Dude's been in the NBA for over a decade. He's almost 33 years old. He's going to be making a RIDICULOUS amount of money as he gets older.
However difficult it was to win big with him when he was younger and cheaper, it's only going to get more difficult. Ownership is not really relevant to that reality.
And the team signed Nurk. They signed Ant. Both of those guys are probably making more here than the would have if they'd walked this past summer. We're giving Dame more money than almost any US professional athlete ever. Ownership's alleged unwillingness to spend money just isn't a limiting factor as I see it.
Dame will be making the same percentage of the cap (35%) he's made since signing the super max. Strictly in terms of fielding a team around him, it's actually more money to field a team around him moving forward than it was at the beginning of his super max. 35% of $100 million cap is $35 million, leaving $65 million to build the rest of the roster. If the cap is at $150 million in a few years, that's $52.5 million for Dame, leaving almost $100 million to the cap line and an even greater gap between his salary and the luxury tax line.
By staying under the tax, ownership got an over $30 million check from revenue sharing and will receive another $15 plus million from the luxury tax this year. That's significant money for a business, but again I'd like to know what teams have won a title while not being willing to add money to the payroll and are always reducing it?
Ownership is definitely not perfect--not interviewing a GM to replace Olshey and then replacing him with a guy who had no track record other than with building mediocre Portland teams wasn't smart, and I think they're too happy to be mediocre rather than facing the reality and trading Dame--but I don't think that any ownership could take this roster and build a championship around Dame. He's too old and the roster is too weak and the future assets are too few.
The assets are too few because ever since 2019 every decision has been made with not only saving money in the current year but making it so they won't be a tax team the following year either. At the 2020 trade deadline, they refused to turn Whiteside's enormous expiring contract into anything positive and salary dumped Skal. At the 2021 trade deadline, they chose to trade a young asset in Trent for an older version just to avoid paying him. At the 2022 trade deadline, they failed to get many assets for 4 players that had interest because their goal was to clear as much salary as possible. This year, they refused to take anyone with salary next year and again traded a quality rotation piece simply because they didn't want to pay him. It's very, very difficult to build a contending team when almost every one of your moves is limiting the ability to make a bigger move in the future by depleting assets and leaving you with not many expendable contracts to match incoming salary in trades. Even despite that, this summer they could still offer 5 1sts in a trade, including a guaranteed lottery pick, Sharpe, and Ant. I'm not saying they should trade all that, but it's enough to compete with almost any other team's offers for a star player.
Right now we have mediocrity and aged veterans with little to no real chance of doing anything in the playoffs IF we're lucky enough to make them.
Aged veterans? Dame is the only "aged" veteran. He'll be 33 next year. Jerami and Nurk will be 29 next year. Justise turns 27 tomorrow. The entire rest of the team is 26 or under. If anything, the argument should be that this team doesn't have enough proven veterans, not too many. Chris Paul had turned 33 on a team that was 1 game away from beating the Warriors in 2018 with Durant. Then 3 years later at age 36 was on a very young Phoenix team that was up 2-0 in the Finals. With some solid moves to get him some help, you don't think there's any chance Dame could do something similar?
