Zach Lowe: Terrence Jones could be asking for $15M per year

Why? No one I can see if saying DMo isn't better offensively or has more potential.

 

Well I've had my fun. (I think it was fun????) Back to work.

 

JAP stands for Just Another Player. They are non-factors to a team. Their contributions can be replaced with a veteran on a minimum salary that is readily available to sign a contract.

You can gawk at TS%, rebounding %, and defensive win shares "over time here". It's meaningless without defining circumstances, parameters and scope.

I'm being generous with the JAP label for Terrence. He was actually quite a net negative for us during the playoffs. And I'm certain that if we had any other big men eligible to play or if we could've signed a vet big and stuck him on the playoff roster that that player would have outperformed what Terrence gave us (or took away from us) during these last playoffs.

 

One player is ketchup and the other one is mustard.

Just because YOU might prefer ketchup over mustard doesn't mean there is no need to put mustard on the table at a hamburger restaurant.

Studies might show that ketchup is more liked and has more impact on the flavored of a beef patty. Still doesn't mean that a restaurant owner shouldn't carry mustard or worse ban mustard across the board.

These two or three posters trying their damnest to tear one down in order to build up the other are fresking ignorant maniacs if you are that upset that Terrence Jones is an NBA player on an NBA team you think you deserve a say so on what condiments are kept on the table.

 

Repped good post.

 

Can you quantifty that? Seems pretty subjective.

Well duh to the bolded. They are similar despite TJones missing more time due to injury.

It's amusing you said ,"it's meaningless without defining circumstances, parameters and scope," above then proceed to focus on playoffs. Context doesn't matter there huh?

 

Thanks. As a rational poster, what do you think Jones & D-Mo are going to end up getting as offers next Summer?

How do you see the Rockets weighing Jones & D-Mo's on-the-court value as theoretically one year contracts w/options for next year over what Morey could get for them in asset value in return?

Do you prefer to keep them even knowing you could lose them given the fact that the Rockets are contending, or does losing them for nothing scare you enough to where you are willing to sacrifice talent that can help you win now to get an asset so you don't lose them for nothing next Summer?

 

TJones is on that fine line b/w role player and mediocre starter, and this is the area where there is the most confusion now about what is the correct pay. Weirdly, some role players are making relatively low salaries (Mike Dunleavy $4m, Bev $6m) and some mediocre starters (Reggie Jackson $16m) are getting huge deals. From a basketball perspective, the performance level in these two groups is often not that different.

What seems to be happening is that teams are overpaying for young mediocre starters who have upside, in the hope that they will develop enough to make them look good. On the other hand, older players and players who are still completely unknown (young free agents) are undervalued.

There is going to be some team out there that thinks TJones has potential. Meanwhile, look what kind of players the Rockets are going after.

 

Well if we are all agreed that DMo is better on both ends of the court, is the best post player on the team, and the best 3 point shooting big, why would anyone suggest that anyone else would start at PF if everyone is healthy?

It just doesn't make any sense.

 

We are talking about the forward (in a financial sense) market. The future price point depends more on the supply/demand of the then market conditions, as well as the expected amount of capital the teams are endowed with, then the backward-looking fair price of the player. Zach has made this very clear in his article. From a relative value perspective, a few FAs that get paid this summer that were in the same caliber bucket as TJ provide a preview of what we shall be expecting. Completely sensible analysis from a market perspective. That so many fans thought this ridiculous is beyond my comprehension.

 

It's not ridiculous that some team out there would pay him like that, it's only ridiculous thinking that the Rockets would. If anything, it's more evidence that the Rockets probably look to trade Jones if Harrell and Dekker do well enough to adequately fill the backup PF minutes.

 

Having DMo play a good chunk with the bench as the focal point on offense makes sense. We are going to have a very flexibile, deep lineup. TJones did well before his first injury last season playing with Howard. However, I can see either DMo or Jones getting the starting PF spot.

 

Having any starter play a good chunk with the bench as the focal point would make sense. Obviously the starters are going to be better than the bench, but that's not a reason to start someone on the bench IMO. I think the Rockets probably stagger the starters rest minutes so that they can get some favorable matchups but you want your best players out there together as often as possible. I just don't buy the idea of essentially hiding Jones in the starting lineup because he isn't good enough as a bench guy. The bench would be better with Dwight, Lawson, or Harden playing with them too, but you aren't going to bench those guys to start games either.

 

Zach Lowe is right that 20 years from now we are still going to be talking about the James Harden trade and what it did to change the landscape of the NBA.

The James Harden situation is exactly why teams are overpaying for these guys. They aren't paying Reggie Jackson because of what he's shown statistically thus far. They are taking calculated risks with a young player that might explode in a different situation so they can be the next team to find the "Next Harden".

Once there is enough data out there to show that this guy is who he is with virtually any team, you are totally right that they are now looking very undervalued in the offers they are getting in comparison.

James Harden and Morey changed the NBA, trades, and especially free agency. What will be interesting will be to see if there are going to end up being enough bad contracts with guys getting overpaid these next year or two for teams to start abandoning this risky gamble to hit the jackpot.

You can call me crazy, but don't be shocked if D-Mo (IF he's healthy and plays the way he did last year) ends up with an offer at his level of max contract. With Jones its a little harder to predict.

 

Not to encourage this discussion, because you seem set on your conviction that Terrence Jones would embarrass his team in a YMCA pickup game ("who brought the chump?!?!").

But would this be the Terrence who had come back in the regular season from a scary nerve injury, only to suffer a partially collapsed lung (or whatever it was), and then return just before the playoffs (wouldn't those injuries mess with anybody's psyche)? The same player who scored the first five or seven points in the game 5 comeback against the Clippers (albeit to be sat down right after, for whatever reason)?

I'll grant you, TJ suffers from intermittent vapor-lock of the brain, but his main problems are the injuries and confidence (and the former probably exacerbates the latter).

Now, I'm only saying he isn't the pond scum you're claiming. I'm not saying the equivalent of, "Raymond Shaw is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever known in my life" (I guess that would be, "Terrence Jones is the most gifted, phenomenal, multidimensional player I've ever known in my life").

But he has a lot of skill. If he could just harness it and stay consistent with it. (And not get hurt so damn much.) Alas, Morey won't pay Terrence Jones the money his agent'll ask for anyway, so if he gets it all together one day, it'll likely be on another team.

 

with reasonable growth, agree with Zach on Jones, DMo probably max.

we're all in. the obligation has to be fielding the strongest team possible. durability & consistency issues still surround both, so i'm not adverse to the wait & see. if we're gonna overpay anyway ...

dominating start to the season? yes. meh start? no. success & value are the only things that can keep the role players stable on a Morey team. and the value part is obliterated next year ...

 

Didn't need to hide TJones when he was playing well with the starting lineup last year.

 

Imagine what he could ask for if he could make layups and free throws

 

The playoffs are the context dmoney. The objective is for the team to win championships. When a player folds/wilts/underperforms multiple times on that stage it is a HUGE RED FLAG.

And that's the first indicator that Terrence is JAP.

The next indicator is how the player performs against other individual players they are matched up against. Review Terrence's performances. When he gets matched up against older, less athletic, SMALLER players (players in the lower half of the 450) he looks good. But when he is matched up against a player in the top 225 of the league he looks very pedestrian to poor. He gets burned repeatedly and is generally a mismatch in favor of our opponents.



As far as quantifying a player's status:

Pull up all the players that play the same position and look at their production and efficiency. That's a pretty simple starting point.

The next thing to do is go back through history and look at young players coming into the league first year, second year, third year, look at their production and efficiency and where their careers went, how high their peek was. The more data you gather here and the more analysis you do, you'll see a more realistic peak and valley for Terrence. And it's not pretty.

I don't have time nor space to lay out all my analysis. Nor do I desire to show the world how I quantify and qualify young talent. But it's not rocket science. Do your own regression analysis and you can see for yourself.