“It may seem like it’s all falling apart, but it’s merely falling into place...” ~ Pat Fertitta (possibly)
Patrick looks like the rich fraternity guy from a John Hughes movie. It's easy to imagine him puling up in his Ferrari to take Molly Ringwald away from Matthew Broderick.
Agree. We lost Trez, Lou and Pat B in the CP3 trade. We also 'lost' a FRP (#30), who is a guy in D-League (Omari Spellman), and the other players we gave up were cuts or are out of the league (Sam Dekkar et al). We won 65 games with CP3 healthy, and look what he did with OKC's **** roster last year, and look at the improvement in the Suns this year after they traded for him. We were clearly worse after the CP3 <-> Westbrook trade, and the Wizards aren't exactly soaring in the standings with Westbrook either. THE big screwup was trading CP3 plus 2 FRPs + 2 FRP swaps for Westbrick...that's the trade that sent this franchise into it's current crash landing.
The Harden / CP3 breakup and then the Harden / Westbrook breakup makes me wonder why couples therapy for superstars aren't a thing for franchises.
Tilman would have loved nothing more than to run it back with Harden and WB after shedding other players to get under the LT.
Definitely a screw up! But giving CP3 40mill a year to be the backup PG was a mistake... sure, it worked great for a year with him playing backup to Harden - but we needed a big wing who could get their own shot. Pouring 40mill into a backup PG was a terrible idea. The mistake was compounded by throwing assets at Westbrick, and then further compounded by trading Capela to try and make it work with Russ... ugh. The bad moves began by giving Paul the max. Because he wasn't worth it, we shot ourselves in the foot, then freaked out and made multiple other bad moves in a desperate bid to contend (and avoid tax $$). In the end, just sitting with Paul's bad contract would have been much better... ah well.
It's widely assumed that the contract was tacitly agreed on when we traded for him. The actual signing was just honoring the agreement. If it's true, then the trade for CP3 was much more risky than a lot of people thought, given his injury history.
This is flat out not true. There is nothing wrong with giving Cp3 that contract. We would still be in contention with Cp3 still here. The man made the all star game this year sheesh, How many times does this dude have to make people look like idiots for you guys to stop saying his contract was a mistake.
We didn't pay CP3 $40M to be a backup PG. Which hole of stupidity did this misconception even crawl out from? We paid CP3 $40M because he was (arguably still is) the best true PG in the league and adding him next to Harden gave us 48 minutes of ELITE HOF PG play. It's like people already forgot how badly we stomped the other team when they marched out their secondary unit because we COULD stagger Harden and CP3 to keep up that elite playmaking. He only became a backup PG the 2nd year while he was recovering from injuries or did you forget how close he led a much worse OKC team in beating us the season after that?
At this point the CP3/Westbrook trade is water under the bridge, as far as I'm concerned. But you're right, CP3 and the second unit were even better that 2nd season from what I remember. Had Harden sat longer vs. GS we might have fared better in that series.
If one isn't the primary player in a position, then one is (by definition) the backup to that position. Harden was playing just over 35mpg as the PG that season, leading the team in usage rate (by a fair margin). That means we needed 13mpg of high quality backup PG play while he sat. I agree, Paul provided this. There is no correlation between saying someone was paid too much and saying they didn't play well. What Paul did was fantastic. But for 40million? Look at the Lakers success last season - with their PG LeBron sitting, their success was aided by Rondo running the team capably. But is that worth $40mill - or to put it another way, when you spend in one area, it costs you in another. Rondo without Davis? That would be a disaster. Clearly Rondo is not on the level of Paul, who is one of the great PGs in history. A lot of things fell in Houstons favour in 2017/18, and they relied very heavily on 6 players in the main. When one of the 6 got injured (and the damn referees intervened) it was sadly the end. Then the 40mill was doled out, meaning cuts across the roster, with a key defensive tandem of Ariza/ Moute being replaced with minimum salary fill ins. And then lux tax savings made it all the worse from there. Given that the owner wasn't willing to pay the tax, the 40mill to Paul was a mistake, no matter how high the quality of his work with the 2nd unit. We needed to split the cash between a backup PG and a wing 3nD guy. The reason they ditched Paul was because they knew it had been a mistake to pay the backup PG that much, but the ridiculous ditching made things far worse (and the curse of the 40mill PG still lives on in Wall!!) By the way, There is no need to be snarky because people see things you don't like.
CP3 over the last year of his old contract, and the first 3 years of his current contract: 2017-18 (HOU): Age 32. 58/82 games. #6 PG in win shares. #4 PG in RPM 2018-19 (HOU): Age 33. 58/82 games. #12 PG in win shares. #11 PG in RPM. 2019-20 (OKC): Age 34. 70/72 games. #1 PG in win shares (12.00). #1 PG in RPM (5.51). 2020-21 (PHX): Age 35. 60/61 games. #8 PG in win shares (9.05). #3 PG in RPM (3.44). #3 in DRPM (3.03). 2021-22 (PHX?): Age 36. Player Option Year in his 4-year deal What we've had instead with Westbrook, and then Wall...and we've lost draft choices in the process.... 2019-20 (HOU): Westbrook Age 31. 57/72 games. #4 PG in win shares (9.03). #4 PG in RPM (3.64). 2020-21 (HOU): Wall Age 30. 50/61 games. #32 PG in win shares (2.38). #31 in RPM (0.05). 2020-21 (WAS): Westbrook. Age 32. 54/61 games. #20 PG in win shares (6.53). #15 PG in RPM (1.60). (Just for comparison w/Wall). CP3 >> Westbrook >> Wall...even with CP3 just a week shy of his 36th birthday. He's still an elite PG that makes teams much better. Meanwhile we're stuck with Wall for two more years, while CP3 would be in player option year this offseason, coming off of two great seasons in a row. He would be a positive trade asset or a positive player if we had kept him instead of playing the Westbrook to Wall tango. This trade (CP3 + 2 FRPs + 2 FR Pick swaps for Westbrook) did start the death spiral...and his contract HAS aged better than many of us, (myself included), believed at the time. Morey was 100% correct that CP3's game would age better than a player that relies on elite athleticism (Westbrook and/or Wall).
I am not being snarky because you mentioned something I didn't like, I was snarky because the point you bring up is just so stupid and wrong. When Harden and CP3 played together, they shared primary PG duties. Neither was the backup PG. Whoever wasn't handling the ball shifted over to the SG position at that time. Whoever wasn't cold handled the rock. When one sat and the other didn't, then we went back to a traditional lineup with just a single playmaker. I am not sure why you keep trying to separate CP3's contract from his trade. His subsequent signing was PART of the trade. Initially, he was going to opt out and then we pay him the same amount. Morey convinced him to opt-in instead so we could trade for him instead as that was easier and better for the team and then we signed him afterwards. We basically kicked the signing back a year. Now could we have then reneged? Sure, but then no superstar would ever work with our FO again or at least be super non-cooperative. As for not wanting to pay the LT at the time of the signing, who knew that at the time? We just came off our most successful season and postseason run yet since Hakeem's glory days. Now going back to bad contracts. I personally find both WB and Wall's contracts far worse than CP3's. Heck, I even posted about preferring to run it back one more time with CP3 to see if he could adjust or properly recover. Giving him that contract and looking at his production after he was traded from the Rockets, I would say that he completely deserved and earned it still.
