There seems to be a pretty dramatic misunderstanding of the new salary cap effect by some posters on this board. $17.5m/year for a top-7 rotation guy simply isn't that outrageous when the cap is around $100m. It might feel, intuitively, like it's too much... but Olshey didn't become a bad GM overnight. He's using more than intuition.
If you like Turner as a player, then I don't think that his contract should be a negative here (although it's not a screaming deal like we got on Aminu last year).
Now... as to whether we should like Turner as a player, there are three key things to the modern NBA:
- Perimeter shooting
- Defense
- Ballhandling/distribution
Turner is fantastic at number 3. He is pretty good at number 2. And he's been poor at number 1... at least until he shot over 50% from beyond the arc the last two months of last year.
I think that he's going to be a good addition, but there is a question of what current Blazers, if any, we are going to let walk because of acquiring him. Right now I think feel good about this and am confident he will help make the Blazers good next year and in the future.
Ed O.