You're right. Portland doesn't need Wes playing behind Roy. But the way the Jazz played it, a guy like Paul Allen, with his deep pockets, had the funds to make it really hard for the Jazz.
It's how you play poker - and the Jazz suck at it. Just like with Millsap Jazz showed their hand: "we love this player and we're definitely going to match any offer." So of course someone else at the table - who has a bigger stack than you - can afford to stick it to you and make you either lose the hand or make you overpay for it. For all their "no comment"s the Jazz FO suck at hiding their hand. They sit on their hands and slowly bleed their stack away until they start to tilt, and lose even more money overpaying for a hand (Memo, AK).
What would be sweet is if the Jazz were not really in love with Matthews at all - but played it up that they were in order to get someone like Portland to try to stick it to them, and then the Jazz sit back and let Portland keep the overpaid player. FOOLED YOU!!! That's how you're supposed to play. But the FO is clueless.
How to play this now? Memo to Jazz: KNOW WHEN TO FOLD 'EM!!!
A couple of points that I disagree;
- Comparing Millsap's RFA to Wes'. Actually Siler summed this up:
"Millsap was automatic for Jazz to match because he's a big man, with 3 years in the league and was expected to succeed Boozer."
https://twitter.com/tribjazz
- Can you prove me that Millsap does not deserve that contract? He could easily be considered a talented, promising and reliable, multidimensional bigmen, IMO. Do you agree? How many players among centers and power forwards at the same age, can you put the ahead of Millsap?
- Considering that nobody could predict an injury like one happened to Okur (and by the way, he expects to come back opening night) , and considering DArko's, Haywood's contracts ( both length and value wise) and the contracts of every NBA player that is called "bigmen", can you still think Okur is overpaid? (In case you want to compare, Matthews' contract starts with 9.2mil)
- From where, or which of KOCs or any team management member's comments did you get te impression that the Jazz will do anything to keep Matthews, i.e, they are in love with WEs? I, for one, do not think that Jazz FO will match that offer, at all. They are reported to find players who they can add by using the MLE, which Wes insisted on but KOC declined. I also do not want them to match that heavy contract.
