Latest on Rubio

[BrianFromWA]

Why are you picking Bayless as the one to "stick with to see what he has"?

I don't know who the "we" was, but I'd add Augustine in there before Bayless. And Collison and Holliday before Lawson and perhaps Jennings (haven't seen him enough).

Common denominator? I'd like to have a PG whose top skills involve distribution and defense. I'm not sure that Bayless in the one I'd pick out of that entire group.

 

[hasoos]

Why are you picking Bayless as the one to "stick with to see what he has"?

I don't know who the "we" was, but I'd add Augustine in there before Bayless. And Collison and Holliday before Lawson and perhaps Jennings (haven't seen him enough).

Common denominator? I'd like to have a PG whose top skills involve distribution and defense. I'm not sure that Bayless in the one I'd pick out of that entire group.

Well it is simple. Because we already know what the other PG have and bring to the table and there is no more upside left there, and they are not getting the job done. The facts are that Blake has no more upside and isn't cutting it. The facts are Sergio has no more upside and definitly is not cutting it, in fact, he fucking stinks. Bayless did not do great last year. But he has upside. He has athletic ability and finishing capability that neither one of those guys will ever have. He is also a better defender than either of them. He gets to the foul line twice as often as both of them combined. What do you want from your PG?

*Attack the paint
*Unselfish
*Hit outside jumper
*defense

Bayless has 2 of those already, and an NBA body. Steve Blake and Sergio will never have an NBA body. Ever.

 

[BrianFromWA]

I see. It's an "agree to disagree" thing, then. I have team defense and distribution to our other scorers as 1A and 1B in creating a dream PG, not necessarily "attacking the paint" or being supernatural from the 3point line. "NBA body" doesn't really do it for me, or else Jack would have been a better option. Personally, I think it's much easier to put on some muscle than to have your brain re-programmed to pass instead of shoot. KP said that Bayless wouldn't go to the D-League this year b/c his problem wasn't in skills, it was "learning how to play with other great players".

 

[Nikolokolus]

Am I the only one who can't wait for the day when have a starting quality point guard and we can put the incessant "young scrub A is better than young scrub B" arguments to bed?

 

[Rastapopoulos]

The max that Roy and LMA can be offered is probably going to be 13.8M (assuming that BRI stays about the same from 2008 to 2009). Let's just assume that (though I'm not sure LMA will get the max, but for

For instance, if we pulled off this trade (with CHI getting the #24, SAC getting the #17, and us getting the #2), we'd be slightly over the cap this summer at 60.3M (but have an MLE and BAE to use) have a 2010 summer salary of 49.0M and 10 men on the roster (the cap hold would be somewhere around 50M b/c of the two min salary holds we have to have to get to 12 players)

The trade in question has Sacto giving up the #2 (let's assume) and Kenny Thomas for Blake, Bayless and Outlaw. I know they want to get rid of Thomas, but not THAT much! I think:

1. You'd need it to be the case that Petrie was under orders to offload salary at all costs (otherwise I have a feeling he wants Rubio bad - this is a man who drafted Jason Williams, after all)
2. You'd have to take a lot more bad contracts off the Kings' hands to make it worth their while. Udrih at a minimum and probably Nocioni too (I know they just traded for him, but he's the kind of player that you get when you're ready to contend, and he's got to be pulling his long, stringy hair out playing for the Kings, even if he is getting paid $8M per.)

I always find it confusing: it says the Kings have Thomas under contract for 2 more years, but are they including this year? I think so, in which case Thomas might actually be a valuable chip for them (like RLEC could have been) and not something they'd pay a lot to dump.

 

[BrianFromWA]

Yeah, it's including this (past) year, and they're also getting the 17 pick.

It does a couple of things for them. At face value, they give up Thomas and Rubio for 3 pretty decent (and cheap) players and the 17th pick in the draft. Or, they could trade Thomas for those 3 and the pick and keep Bayless while cutting Blake and/or Outlaw.

So they could potentially spend 13.2M on Rubio and Thomas next year, OR 11.2M on Blake, Outlaw, Bayless and #17.
OR 7.2M on Outlaw, Bayless and #17. OR 3.6 on Bayless and #17. Lots of options. (Though, they're already way under luxury-tax land, so that isn't a tool like it would be for, say, WAS).

I was just using Thomas as a scenario to get under the cap for 2010. If being over the cap in 2010 isn't a constraint, then a bunch of things can change and we can take on more hellish contracts.