Trade value: Courtney Lee

Narf · Post #1 » by **Narf** » Fri Mar 2, 2012 6:45 pm

Hi, Timberwolves fan here. I didn't see anything on the first page but I checked before I made this thread.

I'm just gauging Courtney Lee's trade value. IMO he's going to get a bigger offer as a RFA than Houston is going to want to pay for a backup. But I was curious if that's what Houston fans think, and what kind of value you'd want back for him.

For instance, if Boston was rebuilding would you take Ray Allen for Thabeet's corpse + Lee? Or would you rather have Lee for the rest of the year and try to resign him?

How much would it take Minnesota to pry him off of you? (Assuming of course there isn't a trade for Martin). Would something in the realms of Memphis's 2013 protected pick (eventually becomes unprotected) + Wayne Ellington (average defender, good 3 point shooter...basically a poor man's Courtney Lee) be good value for him?

Just looking for input. Thanks in advance.

HTown_TMac · Post #2 » by **HTown_TMac** » Fri Mar 2, 2012 7:19 pm

We're looking for Lee to be our starter. Kevin Martin almost has to go.

LarsV8 · Post #3 » by **LarsV8** » Fri Mar 2, 2012 7:44 pm

^ I don't think that is accurate at all.

I wouldn't be surprised at all if both are here long term.

@Minny fan, its unlikely Lee is moved. Only moves that Houston makes is a mass consolodation of talent into one good rotation piece for the Rockets.

rocketseagles07 · Post #4 » by **rocketseagles07** » Fri Mar 2, 2012 8:18 pm

Patterson and Lee could both be starters so their value is higher than your average bench player. I think it's a lot more likely that we move k-mart like t-mac said...

LarsV8 · Post #5 » by **LarsV8** » Fri Mar 2, 2012 9:25 pm

The only reason Martin was moved the first time was because Gasol/Nene is a monster front court and would made us much much better.

The organization is not in a hurry to move Martin.

HTown_TMac · Post #6 » by **HTown_TMac** » Fri Mar 2, 2012 10:29 pm

LarsV8 wrote:The only reason Martin was moved the first time was because Gasol/Nene is a monster front court and would made us much much better.

The organization is not in a hurry to move Martin.

I believe we are.

moofs · Post #7 » by **moofs** » Fri Mar 2, 2012 10:38 pm

Hurry, no. Priority, yes.

Narf · Post #8 » by **Narf** » Fri Mar 2, 2012 11:24 pm

OK, so you do see Lee as your future starter.

Well that answers my question. I assume he'll get $8-9 mil a year in free agency and Houston will match then.

Thanks for the info

x- · Post #9 » by x- » Fri Mar 2, 2012 11:41 pm

I do see Lee as the future starter, but I don't think that's a given. I think the Rockets see him as a future Rocket.
Whether that's him starting or coming off the bench in some kind of 20-30mpg role will depend on what/who is available and what makes the most sense to us.

I do not think he will get $8-9mil a year and if he does I do not expect us to match.

I think we'll sign him to a multi-year deal in the $5-7M neighborhood.

Narf · Post #10 » by **Narf** » Fri Mar 2, 2012 11:56 pm

Oops, I meant $7-8 not $8-9 million
IMO he has as much value as Afflalo, so I would expect a similar contract to his.

x- · Post #11 » by x- » Sat Mar 3, 2012 12:14 am

Narf wrote:Oops, I meant $7-8 not $8-9 million
IMO he has as much value as Afflalo, so I would expect a similar contract to his.

Yeah, I think Lee is in the same boat as guys like Afflalo and Wes Matthews...

However, Lee is a little shorter than both guys (he's like 6' 4 1/2 on a good day) and Morey is pretty good when it comes to negotiating contracts.
I do not think we'll offer Lee more than ~$6M/year.
If he get's $7M/year from another team, I guess we might match anyway, but I do not expect him to get that kind of offer from us.

Narf · Post #12 » by **Narf** » Sat Mar 3, 2012 12:34 am

I wouldn't be surprised to see the Wolves offer him $7-7.5 mil starting with the standard 4% increase a year. Basically $7.5-$8 mil a year on average. Lee is exactly what we need, a good defender and 3 point shooter. Everything else is pretty much in place. Unfortunately I don't see a more realistic option for us right now.

Guy986 · Post #13 » by **Guy986** » Sat Mar 3, 2012 1:13 am

If Courtney Lee gets 7-8 million starting salary for 4 years with 5% increase, good riddance. No way Morey match that.

moofs · Post #14 » by **moofs** » Sat Mar 3, 2012 1:23 am

If anyone offers Lee much more than 6m, he needs to be S&T'ed, offloaded for picks, or allowed to walk (which would hurt, because he's too good of an asset to lose for nothing).

Let's look at it in terms of this year. He's produced 1/10 of our wins ("there goes moofs again with his damned WP48 again..."). In a standard year, you need to win 60+ to have a good shot at the title. Across an 82 game schedule, if he plays the 25mpg he's playing now, he should produce about 6 wins (701 / 28 * 82 * .14 / 48). The NBA salary cap in 2012 is $58.68 million, and due to player salaries having stagnated for 3 straight years, I wouldn't expect it to go up more than 1% tops per year. As he's 27, this would mean that on a 3-4 year contract, the cap sound be around 60-60.5m by the time it's up. Given that he's 27, his production should do almost nothing but slide from this point on, albeit slowly (let's go with a VERY modest 2%, but we're probably looking at closer to 4%). So if he's worth 5.86m ((58.68 + .5) * 5.987 wins / 60 wins) = 5.9m next year, he'd be worth ((58.68 + 1) * (5.987 wins *.98) / 60 wins) = 5.83m the year after and ((58.68 + 1.5) * (5.987 wins *.96) / 60 wins) = 5.76m in the third year. UNFORTUNATELY NBA contracts are typically backloaded with 3% raises, so we're looking at 17.49 * .3 = 5.25m, 17.49 * .33 = 5.77m, x * .37 = 6.47m in year 3. Basically, if someone STARTS him at 7m, they're paying about 30% too much. Is he worth that level of overpayment? If you do that across your entire roster, you'd probably end up paying pretty close to 100m after the luxury tax hit, so really you should save overpaying for the guys that really get you wins. Also since you've cleared up cap space for winning in the first two years, you'd better have assembled a pretty viable roster by y2 or you're going to have that much more trouble (1.5m more for .25 less wins) finding space and ways to win in y3.

And all that's all before accounting for VORP, which frankly I can't really think of how it should be done. i.e. he's taking up 1/10 of the salary cap, and 54% of the minutes at his position, what do the other positions have to produce in order for us to hit 60 wins? There probably needs to be some sort of adjustment for that. (and we DEFINITELY need a guy who can produce in the 14-20 win range)

(it also doesn't take into account that he's playing about 40% above his average career production this year - in a smaller, more likely to be inaccurate, sample - which means that even the estimate I have above is likely high, which means that we'd probably need to offer close to the 4-4.5m that i'd guesstimated before I ever wrote any of the rest of these calculations...)

Narf · Post #15 » by **Narf** » Sat Mar 3, 2012 1:33 am

I'm going to disagree with you on value slightly moofs. IMO defense is not counted properly in VORP or WP48. As a Wolves fan I'm going more on reputation than knowledge. But if Lee is in the top 10% in the league as a defender then his real value is higher than his offensive production.

Further more, his value varies slightly by team need. Minnesota needs a good defender and 3 point shooter at SG as it has penetrators and a post scorer. So Lee's value is slightly higher because of his fit.

Minnesota also thinks it has the talent to be contenders in a couple years with Adelman as coach, and is probably willing to up it's salary to closer to $70 mil going forward (the Luxury tax level). So that alters the formula as well.

Plus I would argue that the "slide" doesn't really start for a player like Lee until about 30. But that's just semantics.

Edit: But I do agree that he is playing better in this contract year and might fall back to earth a bit next year. Which is a risk anyone signing him will be taking.

MaxRider · Post #16 » by **MaxRider** » Sat Mar 3, 2012 1:41 am

Adelman likes Martin more than Lee
how about Martin for Beasley straight up

Narf · Post #17 » by **Narf** » Sat Mar 3, 2012 1:44 am

Oh, and one last point.

The Wolves are underpaying for Rubio due to his rookie contract. That means they have more money available to overpay a bit on a guy like Lee for 3-4 years. I would argue that Derrick Williams will be an underpaid player as well (he's starting to show it finally), but that isn't established yet.

Narf · Post #18 » by **Narf** » Sat Mar 3, 2012 1:48 am

MaxRider wrote:Adelman likes Martin more than Lee
how about Martin for Beasley straight up

I think you guys would probably want Anthony Randolph as well, which would be an easy throw in as the Wolves are stacked at PF/C and he isn't going to get any playing time from here on out.

I personally like Beasley a lot, but I would say yes to that deal.

moofs · Post #19 » by **moofs** » Sat Mar 3, 2012 2:52 am

Narf wrote:I'm going to disagree with you on value slightly moofs. IMO defense is not counted properly in VORP or WP48. As a Wolves fan I'm going more on reputation than knowledge. But if Lee is in the top 10% in the league as a defender then his real value is higher than his offensive production.

It's not (defense counted in VORP/WP48), and in my opinion assists aren't remotely valuated properly by any stat/system. If you really think about it though, the only additional stats that defense coule captures are deflections and opp. Shooting %. Most deflections are probably captured by steals, but oppsht% could be significant. We'll say he may be worth 1.5-1.65 this year and 1.1-1.3 in a normal year, being generous.

Narf wrote:Further more, his value varies slightly by team need. Minnesota needs a good defender and 3 point shooter at SG as it has penetrators and a post scorer. So Lee's value is slightly higher because of his fit.

This is very true and would allow him to be overpriced for trade purposes with the right team, yes.

Narf wrote:Plus I would argue that the "slide" doesn't really start for a player like Lee until about 30. But that's just semantics.

Having both experienced it and from studies, the slide starts at 24/26, continues very slowly through 29/30 (hence only 2%, but 1-3% should work) accelerates through 32-33 (5-10%), then drops off a cliff (20-50%+). The slide can be postponed/slowed by improved shooting and/or learning new techniques at times, but that's best case and temporary.

Narf wrote:Edit: But I do agree that he is playing better in this contract year and might fall back to earth a bit next year. Which is a risk anyone signing him will be taking.

Absolutely.
Turned out I was only really missing one word, but couldn't tell it because my browser wouldn't scroll

Guy986 · Post #20 » by **Guy986** » Sat Mar 3, 2012 3:05 am

Hell no to Martin for Beasley straight up.

Martin is playing below par but Beasley is having an atrocious season. I want atleast a first round pick or 2 involved in any Martin/VBeasley swap.

If the wolves want Courtney Lee they can over pay him via free agency. There is zero chance we match a 7-8 million starting salary for Lee.