$8M a year is a hefty price for a mere 35 game sample size and 25 starts. No doubt you will hear this point repeated over and over in the coming weeks, especially by a bitter NY media unaccustomed to getting spurned. Even respectable cap gurus on this board have expressed similar trepidation, believing the contract is "too rich". I believe there is a fundamental flaw to this logic. The reason why Jeremy Lin is sign to such a contract is due to being initially undrafted, thereby allow the market to set his price this year. The market paid $8M/year fully factoring in his limited sample size, projecting his production into the future. In other words, his salary is an educated gamble. That does not guarantee he will live up to it, or exceed it, or crash and burn. However, how is that a problem, or even at all unusual? In fact, every team makes this type of educated gamble on limited sample size every single year. Kyrie Irving was selected with the 1st pick of the draft after a sample size of 0 NBA games played, and 11 games in college. His salary is in excess of $5M/year. Ricky Rubio was selected with the 5th pick in the draft after a sample size of 0 NBA games played, and roughly 100 games in Europe playing barely 20 minutes/game. His salary is in excess of $3.5M/year. Now ask yourself, instead of rookie scale contracts, which Morey believes to be the best value in the league along with max contracts due to its artificial ceilings, what if the market was allowed to determine Rubio's or Irving's salaries? Or that of any other highly sought after no sample size rookie drafted based on projected production(which is EVERY rookie), what would they be paid? $8M/year like Lin? I doubt it would even be that cheap. The fact that Lin has actual NBA experience should make the projections much more accurate in comparison. The fact that it is only 35 games makes it still a "gamble". But again I ask, why is that only a problem in his case, and nowhere else? PS. Given Daryl Morey's track record regarding unproven, unheralded point guards -whoever he is betting on- split and double down for me(pretty pls?).
8 mil per for a new kid who's been on the cover of sports illustrated back to back, shouted out by the president and one of times top people of the year, 8 mil per is about the average pay for a starting pg in this league. Not at all.
Morey is great at evaluating PGs. I agree. That's why he totally wouldn't have been one of those GMs who had Lin and cut him.
The measuring stick is Lowry and Dragic, since those are the guys we could have had for similar or less money.
I don't know why so many people fail to understand this. I guess because there isn't enough cross-pollination between baseball and basketball. In baseball everyone understands this concept because because young players get paid a tiny fraction of the superstars ($500,000 compared to $25 million) for a long time, which makes a good farm system the key to winning.
The measuring stick is Jeremy Lin and Jeremy Lin alone. No one knows with certainty how good he will be. People act like he is some 10 year vet with 0 upside. Morey's IBM says he will be worth $8/year or more. If that turns out to be true, then he will not be overpaid. Period. Lin's value has absolutely nothing to do with Lowry or Dragic.
Yea because it makes a lot of sense to roster a 4th PG off of preseason performance when you have Lowry, Dragic, and a garunteed contract in Flynn. Flynn who helped us get Camby, and Camby that helped us abuse the Knicks some more.
Why is everyone crying wolf when Lin gets overpaid a few dollars while they gave jerome james and marbury and let's not forget eddy curry a chance even when they were overpaid 2 or 3 times more. And we all know how horrible they were even in a 30 games sample size lol.
The thing people ignore, which is strange to me, is the PG's position's natural growth curve. I mean, we make this point anytime we want to discuss another young PG. But when it comes to Lin, it's all about "regression to the mean". Yes, I'm sure Lin will regress to the mean somewhat. He can't keep up that production he showed last year; no one can. Nevertheless, what about that argument we always hear, about how PG is the hardest position to learn besides C, and how guys can make huge leaps and bounds each and every year they're in the NBA? Isn't Lin due to benefit a lot from that point as well? He'll be 24 next year, in his second year as a pro. It reasons to say that he should have a ton of room to grow in terms of court vision and taking care of the ball. Anyways, the reason we're all rationalizing this is because Lin is a Rocket now. He's ours. So we can get behind him, see the grass on our side of the pasture as greener than it was when our pasture was somewhere else. I'm butchering this analogy, sorry. Tired after a long night at work.
He's not bad when comparing "unproven" first round picks. It's just that we have the earlier cheaper contract with less guaranteed money in mind, so it skews our value judgement further when considering if we're overpaying him. 6 million=great deal even if mediocre 8 million=better hope he plays well...
Sure it does. How are you going to measure if he is "worth" $8 million a year if you don't compare him to other players? Especially players making around the same amount or less, who were available for the team to resign, or keep?
The only measuring stick is how much the Rockets can get their investment on him back. I think the answer is obvious. The Rockets is below mediocre with Lowry and Dragic, and they will not that be much worse with Jeremy, but the team will get a big return in their investment$$.
