[ClutchFans] Samuel Dalembert's Contract: A Brief Analysis

From the article

Dear God, just kill me now. Anything is preferable to another two years of "assets", "cap flexibility", and "2013 free agency" b.s.

Morey is a great salesman, I'll give him that, but eventually the pitch grows tiresome. I've heard all these phrases so many times, I'm immune to them.

PS, see my sig.

 

Jefferson and Martin will be good but absolutely unbearable to watch........
Their game is not meant to be for viewers.....

 

Pretty much how I feel but I'll put a bit more blame on Les. Just because he goes a few million into the tax doesn't mean he is trying to do the right thing.

 

Cap space can be extremely useful to absorb bad deals, and with the luxury tax being so punitive, I could definitely see a team with cap space being able to pick up lots of pieces by acting a facilitator or dumping ground for contracts.

Look at what the Zombie Sonics have managed to do with cap space in the last few years: in 2007, it acquired 2 first rounders from Phoenix to take on the last year of Kurt Thomas' contract; one of them was Serge Ibaka. After getting 7/9/1/1/1 production from him, they traded him for another pick that would become Rodrigue Beaubois (though they traded him for BJ Mullens). In 2009, they absorbed Matt Harpring's insured contract in order to pick up Eric Maynor. In 2010, they absorbed Daequan Cook's contract to draft Eric Bledsoe, and absorbed Morris Peterson's contract and traded the pick they acquired in the Kurt Thomas deal to move up from #21 to #12 to draft Cole Aldrich. They used their capspace to extend Nick Collison where he's only going to cost $2.75M against the cap for the next 4 seasons by giving him a signing bonus. Finally, they were able to trade the pick they got from the Clippers in exchange for Eric Bledsoe along with Jeff Green for Kendrick Perkins, and sign him to an extension that pays him just $36M over 4 years, prior to DeAndre Jordan getting $11M per year, or Nene getting $13.5M per year, or Marc Gasol getting $14.5M per year, or Chandler getting $15M per year.

So for the TL;DR crowd, the Zombie Sonics have basically gotten Serge Ibaka, Eric Maynor, a first rounder and a lottery pick for free, kept James Harden over Jeff Green in the Perkins deal, and extended both Nick Collison and Kendrick Perkins to below market deals; all because they had cap space.

 

If everything goes down according to plan, by March the Knicks will have virtually sewn up a playoff spot, the Magic have imploded, and the Rockets are out of the playoffs; so the other conditions would be merely to fulfill the CBA, and it basically boils down to an unprotected lottery pick in 2012.

Heck, I though this up in 15 minutes after reading your post; seems like we hear about teams "working on deals" for weeks at a time. I'd hope that if you had a dozen lawyers/capologists/assistant GMs/vice-presidents on both sides of the deal working 12 hour days, you could hammer out a way to get the deal done, confuse the heck out of 90% of your fans, make every ESPN analyst's head explode on camera, blow up Larry Coon's twitter feed, and get Adrian Wojnarowski to blame it on LeBron somehow.

And it would be worth it all.

 

I'm sold. Let's move this franchise to Seattle.

OK, you make an excellent point about what taking advantage of another team's troubles can do with good, visionary management.

 

Would cap room have allowed them to acquire Durant, Westbrook, and Harden? The reason OKC was able to use their cap room in such a manner was that they dedicated themselves to being bad for at least three years in order to build up assets. The high draft picks mattered a lot more than the cap space; the cap space was a function of them making a concerted effort to find future value in something they were not making use of at the time.

Given Morey's and apparently Les Alexander's unwillingness to do business like the Thunder, I see no reason to compare our two franchises and use anything they've done as a point of reference.

 

Leslie isn't willing to bottom out the team. Morey presents him with deals and he approves or denies. I would prefer a winning season rather than 3-4 games under .500, even if it means we are the best team in the lottery again. The difference in lottery balls from 14 to 12 isn't worth 6 more nights of disappointing games to watch.

 

And I am sure everyone will be perfectly happy when the team is 2 or 3 yrs into "building from the draft"

 

My bubble is completely deflated already, don't worry. I was just outlining a possibility of how the Rockets could give up a first rounder, I actually think the chances of getting Dwight Howard are some number between 0 and 1%, but that's the only realistic way I'd give up an unprotected lottery pick.

Still, that's probably a higher chance than the Knicks getting 3 consecutive top 5 picks

 

I'm all for signing sammy D, but obviously he's not gonna make us a championship team, he's not even gonna make us a playoff team. At most, his defense might make most games closer, but the league is now structured around pgs and sgs, therefore apart from nights when we play orlando, lakers etc, he might be worthless on the court.

Considering the fact that sammy d wont make us a contender, why waste the money. Why not develop Thabeet and Jordan Hill. Sammy D is old and is only gonna delay the development of our bigs by stealing the minutes

 

I don't agree with you that the 2012 knicks pick cannot be traded. It was included in the proposed pau gasol trade? (I'm sure with some weird language and protection added though, as to not violate the stepian rule)

Also, the picks that new jersey was offering was not "over the next few years. "...[nets] including their own first-round picks in 2012, 2014, 2016 and 2018 as well as a 2012 first-rounder previously acquired from Houston." Source: http://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/7...taking-dwight-howard-trade-offers-sources-say

The rockets pick owed to the nets is a non-lottery pick and the value of the nets picks over the next 7 years depreciates like crazy due to them having dwight howard and deron williams (in the proposed deal). The nets draft pick package is not very impressive. And doesn't Phoenix owe houston a future first round pick (lottery-protected) from the aaron brooks trade??

 

Ok, well, how about Portland getting Brandon Roy by absorbing 3 years of Raef Lafrentz for 2 years of Theo Ratliff and Sebastian Telfair? That is a deal that could have been beaten by a team with capspace rather than a bad deal. A team with capspace could have also beaten Cleveland's offer to absorb Baron Davis' contract and Kyrie Irving for 2 years of Mo Williams.

And I'd take Ibaka, Maynor, a #1 and Eric Bledsoe over Al Jefferson, Gerald Green, Sebastian Telfair and 2#1s: the package that Minnesota got back for Kevin Garnett.

So yes, you can use capspace to get high draft picks. You can use it to get role players. You can use it to sign free agents. And eventually, if you use cap space to consistently get something for nothing, will turn these assets into a great player.

 

Nevermind, that pick was already conveyed i believe. The orlando magic pick we received in this past draft.

 

Gotcha! Good information and nice job with the article. I enjoy your work!

It kind of makes you wonder how highly the rockets front office regards Terrence Williams in their future plans, since they gave up a pick that really hinders their draft pick flexibility for future trades.

Also, if there was ever a superstar that i think Houston had a chance in attaining through a trade, it has to be Dwight Howard on the basis that Orlando is not looking for a rebuilding package (draft picks and young players) as much as a veteran package. Even in that proposed trade with the nets, the majority of the picks that the nets were giving up were to the Blazers in exchange for Gerald Wallace going to the Magic. I think with a new stadium, they are looking to compete now and thus want veterans... and not that Scola and Martin would be enough, but that would be an interesting place to start the conversations.

 

Again... just think of every team that was forced into a rebuild and how it turned out. 75% of the time its a failure and the 25% of the time it does work is when you get lucky and find a Chris Paul at the #3 pick or you happen to get the #1 pick when Yao Ming is coming out of the draft. Even if you are one of the worst team in the league, you still have to win the lottery. So we could be the 5th worth team in the league and pick 7th or 8th and it would be just as bad (because you aren't getting a franchise player there) as picking 14th but at least being a watchable team. And the important thing to remember is that once you blow up a team, you can't just un-blow it up and get those guys back.

The other side to the story is that it is possible to build a team the way Morey is doing it. Boston did it by having a guy like Paul Pierce and attracting two veterans and they made a 3-4 year run at a title. Now... Paul Pierce isn't a "Chris Paul"/"Dwight Howard" level franchise star that can carry a team on his own. His numbers early in his career are actually comparable to Kevin Martin. Now... this isn't me saying Kevin Martin is as good as Paul Pierce, but I'm just trying to misspell the myth that the only way to build a team is to draft a top 5 talent and build a team around him.

 

Nice write up Bima - as usual. I know you and I differ on "rebuilding" but you put in a nice piece on the value of the buyout clause for trading purposes that I hadn't thought of.