dougthonus wrote:Red8911 wrote:I’m pretty sure there will be more moves this time. AK for the first time sounded like he wanted to make changes. Sure Demar might be coming back and as the best player of this team it’s not a bad move but doesn’t necessarily mean everyone else is coming back as well.
The way I see it only Coby, Ayo, and probably Patrick (despite being a RFA) are safe to return. The rest of the roster can be used in trades including Vuc and AC.
He effectively said at the end of season last year "just wait until you see what I do in free agency" or something like that, then used 7M of the MLE on Jevon Carter and brought in Torey Craig. I wouldn't get too hyped up.
And sure, not _everyone_ is coming back, but you just listed everyone on the team that has any value whatsoever outside of AC as safe to return. So again, we're trading Zach and swapping deck chairs.
We probably won't improve much if at all, but I also see a little bit more substantial player movement. I actually think the best bets to be on the roster are Coby and a re-signed Demar. I think AK will shop ALL of these guys and probably end up trading at least two, maybe several more than that:
Vuc
Drummond s&t (maybe somebody will realize he's worth a real contract who is capped out and using their MLE on someone else)
Patrick s&t
Caruso
Terry
Zach
Ayo
Ball (as part of a deal as an expiring)
Carter
#11 pick (or top 4 if we're lucky)
I think the "continuity" plan now will still be valued, but pared down to just the two main guys in Demar and Coby. I think Phillips and Bitim are AK's worthless personal choice prospects so they'll be back pretty much for sure too unless needed in a deal. I think Craig will opt out and be gone.
It's not a ton different than what you were saying, but I do think these positive value assets will be aggressively shopped:
Patrick s&t
Caruso
Zach
Ayo
#11
I think we'd all agree that Vuc and Carter aren't positive value assets (hell, Zach probably isn't either but a team would only acquire him to try to improve which is why I ranked him in the above group), but for fit reasons, another team may "value" them for equally meh deals for their players due to positional or style needs.
So anyways I that's kinda what we're working with. What we do with Demar in terms of years, dollars etc should really depend on moves with this group, so I hope/expect to see us try to make moves before FA with some or all of Zach, Caruso, Ayo and our pick. Then we reassess and maybe tweak more with moves with the others.