So KP is planning on picking Blake and Outlaw back up.

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I am worried about resigning Outlaw. Not worried about Blake. I just think Outlaw is on the decline of his career. Unless we keep him in hopes that he can have a good first half of the season and trade him before the deadline if the right deal comes along.
 
It is a no brainer to me. Based on their salaries you would be stupid not to. Even if you want to replace them they have value in a trade. But again based on their salaries they are at the very least excellent role players. The only debate is what are their roles.
 
http://www.portlandtribune.com/sports/story.php?story_id=124418030527213700

I also linked this on the Greg/Bayless thread due to the cross of information, but this article says in part of it, that they are planning on picking Outlaw and Blake back up.

Discuss.

I can sort of see keeping Blake, though he is coming off of shoulder surgery.

I don't see any reason why they would keep Outlaw, though. He killed his trade value in the playoffs by not even bothering to show up.

It's comments like these that make me believe KP is going to come up empty this off season. If he values these two extremely mediocre players this highly, how much does he value players who are actually good?

Far too much, I would say.
 
I think they said that:
“I don’t see a scenario where we don’t pick up their options,” Pritchard says. “They’ve both been terrific for us. We like those guys way too much.”

If they're not on our team, we can't pick up their options. :) There's a scenario.
 
The thing that makes this stuff so hard to figure out is that if I was KP, I would say I was picking them up too. The reason being:

1. If they are back on the team, I want them to feel wanted.
2. I don't want other teams to be able to make plans based upon released information, such as who will be a free agent, and who will not.
3. If you don't have them under contract, you can't use them as trade value.

Now on the other end of the scale, once again, my mind runs with the fact that I wonder if KP is too loyal to the guys he has here. Is he too close to them to make an objective decision? Or is it the fact that if not for a few injuries, he think this team can contend? It could be either, neither, or both.
 
And in the article, they got the 52M cap number wrong. Blake and Outlaw aren't committed to yet, so the number's around 45M
 
And in the article, they got the 52M cap number wrong. Blake and Outlaw aren't committed to yet, so the number's around 45M

He very straight forwardly said that was with Blake, Oden and a 1st round draft pick included.
 
I don't understand re-signing either of them, but that is why I am not the GM. I trust KP and hope he has a plan.
 
Reality check:

As mediocre as Blake and Outlaw are, you better have a plan for replacing them before you throw them out of the lifeboat.

Do you really want to see 30 MPG from Sergio? Do you want to have Webster as our only "safety" net if anything happens to Batum? Do you want naked pictures of Rosie O'Donnel as your screen-saver?
 
It's a no brainer that we have to pickup both Blake and Outlaw at their salaries. The only case would be if someone wants to offer us a trade of something we can't refuse and need the cap space. I'm pretty frustrated with both at times but they are both worth far more then their options and we would be crazy to not pick them up. Now if we make a offer to Frye then I would be pissed.
 
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I don't understand re-signing either of them, but that is why I am not the GM. I trust KP and hope he has a plan.

They are not technically resigning them. They would be picking up the option for the last year of their current contracts.
 
They are not technically resigning them. They would be picking up the option for the last year of their current contracts.

I haven't actually paid attention to how often teams don't pick up the option for certain players. For bubble players, surely. But for rotation players, I would have to guess they get picked up most of the time.
 
They are not technically resigning them. They would be picking up the option for the last year of their current contracts.

So these are for 1 year deals...got it...thank you.

It does make sense then, to be able to have them so we can trade them.
 
This may just mean that KP has bigger plans to find players via trade rather than free-agency
 
They are not technically resigning them. They would be picking up the option for the last year of their current contracts.

Correct. Both are proven NBA players on very cheap contracts. Whether you plan to keep them, or trade them, you pick up their options. They are either cheap proven back-ups on your team, or valuable trade assets to bring you something of value in return. Given the state of the economy, the reduced salary cap and luxury tax threshold, and the fact that many teams are struggling financially, proven NBA players on cheap, short contracts could actually be pretty good trade assets. Re-signing both is a no brainer.

BNM
 
They are not technically resigning them. They would be picking up the option for the last year of their current contracts.

I have to ask...is this the Pinwheel1 from years ago on the Hoopsworld message boards?
 
to play devil's advocate...

You're going to limit yourself to a guaranteed less-than-7M in caproom in the summer you've been targeting for 2 years because you have unnecessarily tied up 7.6M of your space in backup-quality players that you didn't have to? Really?

That's why I think either Blake or Outlaw (but probably both) are gone draft day for a big move that probably kills our cap space. That allows us to have the 2.9M Diogu exception, the BAE (around 2M), the MLE (around 6). If the other team doesn't pick up their option (which lots of teams might) you can attempt to re-sign Travis or Blake or both.
 
Let me say this another way...

By keeping Blake and Travis, you limit yourself to that 7M. Period. You don't get a BAE, MLE, Vet Minimum, etc. Nada. Even if you use their contracts in an S&T, they are worth less next year (7.6M) than this year (8.25M). Additionally, the other team HAS TO PAY that contract. If you trade them before June 30 and the other team doesn't pick up the option, they just traded b/w 7 and 10M worth of their bad/overpriced contracts and don't have to pay a dime.
 
KP said this on the radio the week after the playoffs ended. On top of that, given how much they're scheduled to make, this shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone.
 
"given how much they're scheduled to make"?

They're going to take up over half of the existing cap room. I personally don't care much, b/c I think we have enough assets to make moves we want to anyway--and Hedo is basically the only UFA I care a lot about. Sessions would be ok, but he's RFA, so there's risk there.

It might be helpful to look at it this way: think of Blake and Outlaw as 7.6M of players signed to offer sheets. We can either blow half our caproom matching contracts to mediocre players who'll be backups for us in the championship window, or have around 15M to be players for someone that will put us over the top.

Smokescreen, imo. And damage control ("we really love you guys, seriously") if the trades don't happen.
 
If we go into the 09-10 season with virtually the exact same roster, I will be sorely disappointed in Kevin Pritchard.
 
If we don't add anyone, KP may get a reputation of being "anti-trader KP", stand-pat KP.. To miss out on LaCapSpace, and now this.

We can bring on Joel Freeland next year, so yes, Outlaw is expendable. With Blake, they may hold onto him and try to trade him in a sign and trade with Philly, rather than letting him walk and risk not being able to land that FA.

But I'd rather just cut him, and go after Nate Robinson or Andre Miller.
 
Why wouldn't you pick both of them up?

For the money, they're a great value. Whether they fit back into our system (a system with the 2nd best in the West last year!) or they are moved to another team, they're certainly worth retaining in one way or another.

I suppose there could be a scenario where we're able to say deal for a player (i.e. Hinrich) and we find that the deals involving Blake don't bring us back anything that we figure we can either use or parlay into another asset, but I find that extremely remote.

They will pick up those team options.
 
I think that what this tells us is that KP believes he can get whoever he wants in free-agency with the cap we will have - or he does not like anyone available in free-agency and wants them as cheap trade chips.

The more I think about it - it seems to me that the only possible free-agency target is Sessions - Miller will require more money and we heard some questions about locker-room issues recently, Kidd will require more money.

It's Sessions or trade. My gut feeling is that a trade is the most likely way changes to the roster will happen.
 

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