Sad thing is that we did have that player, but gave him away to Portland for nothing. What Wes is doing now for Porty is EXACTLY what we need. Good scoring, good shooting, good defense, durability, unselfish play. Yet Jazz were unwilling to pay that guy average League salary. Wanted a steal of a deal. Now we sit here and talk about how nice it would to have a guy who can score and play defense when we had this guy all along and all we had to day is pay him average money. How pathetic is that?
Houston shopping everyone
- Thread starter Beantown
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Sad thing is that we did have that player, but gave him away to Portland for nothing. What Wes is doing now for Porty is EXACTLY what we need. Good scoring, good shooting, good defense, durability, unselfish play. Yet Jazz were unwilling to pay that guy average League salary. Wanted a steal of a deal. Now we sit here and talk about how nice it would to have a guy who can score and play defense when we had this guy all along and all we had to day is pay him average money. How pathetic is that?
Twin Towers
Well-Known Member
Financially it made sense. No way we could of afforded that contract. But at the same time I think that we should of been trying to dump AK's contract to make room for Matthews. Maybe we tried but it didn't seem like it to me.
Matthews was the perfect 2 guard for us. Sucks we had to let him go.
I already mentioned that several times on this board: luxury penalty for Wes this year over Raja and Elson would be only 1.5 mil. And next year, AK is off the books regardless. So, we are not talking about breaking a bank here. We did not keep Wes because KOC is an idiot, not because of AK.
For starters, for the sake of this discussion, Elson makes $884,293 (he's earning the veteran's minimum, so anything he makes past the minimum for a 2nd year veteran is paid by the league and the 2nd year number is all that counts against the cap).
https://www.eskimo.com/~pbender/contracts
Matthews is making $5,765,000 this year and the total combined salaries of Bell and Elson are $3,884,293, which after the tax, the cost difference for the Jazz JUST NEXT YEAR, would be <3.75 million. But that's just the beginning, there's an additional $20 million MINIMUM in total cost difference over the lives of the respective contracts and that's not including whatever possible penalties might be incurred after the new CBA.
The Jazz had a choice between matching an outrageous offer sheet for a 1st year undrafted free agent and filling out the roster for $24 million less. This was also all factored into whether to get Jefferson or not. I wasn't a fan of the Jefferson acquisition myself, but no person in their right mind can look at me with a straight face and say at the time they'd rather have Wesley Matthews than Raja Bell and Al Jefferson. I will say it again, whether or not Matthews turns into the next Kobe Bryant or not, that contract offer was lunacy when it came down. If it works out for the Blazers, it's by serendipity because I don't believe they had the right intentions in mind (they didn't have a GM at the time, they have the money to screw the Jazz, and they tried to screw the Jazz).