2021-22 NBA Off-season Thread

gammoseditor

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Keith Smith has his supporters and detractors around here. He has a new home at spotrac and his first article is a great example of what he does better than any nba writer I know. If you ever wondered what a star rookies options are for becoming a free agent off their rookie deal instead of signing an extension he gives a full breakdown. He uses Luka to illustrate the financial options.


https://www.spotrac.com/spots/luke-doncics-next-contract-options-1235/
 

Cellar-Door

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Keith Smith has his supporters and detractors around here. He has a new home at spotrac and his first article is a great example of what he does better than any nba writer I know. If you ever wondered what a star rookies options are for becoming a free agent off their rookie deal instead of signing an extension he gives a full breakdown. He uses Luka to illustrate the financial options.


https://www.spotrac.com/spots/luke-doncics-next-contract-options-1235/
I think he's maybe the best cap guy of the writers out there. His sheets when they were public were definitely better than what Sportrac had, so not surprised they brought him on to help with that and write.
 

Sam Ray Not

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I always though Danny LeRoux was the best capologist, but I haven’t head much from him lately. Guess I need to start listening to the “Dunc’d On” podcast again. Anyway, thanks for the link...
 

PedroKsBambino

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I always though Danny LeRoux was the best capologist, but I haven’t head much from him lately. Guess I need to start listening to the “Dunc’d On” podcast again. Anyway, thanks for the link...
Agreed, I think Leroux is the best cap guy. He was with Athletic I thought but haven’t seen him recently there….wonder if he has a book gig or subscription thing?
 

EvilEmpire

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I'm glad they're looking at this:

https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/31632458/nba-competition-committee-exploring-rule-changes-restrict-unnatural-jump-shot-motions-sources-say

The NBA's competition committee met Monday to further explore rule changes to restrict the unnatural motions surrounding jump shots that players are using to draw fouls, sources told ESPN.

The league wants to limit the ability of players -- including crafty stars like James Harden, Luka Doncic and Trae Young -- to lean backward and sideways, for example, to initiate contact and get to the free throw line.
 

ElUno20

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Well deserved. Awful communicator, stubborn, and non-reactive to real world results. Glad he cant waste another zion season.
 

the moops

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A formality but still another exciting option along with Ball. I have a feeling I am going to be a much bigger fan of Brad The GM than I was Brad The Flawed Coach.
Prepare to be dissapointed if you are thinking that either of those guys will be playing for the Celtics next year
 

HomeRunBaker

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Prepare to be dissapointed if you are thinking that either of those guys will be playing for the Celtics next year
I expect more of a short term Lowry-type player but hey a man can dream. I’m not writing Ball off though.
 

Devizier

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I’m guessing Lonzo will be joining Kawhi and Collins in signing a max contract. Chris Paul might get more money than Ball/Collins, though.

Lowry probably has too much value to sign a short term/prove it. I’m guessing Dragic might fall in that category if Miami moves on.

My guess is Patty Mills or Ish Smith. Something on that level.
 

Cesar Crespo

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I guess I'm on an island thinking Ball won't get close to the max. At least not for another 3 years, and that guy's name is LaMelo.

It only takes one team though.
 

HomeRunBaker

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I guess I'm on an island thinking Ball won't get close to the max. At least not for another 3 years, and that guy's name is LaMelo.

It only takes one team though.
I guess I'm on an island thinking Ball won't get close to the max. At least not for another 3 years, and that guy's name is LaMelo.

It only takes one team though.
When multiple teams have Max slots and are targeting a player it doesn’t make sense to miss out to get outbid when you are now left with inferior players while wasting the max slot. The Dinwiddie/Ball wars are surely going to bump both of them close to Max if not at it.
 

mcpickl

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Are you talking about a different Collins than John Collins?
Collins is almost surely getting a max. The Hawks reportedly offered him a 4 year deal starting at 22+M in December. If they offered him that when they were the only team that could negotiate with him, I'd be really surprised if there wasn't one team that would give him an offer sheet for the max in this very weak FA market. I'd be just as surprised if Atlanta didn't match.

Lonzo probably gets the max as well. There is just too much money out there available and so few players to spend it on.

And within six months of the ink being dry on those contracts, GMs will be trying to figure out how to move them.
 

lovegtm

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After failing to land Lilliard, Morey will settle on CJ McCollum for Simmons
Would make Powell work a lot better in Portland too. Only issue is that you get a bit clogged with Nurkic+Simmons.

I love Simmons, and I think he'll fetch a decent player, now that Philly is almost guaranteed to move him. But you need a really specific crunch-time lineup around him to maximize what he does.
 

nighthob

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I said at the time they were going to rue not making the deal for Harden. Harden/Embiid’s a title team. They aren’t getting anything like that return anymore because the shine’s off that apple for good. They’re going to have to make the deal they could have made for Harden for someone not nearly as good.
 

nighthob

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Houston asked for Simmons and Maxey, after Philly didn’t bite they made the execrable Brooklyn deal. My guess is that Philly, who made a big deal about Simmons as the face of the franchise, were offering Tobias Harris and picks and the Rockets said “Thanks but no thanks”. But Simmons is an offensive point center that can’t really be the center on defense. So building around him is really tricky. At the time I made the joke that if Philly came across Houston’s best use of Simmons would be to give him to OKC to get their draft picks back.

Simmons is basically unplayable at the ends of games or the fourth quarters of playoff games. They ain’t getting a top ten player for him these days.
 

HowBoutDemSox

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Houston asked for Simmons and Maxey, after Philly didn’t bite they made the execrable Brooklyn deal. My guess is that Philly, who made a big deal about Simmons as the face of the franchise, were offering Tobias Harris and picks and the Rockets said “Thanks but no thanks”. But Simmons is an offensive point center that can’t really be the center on defense. So building around him is really tricky. At the time I made the joke that if Philly came across Houston’s best use of Simmons would be to give him to OKC to get their draft picks back.

Simmons is basically unplayable at the ends of games or the fourth quarters of playoff games. They ain’t getting a top ten player for him these days.
The reporting around Houston/Philly negotiations are weird. There’s the Maxey story, but then there’s the local reporting that it was Simmons and Thybulle plus picks and those two were informed a deal had been reached and they were outbound to Houston:
However, a source close to the Sixers denied that Maxey was part of the deal.
But the Sixers thought they had a deal for Harden done, according to sources. The team won’t come out and say it, but Morey pushed hard to reunite with the 2018 MVP. Simmons and Thybulle were even informed by their agents on Wednesday of an expected trade.
For me, between the competing stories of Morey nixing a Harden deal over Maxey, or Fertitta being a spiteful jackass, Occum’s razor tells me to believe that Fertitta was a spiteful jackass.
 

nighthob

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I don’t think that Fertitta would have said to his GM “Let’s knock hundreds of millions off the value of this team as my other business is imploding due to Covid”. I mean I get that people hate the guy because of his politics, but you don’t get that rich by being stupid.

The “We were totally offering what they wanted!!!” stories came after the fact. It always struck me as Pritchard nonsense. Houston clearly demanded more from Philly than they were willing to accept elsewhere. But Philly clearly wasn’t willing to pay for Harden. And it was stupid because Simmons is basically the 6’10” non-shooting Marcus. Fantastic perimeter defender, but that contract is a killer for what he brings to the table.
 

lovegtm

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As we mentioned, I also wouldn't blame Fertita one iota for being spiteful towards Morey. He burned down the franchise and then waltzed into the Philly job.
 

wade boggs chicken dinner

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The reporting around Houston/Philly negotiations are weird. There’s the Maxey story, but then there’s the local reporting that it was Simmons and Thybulle plus picks and those two were informed a deal had been reached and they were outbound to Houston:


For me, between the competing stories of Morey nixing a Harden deal over Maxey, or Fertitta being a spiteful jackass, Occum’s razor tells me to believe that Fertitta was a spiteful jackass.
If Morey was willing to do Simmons + Thybulle + picks for Harden but not willing to include Maxey, that's on him.

Although given Harden's injury issues, PHI wasn't going anywhere even if they had made that trade.
 

ManicCompression

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As we mentioned, I also wouldn't blame Fertita one iota for being spiteful towards Morey. He burned down the franchise and then waltzed into the Philly job.
I'm not a Morey defender - I mean, I've compared the guy to Geoff Petrie before - but my sense was that Fertitta had essentially knee-capped Daryl in two ways:
- He refused to go a single dollar over the luxury tax, forcing the GM to make nonsense moves at the margins to save miniscule amounts of money
- He and Harden developed a relationship that made Morey powerless. Harden was forcing the RWB and then John Wall trades via Fertitta.

That probably was spin from Morey's camp, but it has a ring of truth to it. The GM who was obsessed with efficiency all of a sudden prioritizes point guards who can't shoot? That's not even mentioning the China fiasco or the fact that Fertitta over-leveraged himself to buy the team in the first place (this could turn into Frank McCourt situation). Morey owns some of the blame, but the rot in that org starts at the top.
 

HowBoutDemSox

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If Morey was willing to do Simmons + Thybulle + picks for Harden but not willing to include Maxey, that's on him.

Although given Harden's injury issues, PHI wasn't going anywhere even if they had made that trade.
Well that’s the thing, there are conflicting reports on if Maxey was the sticking point or not. If so, I agree it’s on Morey, but other reporting makes it seems like the deal was done with Simmons and Thybulle until Fertitta vetoed things (or, alternatively, that the Philly deal was never going to happen because of Morey and they were using Philly as leverage with Brooklyn):
Initially, it was reported that the Sixers offered a package centered on Simmons, Matisse Thybulle and draft compensation, but would not go so far as to include rookie Tyrese Maxey, whom Houston wanted. Maxey looks like a nice young player, but it's a stretch to believe the Sixers would really consider a late-first-round pick who's played 13 career games a bridge too far with a chance to acquire James Harden and become an immediate, and probably top-tier, title contender.

The second report is more believable, which is that Rockets owner Tilman Fertitta was adamant he wasn't going to make a trade with his former GM Daryl Morey, who of course is now running the Sixers.
The math adds up here because had Fertitta made it known to Stone from the start, explicitly, that a deal with the Sixers was not going to happen, while Stone still could've, and almost certainly would've, kept negotiations with Philly open for leverage against the Nets, it never would've gone as far as Simmons being told to expect a trade.

No right-thinking GM -- particularly one getting his first shot at running his own club with presumably no interest in torching his credibility with front offices, players and agents throughout the league -- would knowingly deceive people to that length. More likely, Stone believed he had the green light to make the best deal possible, got set to make that deal, then had the plug pulled by his owner.
https://www.cbssports.com/nba/news/76ers-were-so-sure-of-james-harden-deal-that-ben-simmons-was-told-to-expect-a-trade-per-report/

It’d just so hard to believe that Morey wouldn’t make the deal over Maxey, that’s why I’m inclined to believe the Fertitta story, crazy as it sounds in a vacuum.
 

HowBoutDemSox

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I'm not a Morey defender - I mean, I've compared the guy to Geoff Petrie before - but my sense was that Fertitta had essentially knee-capped Daryl in two ways:
- He refused to go a single dollar over the luxury tax, forcing the GM to make nonsense moves at the margins to save miniscule amounts of money
- He and Harden developed a relationship that made Morey powerless. Harden was forcing the RWB and then John Wall trades via Fertitta.

That probably was spin from Morey's camp, but it has a ring of truth to it. The GM who was obsessed with efficiency all of a sudden prioritizes point guards who can't shoot? That's not even mentioning the China fiasco or the fact that Fertitta over-leveraged himself to buy the team in the first place (this could turn into Frank McCourt situation). Morey owns some of the blame, but the rot in that org starts at the top.
The idea that Fertitta pushed the Westbrook deal through over the objections of his basketball ops people is more than just spin from the Morey camp, it’s from Fertitta himself:
I was in Europe, and so I was six or seven hours ahead of them. So I’m talking at 2, 3, 4 in the morning. And we just decided to do it. They ran different statistics by me.

My basketball ops got maybe a little weak at the end, and I just said, ‘We’re doing this. We are going to make the change. We’re going to go after it and roll the dice. We’re going to find that 5 percent.’

The one thing I believe you do in business, and you do in basketball, is you never sit still. You always keep it exciting. Not only is it exciting that we’re a better team, but it’s exciting for the fans. I owe it to them to give them the best opportunity to win a championship every year.
https://rocketswire.usatoday.com/2019/10/02/rockets-owner-tilman-fertitta-tells-final-hours-of-paul-westbrook-deal/
 

ManicCompression

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The idea that Fertitta pushed the Westbrook deal through over the objections of his basketball ops people is more than just spin from the Morey camp, it’s from Fertitta himself:
Brilliant find. "My basketball ops got maybe a little weak at the end" - god what a prick.

Edit: Just want to add it goes way beyond politics. This guy sucks regardless.