dougthonus wrote:League Circles wrote:Would any teams with actual cap space choose to absorb any of the guys I listed as negative with their cap space? I'd argue no, they wouldn't.
I think Phillips would trivially be absorbed by any team in the league into a trade exception. I think Terry and Carter would also both be absorbed by at least some teams.
I think it's telling that you qualified it as "trade exception" rather than with cap space. Just to be clear though, you think there are teams that wouldn't pay Carter what he's getting now a year ago, but after seeing him stink it up this season, now they would?
That said, either way if we have a range of numbers from -1 million to +1 million then just discussing the sign without the magnitude isn't all that meaningful. On a scale from -10 to +10, I'd put Phillips between +2 and +4, Terry and Carter between -1 and +1. Vuc at like a -2 to -5, and Zach currently between -2 and -6 with the possibility of dropping to a -10 or raising himself up to a +1
I agree that obviously the impact of the bad deals of Vuc, Zach, and Carter in that order is much worse than Phillips and Terry, but I was just trying to conceptualize the roster in terms of understanding that we have very few keepers and no one else (the guys in the bad or not under contract lists) should be clung to necessarily because they simply aren't good assets right now. They actually really objectively suck.
Most of your analysis seems very caught up in the moment. Before the season started, you were talking about how Ayo wasn't even worth the vet minimum, now you think he's worth 7M a year and it's a good deal. Carter was playing better last year than Ayo is this year. Their value as a contract is based on the role, opportunity, and ability and belief of the team acquiring them.
We obviously looked at Ayo in the off-season and projected what he would become. Phillips can easily be the same. Carter can easily get back there. Their value as contracts is based on expected performance over the life of the deal, not their exact performance at the current moment. There's a lot of reason for optimism that any of those guys can beat out their very modest deals.
The fact Ayo went from playing at or below replacement level last year to playing pretty well in his role this year just proves how hard it is to accurately project performance. A lot of guys that sign contracts like these are basically out of the league or at least riding pine in 2 years. Carter is surely no more than a few months of games away from losing his rotation spot, for example. I agree there is certainly reason for optimism frankly for all 6 of Vuc, Zach, Carter, Terry, Phillips and Ball. But as of now, they are not delivering us good value for their performance whatsoever. So we shouldn't prioritize or just concede to keeping any or all of them. But even if all these guys (Terry, Phillips, Taylor, etc) pan out, the impact will be so tiny because they are basically all the same player to one degree or another and there will never be time for all of them.
My feeling on Ayo was clear - that I knew he might pan out in the way he seems to be playing this year, but that there was no way that all of him, Caruso, and Carter could be good values in their roles (given Coby, Zach, and Demar and amothers). Carter was simply the one who has failed instead of Ayo, but the point remains that we have too many similar meh guys on guaranteed money.
Also, you're using top end vet min players as your comparison, no team in the NBA has 5 vet min players that hit like Craig/Drummond. You should be comparing the vet min to either the median vet min player or the "not presently in the NBA" vet min player. While there are good ones available every year, your ability to sign a good one is often heavily related to role/opportunity/ability to win.
I agree only to an extent. You're right that it's unrealistic that we'd hit on another several vet min guys (instead of Terry, Phillips, Taylor), but they would still likely be better than those guys. Like, I do think that the median vet min guy indeed is better than those guys. Have you looked at their numbers? The fewer of them we have, the more attractive we are for the good vet min FAs. It seriously seems like we've had great luck with such players in Chicago for 20 years now.
It's unlikely we could sign another high end vet min guy given that combination of things we had to offer. The median vet min guy is probably a fringe in/out of the league guy with minimal potential. Phillips is obviously worth more than that, Terry is probably worth more than that. Carter, this year, isn't worth more than that, but his past performance still probably makes him project into worth more than that over the life of his deal.
A good rule of thumb IMO is that if you have a top-ten rotation spot (starter or primary backup) available, and you're a solid org in a good city like Chicago, you will always be able to get good vet min guys. Once the role available is 3rd string it's an entirely different ball game.
Again, it's hard to really gauge any of these things, because how you define terms creates wildly different results.
I'd say one are where you and I probably differ in this respect is that I basically view no contract at the BAE level as meaningfully bad because the total money lost is just too irrelevant to care about and a good one month stretch from a player can flip that from bad to good, which means it really is irrelevant. Not until you get into multiple years and closer to the MLE does it really even matter at all.
I think it matters in terms of roster spots. You can only give an opportunity to play/develop to so many guys. The best NBA roster for the dollar should have 14 guys on it, and IMO for teams that aren't clear contenders that should never include more than about 8 guys on non expiring contracts. Over the other six, IMO at least 3 should probably be good vet minimum guys, which only leaves 3 spots for rookie scale guys. But a lot of fans here want to perpetually have 8 guys on rookie deals (most of whom will make more but play worse than good vet min guys which is why most are out of the league after 4 years at the most).
Again, I'm not saying we should just dump Terry and/or Phillips automatically. But I am saying that they're currently just taking up space. They have put up terrible numbers in their limited minutes. They most likely aren't going to develop either way, but especially unlikely if they don't have a defined role, which I don't see happening unless Patrick and Craig both walk. Do we really want to see what these guys can do? Possibly. If so, let's put them in the rotation and move the guys ahead of them and sign meh vet min guys for the third string roles behind them. One thing I'm trying to get at is that I rarely think prospects are good in third string roles. They have too much to prove and aren't stabilizing in the way that a guy like Javonte or Dragic could be. I'm only interested in prospects that are good enough to be first or second string roles off the bat. The 4 year deals for 3rd string borderline NBA player scrubs is just crazy to me, as small of a dollar impact it may be.
