Negative? You dont say? After reading that Im sure gullible people were looking for their gun.
To the contrary, the "gullible" people will hold out hope for this off-season. When the regular season rolls around and we've got the same squad as last year (+/- Boozer or Korver), they'll insist, with a little help from subtle KOC statements, that we've got something in the works for a deal toward the deadline. As the deadline comes and goes, we'll be so ecstatic about competing for a playoff spot that we'll hardly realize our roster hasn't changed in four years.
where i disagree with infection is that AK is just "bad salary." AK is overpaid, there's no question about that. but "bad salary" can't impact a game in that many ways. "bad salary" is tmac earning 23M to sit behind the bench in an armani.
Not quite something I said.
inf, you're wrong here. S&T isn't as complex as you think. i still think it's a long-shot option in boozer's specific case given the math involved (more on that in a sec), but you treat it like you need a team of army engineers to make it work. S&Ts happen.
No, a sign-and-trade isn't as complex as stated, but that will surely be the PR spin, followed by a lot of people repeating as much on these forums.
the math: the S&T option generally works because it benefits everybody. player gets more money, new team gets a player they couldn't have gotten otherwise, old team gets an asset. but those first two are only true if you're talking about a max deal. if you're talking about a max deal, the old team can do max years and 10.5% raises, taking a contract starting at 16M to a much higher total than if there's one less year and 8% raises. but if the player isn't going to command a max salary anyway, then the new team can offset that by just raising the first year salary. in other words, if team X wants to surpass the jazz's offer of a deal starting at 10M with max raises, they'll just offer 12M and get him without surrendering any assets.
I think my original point wasn't the feasibility of a sign-and-trade, but rather that we've narrowed it down to simply "re-sign or walk".
so what does all that mean? boozer's not going to get the max, so the bulls, nets, knicks and heat wouldn't need to give anything up to offer him a similar contract to what the jazz could offer with bird rights. if another team wanted him that DIDN'T have the cap space, then they'd have to explore sign and trade scenarios.
at the end of the day, though, likeliest scenario is that he re-signs or he walks.
Exactly.
not a myth. we'll have to use a decent portion of it to retain matthews. i could make the case that they shouldn't use more than about 3M of it on him, but the fact is, they'll use it, or they'll lose matthews. but you're right, they won't use it to find a quality free agent from another team.
I should have been more specific to emphasize that the mid-level exception will not be used to sign a free agent
from another team, which is precisely correct.
i threw up a little when you made the jarron collins reference. but ya, not a lot of quick fixes here. if our big man picture looks drastically different next year, it will be because of internal improvement.
True, but I was serious about Collins.
also false. look, you're not going to get an allstar w/ trade exceptions, but a lot of teams will find themselves in similar positions to where the jazz were at last year: if we could only get rid of player X, we'll lessen our tax blow, and we'd be willing to surrender these assets to do it. obviously a lot depends on the other pieces in our own salary puzzle, but i guarantee you that any over-the-tax team with guys in that 4-6M salary range will make multiple calls to KOC next season
I just don't see us taking back salary whether it's talented or not. I don't believe we could be offered anything that would improve our competitiveness enough to even have it be a wash financially. We're just trying to weather the storm and our current squad gives us a good shot at making the playoffs, which from a financial perspective is good enough.
