I get that, but bringing in a UFA to Utah is always a longshot unless you have good tampering information.More than half the reason I support a Collins/Kessler for Ingram swap is to get off of Collins’ money.
Is Indy a team that usually pays the tax? I would assume anything north of 25 million per year would make them a significant tax paying team.
Indy has a lot of interesting young players. I'm sure they could make some moves to get a replacement.
Uhh, this is such a dumb statement. If you are overpaying these players at the expense of an ability to make another move, sure, but Utah is Utah.It is incredibly easy to build a team that reliably finishes in the 6-8 range and loses in the first round. That's because in any given season in each conference there are about 3 teams that are tanking, 1-2 teams that have finished tanking but their roster is still young and does not win many games, at least one good team that has been hit by a string of injuries etc.
Getting players like Turner, Ingram or Collins is a sure way to build such a team.
I don`t think they can extend him. He did a renegotiation and extensions in January 2023 that put one more year on his deal. AFAIK deals have to be for at least three years to be extension eligble.Counterpoint: If was already a done deal that they were going to pay Turner and are OK with paying the tax....why does Turner not have a deal yet? A 140% increase would have him starting at ~$28M which should be more than enough for him.
The dream is getting Flagg while being able to get off enough money at the deadline to open up significant cap-space. Not a lot of teams in 2025 will have cap-space (I think, far from a cap expert, quite uninformed in that regard), so you may be able to get these high level non-allstars for a decent deal (of course with the Utah tax added on most likely).It's true that it is hard to build a contender with highly paid, non top 30 players, but when your star level players are on rookie level contracts then it works just fine.
Usually/Always (I can't think of any exceptions) teams wait until they know they have a rookie who is going to be a star level player before they start acquiring they guys that fit around them. So it's really hard for me to imagine the Jazz drafting Flagg, for example, and not at least wanting to see him play a little before adding guys like Turner around him. On the other hand, if Lauri takes a step forward and/or one of our young guys look amazing, then we might already have the pieces that make the FO feel like they can start adding guys like Turner.
We also might just be the exception to the rule where because we have Lauri we get impatient and decide to just hope our 2025 draft pick is a stud and skip some steps to a degree.
I don`t think they can extend him. He did a renegotiation and extensions in January 2023 that put one more year on his deal. AFAIK deals have to be for at least three years to be extension eligble.