At first, it makes no sense. Why would the Portland Trail Blazers pay Hedo Turkoglu $50 million?
Thanks to his position as a key ballhandler on a conference champion, Turkoglu has become one of the league's most overrated players -- a 30-year-old forward who has had league-average PER numbers the past three seasons. Clearly, he isn't worth $50 million, which is the rumored price, and in a couple of years he might not be worth half of $50 million.
Yet in a roundabout way, it makes a lot of sense for Portland to offer him $50 million.
Let me try to explain.
First, here's the most crucial thing to understand about salary-cap space: It doesn't mean you're getting a superstar, or even a star. Teams are limited to the players that are available on the market, and those players are often available for a reason -- and in fact, this year there isn't one bona fide All-Star in the bunch.
Additionally, teams have a limited window of opportunity -- often cap space is only a 1-year phenomenon. As extensions kick in for younger players, it can be gone a year later, especially in the current environment where the cap is expected to drop a year from now. In Portland's case, the likely extensions for Brandon Roy and LaMarcus Aldridge mean this year's expected $9 million in cap space will be gone next year.
The time horizon can shrink in another sense, as there's a league-wide blitz in the opening days of free agency to get players to commit to deals. Options for teams quickly become limited, which is why the strategy that has worked best in recent years is to pick one guy and go overboard after him.
Finally, signing a player who doesn't fit the team's needs makes little or no sense. In this year's market, a couple of the top players available are power forwards (David Lee, Paul Millsap) who would play behind Aldridge. Clearly, those players wouldn't be a great use of cap space by Portland.
What Portland needs instead is another player who can create off the dribble and take some of the burden off Roy offensively, and that player needs to be able to defend either the 3 or the 1 to fill in the Blazers' softest lineup spots.
Make a list of available free agents who meet that criteria and you get:
• Hedo Turkoglu• Ramon Sessions• Nate Robinson• Allen Iverson• Flip Murray• Andre Miller• Lamar Odom
Here's one thing you'll quickly notice about those seven players: In a vacuum, not one of those players is worth $10 million a year or anywhere close to it. But we're not in a vacuum, we're in a bidding situation, and sometimes in those situations it pays to overpay -- as we saw last year with Turkoglu and the Magic riding the $122 million Rashard Lewis acquisition to the NBA Finals.
In particular, it pays to overpay for a player who is the right fit.
And from the list above, Odom is a nice option, but the odds of winning a bidding war against the world-champion, revenue-raking Lakers are slim; Sessions would tie up Portland's money for a week while the Bucks decide whether to match, after which the other desirable free agents might be gone. Ditto for Robinson.
Which basically takes the competition down to Turkoglu, Miller, Iverson and Murray. And when we talk about players you'd even remotely consider giving more than the midlevel, you can narrow it further to Turkoglu vs. Miller.
In that competition, Turkoglu is clearly a better fit. Miller is an up-tempo point guard who would be joining one of the league's slowest-paced teams, and he's a poor floor-spacer on a team that thrives on spreading the floor around Roy. He's also 33, making a long-term deal risky.
Turkoglu is no spring chicken at 30, but he has a couple of advantages. Because he is big and can shoot, his game should age well -- he's not overly dependent on his athleticism. Additionally, he allows the Blazers to line up in a way no other free agent does. Because he handles the ball so well, he and Roy can do the ballhandling and allow the Blazers to play large chunks of the game without a true point guard. It's not like they'd be missing out on transition buckets -- they already play at a snail's pace.
That takes us to the other story, Rudy Fernandez's reported unhappiness with his role and the pursuit of Turkoglu. But actually, a Turkoglu acquisition should be a godsend for Rudy. In a traditional lineup, it was going to be hard for him to see much daylight behind Roy, but in this set-up he could play extended minutes alongside those two provided he can defend quick point guards.
If there's an odd man out, it would appear to be Travis Outlaw. The Blazers would lead the league in oversized wing players with 6-10 Turkoglu, 6-9 Nicolas Batum, 6-9 draftee Victor Claver, 6-7 Martell Webster and Outlaw.
Outlaw, with a cap-friendly contract that has one year and $4 million left, is easily the most portable of the bunch, especially since his shot-creating skills with the second
