal wasn't going to be top of market, or at least had unwarranted fear that it wouldn't be. THAT is the problem. There's zero evidence that he's super high on either guy. He just (wrongly) believes it's better asset management to commit even to guys he's lukewarm on. Smh
Both those contracts seemed top of market when they were made and turned out that way, so maybe he's just really bad. Of course, I believe we both think that, so arguing which way he is really bad doesn't really matter much.
We mostly agree, but just to note:
1. The Bulls simply did not have the option to avoid his situation last summer in a meaningful way because he got injured for the year not long before the trade deadline last season. IMO it's highly likely they'd have explored trade offers if he hadn't.
2. For whatever unwise reasons, AK obviously thought there was a decent chance he'd get a better offer than what we agreed to if he got to RFA.
3. 5 years for a guy like him at his range isn't common, but neither are effectively decreasing annual salaries as a fraction of the cap.
4. You're saying he bent over in every way possible without having the faintest clue what the 2nd to final offer was made, or by which side in the negotiation. For all we know, it's entirely plausible that his agent was firm on "4 year starting at 20 million with max annual raises" and AK is like "nah, 4 years starting and staying at 18, and we'll throw in a player option 5th year. Take this deal now or we'll withdraw the offer and negotiate with Demar or whatever instead". You're presuming that the negotiations started at a lower point and AK acquiesced into some combination of more years, more money, and player option. I'm not presuming anything. All I'm saying is that we can criticize the deal based on other factors than presuming that he bent over in every way. He might have shrewdly negotiated Patrick's agent to come down on various elements of the deal ....... While still making a mistake in having offered it at all (as wel agree).
