The time to get Wallace will be this summer, when we could use the exception. If we had used the Rice contract to get Wallace now, we'd have had to resign him, without reducing his pay, or lost him. Wow. That would have done us a lot of good. This way, we can do a S&T, and get him to drop his salary to something we can afford. We'll have a better chance of getting Wallace this summer, IMHO. Posey may turn out to be a great player. But, we thought that with Maloney, Cato, Anderson, Taylor, and even Norris, and paid them all way too much. I, for one, was glad we stopped the overpayment trend, which has hamstrung us now. In every one of those cases, we'd have been better off, if we let them walk, although that would have been hard with Taylor. I was glad they learned from the Shandon Anderson S&T, which got us stuck with Rice. Maybe we'll miss one here or there, such as Posey, but this wasn't a matter of being cheap. It was a matter of being shrewd. Pike looked like a better deal. So did Jackson. I admit, I got pretty pissed off that we didn't turn our investment in KT into something more. Geez. We've turned the #16/18 '98 picks, #22/44/50 '99 picks, #9/38 '00 picks, #13/18/23/44 '01 picks into a big fat ZERO. I'm really not happy about that. (here goes my vent again) If we had not signed our players to big contracts, but drafted players that many of us here wanted to draft, we could have had Rashard Lewis, Andrei Kirilenko, Jamaal Magliore, Richard Jefferson, Zach Randalph, Gilbert Arenas, Mehmet Okur, Eduardo Najera, and Loren Woods in addition to Yao, Francis, Mobely, Cato, Boki, and Taylor. Thats not 20/20 hindsight and woulda, coulda, shoulda ... thats what we amateurs at this site wanted. Imagine: Yao/Magliore/Woods Randolph/Okur/Najera Lewis/Kirilenko Mobely/Jefferson/Boki Francis/Arenas I was the first one to speak highly about Griffin's potential, as were we all, although many of us wondered about the 3 guys we could have had, but we trusted Rudy who said he was the best, and we all got excited with him. No one could have known that one. That just sucks, and is the way the ball bounces. And, I don't recall anyone getting that uptight about not picking Kirilenko, when we took Thomas. We didn't know about Euro players then. But, we all cried when Rashard sat in that draft room when we had promised to pick him, and that one more than any other drives us all crazy. Jason Collins was another stupid pick, and we could have taken Turkoglu, Mason, Peterson, Magliore, or Stephenson, and we all wanted Najera, not Langhi. I always deferred to the probability that CD and Rudy knew more than I did. But, it hasn't turned out that way. I'm no expert, but as I go back and look at who I wanted to pick, even though I know nothing compared to them, nor consider myself an expert, I would have made better draft picks, and that is pretty sad. Well, now we can look at the track record, and I will no longer defer in my posts on this subject. So, (after venting on that once again ... sorry), Posey may turn out great, but I feel they made a smart move NOT signing him to a big contract, and actually feel they turned a corner being more shrewd in their contract dealings. This wasn't about being cheap, it was about being smart.
I don't agree with what you said in an earlier post "Who cares about that the lux tax unless you are Les or those who benefits from his estate" and that is why I replied. What I know is that Les is not deep pocket and he knows he has to pay a lot of money to keep Yao, together with the huge contracts of SF, MoT and Cato, and the big money to keep Cat, he did not have a big margin for errors. What Posey demanded was big money for a role player, and not matching it was not being cheap.
Geez, now I'm really depressed. Without going into all the might-have-beens (the depressing part), I've really been surprised at how little Piatkowski has contributed. I really thought he was a good signing. He may still turn out that way, but I was really pumped about getting him and, so far, there's been no joy.
Gater, You should just put that question in your sig, because no one will ever answer it. "If Rice's expiring contract was so valuable, then why did Utah just release him???" Furthermore, the Kings made the exact same deal that we did. They sent Keon Clark (who no doubt, is a much more valuable player than Rice), along with 2 draft picks to the Jazz and got only a 2nd rounder in return. The Suns traded Tom Gugliotta, an $11 mil expiring contract to the Jazz a few weeks ago. His contact had so much value that the Suns had to include 2 first round picks AND a second round pick just to get him off their hands. They got Clark (who they will let walk for nothing after the season) and a 2nd rounder in return. Of course, that means nothing to posters like RIET, who is no doubt smarter, and knows more about player value, and salary cap issues that 4 GMs from the Suns, Kings, Jazz and Rockets, who have at least 50 years of NBA experience between them. Bottom line is, the value of an expriring contract is greatly overrated by many.
I don't think so, I think Atlanta sold cheaper than he ever would have gone normally. Detriot is totally in the bargaining position to keep Sheed themselevs or get something decent in return since they have his Bird Rights. But had we not pulled the Rice deal we could have been a player. Probably even better for Atl's perspective as Sheed would be shipped across conferences. Hindsight is 20/20, but it is the GMs job to evaluate the potential benefits of Pike versus Posey or making the Rice deal or not down the line. It is only after the fact you can evaluate such decisions and whether they were wise, it is history that proves the quality of the GMs forsight and we have not been so good except with largely no-brainer decisions since Francis arrived. Only if we do something really useful with the trade exemption does are brass come out well, and like I said the trade exemtpion should at least be equal to SAR/Sheed on top of what we could have had anyway, because that Rice contract plus a late 1st rounder probably would have landed either from Atl. I don't think anyone has illusions about Posey being a "great player". That is why no one offered him a Maggette/Rashard Lewis type contract--all he was offered was the MLE, a low cost veteran contract for servicable starter/6th man type player in his prime. Jackson was a better contract/deal in the short term sure. But Jackson is like 5 years older and that acquisition was well after the Posey/Pike/AGriff decisions. Pike is similarly old like JJ, but has never been more than a specialist anyway. Further, the extra 2-3 mil for the next 3 years to get Posey over his replacements of Pike/A Griffin is a nobrainer now, again the kind of thing our front office is supposed to have foresight about. Does anyone question that Posey at around 5-6 million over 4 years is a better value than Pike/AG at around 3 million over 3 years? So if you use the argument Posey was overpayed and we were scrwed, well we just blew our screwedness by adding in another bad contract (Pike) for a guy unlikely to contribute much at all consider JJ does what he can and more (defense) at a lower price and with a similar shelf life (3 years max). But what about Cat? Posey or KT (say at an MLE also for 4-5 years) look like a lot closer in value to the Cat deal than the Mo/Cato/Anderson deal. Further, the Pike deal looks just like Norris/Maloney deals where we throw away 3-4 mil a year. Much better to get something mroe substantial out of 5 mil than nothing from 3. To me the history (as much of what you show) has been pretty bad on the Rockets front office of late (post resigning Cat) with the exception of lucking into the Yao pick. You would be hardpressed to come up with any group of worse players to surround Yao, Francis and Mobley with than what we have managed to pull off. Further, of the youghish role players, if they have been semi-quality (KT/Posey) they have been let go, the rest of them have been of less quality at more money (Taylor/Cato) or have been flat out busts (E Griffin, Tmo, Mooch, maybe Boki too). The only major exception is Jim Jackson, who has been invaluable this year but he also is old and thus merely a short term fix.
Why don't Atlanta just trade Sheed to Utah then? Forget about the pick, they'll get a nice lil' 17 million trade exception back. I'll take that over a pick ANY DAY. They can use that 17 mil or part of it to turn it into several #1 picks from as many teams as they want. On Utah's part, hell they'll even throw in the 1st rounder to get Sheed. The draft is not that strong this summer and Utah is not exactly high lottery either. If they can get Sheed, they'll have Bird Right to him next year and he's one of those pretty good players they can add to Harp and AK-47's total 8 mil committed next year. Sheed is as good a player as the j*zz can hope to get, FA or not (no Kobe ain't goin' to Utah). Both teams would benefit. Why then would Atlanta trade Sheed for Rice, especially considering the salaries don't match up and they'll have to take on our junk? The point is, there are MANY teams that can offer more for Sheed than we can and Rice's expiring contract is worthless.
Atlanta traded Sheed for Rebraca (expiring contract), Sura (expiring contract), Chris Mills (expiring contract) and a mid-late 1st round pick. Rice (expiring contract) and our draft pick (mid-late 1st) basically is the same deal except that Atl benefits by having Sheed move to another conference. If necc we could offer another future #1. That is a better deal to Atlanta than they pulled off with Detriot. So is our trade exemption plus like another future 1st rounder worth passing on Rasheed Wallace (though I'd prefer to go after SAR before he was sent to Portland)? We will see after this offseason, depends on what we do with the trade exemption. If the exemption facilliattes a deal even mroe favorable than adding Sheed for almost nothing like Detriot did I'll be thrilled.
OK, here's a simple version of the trade. Sheed's contract is worth ~17 million. Rice's contract is only 9 mil. Both teams being over the cap at the time, we would need to send another ~5.5 mil (20% + 100,000K) the other way. Short of trading our foundation players (Yao, Cat and Steve), the only players we can send is Cato, MoT or some combination of JJ, Pike, AGriff, etc. WHY WOULD the Hawks want to take back our long and crappy contracts back when they are trying to rebuild? Rice's contract is worthless to them and they have no reason to trade Sheed to us for Rice.
