When a team is so far below the Cap they need to spend money....

[Orion Bailey]

So last year was a spend it or lose it year during the off season...
Or so we thought....


First, I have been on the NO support wagon since I've been here, but some recent knowledge coupled with some sober thought has me questioning everything we did last year.

Now I know we ALL know the contracts he signed and the basis was we need to spend it or lose it, but I do not believe this to be the case at all. I will point out a couple of things I learned from Isaac and Suke show yesterday and then tie in with my thoughts.

So the money was use it or lose it. Meaning either sign guys to larger contracts, sign more guys, or just split the difference of the money up between the players for that year, correct?
And I believe (step up if you did not) we ALL said we need to sign more or we will just be splitting the money up among the players. So we signed larger contracts to use the money.

I am now under the believe we should not have signed those larger contracts because we had no choice. We DID have a choice and it is now severely impairing our future options.

Instead of signing the larger contracts, we should have just divided the extra money among the players on the roster last year and walked into this off season without the contracts of Leonard/Crabbe/Turner.

I wouldn't mind Turner and Crabbe, but not at the contracts they have.

If we would have just split the money up to the roster of last year, then we would be walking into this season with this roster:

Dame/CJ/Napier
CJ/Crabbe/Quarterman
Harkless/Aminu
Vonleh/Davis
Plums(Nurkic)/Leonard

I included Crabbe and Leonard because we had to match on Crabbe and Leonard got no other offers, so he was staying either way. but we didn't have to give him the money we did...nor Turner.

So backtracking a year and with the above roster(which is admittedly thin) we would have had $28 mil to sign someone. Lets say we offered Leonard $8 mill a year, that would be $30 mill to spend this off season.

So that roster isn't a winner obviously, but we weren't winning anything last year anyhow. I'm not saying tank, but the long term should have been more of the focus in hindsight. So now lets fast track to this year and the draft.
We could have gone into this draft with 3 first round picks and money for a max player.
Now, couple that with NOT signing CJ early and we could have gone into this season with $50+ mill to spend and three first round picks, with CJ and Nurk coming up as RFA's, we could have gone over the top to resign no matter what.
So yes we would now be severely over the cap, but I truly believe if we would have gone this route, we could have a championship team now.

To put it into perspective,
We could potentially have a roster like this based on the signings this off season(only asterisk is would they have signed with us? I think so looking at the roster and knowing we would contend)

Dame/Napier
CJ/Crabbe/Connaughton
Gordon/Harkless/Aminu
Millsap/Vonleh/Davis
Nurk/Davis/Leonard


Yes, we would be in cap trouble soon but tell me that wouldn't contend with any team in the NBA?
Moves down the road would have to happen to make room for signing the RFA's, but this would make Aminu/Davis/Leonard all expendable to make moves to maintain a contending team without going too deep into penalties.


I really think we got way too emotional (PA's fault??) over last year's team and did not maintain a level headed, long term outlook. We just signed everyone like money grew on trees thinking this team is young and would grow into a contender. While this may still come to fruition, the chances are slim and if you wait for that you burn the prime years of our stars.
I really believe with shrewd moves, we could have been a contender going into this season.
I really believe Millsap would have chosen us over Denver and then Gordon would have hopped on board ( maybe not due to his ties with the Boston coach) But even if we didn't get Gordon, we would have much more trade power for a Paul George, who would make us even more of a contender (except he would probably be a rental).


The long and short is, I think we had the short term vision goggles on last year and that is a huge knock on NO and PA...

Guys like @TBpup can verify the numbers and rules, etc, but I do believe we could have gone another route that would have provided us much more flexibility this year.
We could have had money to sign any number of players and have draft picks and expendables to use in trades.
The options would have been much more diverse I believe if we would have just divided the money up to the players last year instead of spending it in contracts.

Am I wrong? Waste of a thread and read?

Hindsight is 20/20, but GM's are paid for this sight are they not?

Discuss.

 

[Harry's Raincoat]

Summer of '16, we were coming off a 2nd Round loss to the W's. A decision was made to bring back as many of the players from that team as we could. AND to add to it, using cap space created (to use) that summer.

Easy to second guess a year later that our team wasn't really great afterall. Wasn't really a 2nd round type level team afterall. And that we were really still rebuilding.

Attracting Free Agents to PDX is beyond difficult. At least the really good ones. Yes, we overpaid for Evan Turner. But I still consider Crabbe, Leonard and Harkless assets we needed to keep, if only for future trade value. You have to have players under contract to be able to include them in future trades. At the time we signed Turner, we didn't know we were keeping Crabbe or the others. We were adding ET to DL, CJ, NV, and MP.

Yes, hindsight is 20/20. But I think the bigger lesson is that our current Mgmt team has learned that PDX cannot and will not attract great FA's unless we are already NOT needing them. Build through the draft and through trades. Not signings.

 

[Minstrel]

But I still consider Crabbe, Leonard and Harkless assets we needed to keep, if only for future trade value. You have to have players under contract to be able to include them in future trades.

They have to be sought-after players to be trade assets. Otherwise, you could just sign a bunch of guys off the street "to include in deals." Harkless was a good decision to re-sign at his cost--he's a trade asset. Crabbe and Leonard I still don't believe are. Finding a team to take Leonard was supposedly the thing that kept derailing the Houston/New York/Portland/Whomever trade. Not that I particularly want/wanted that deal to happen, but it goes to show that signing guys "just to be able to include them in deals" doesn't work if other teams don't want them.

Yes, hindsight is 20/20.

For fans. Paid professionals in the front office are supposed to be better at projecting forward.

I understand the idea behind last season's off-season. I just think it was a pretty large player evaluation error.

 

[Sinobas]

Where do you get the idea that we'd have 30 million to spend this offseason? That is certainly not the case. Especially if we had matched Crabbe and paid Leonard as you said. We would be under the tax threshold, but not the cap.

The numbers as I calculated them, is that if we hadn't signed crabbe/turner/leonard, we'd be sitting at 6.5 mil of cap space right now. And I imagine we could free up a lot more by dumping guys like Davis and Aminu, who should be very tradeable. So that's about 20 mil possibly.

I do agree with the general idea of your post though. We could have just taken on the contract of Ryan Anderson, or maybe a guy like Jae Crowder. I've seen teams re-gret over paying guys in FA all too many times in sports. You gotta do it to keep good players like Nurk and CJ, don't waste it on bench players.

 

[RR7]

I think some of the info is wrong in here. The "split it among the rest of the players" portion of the salary was for the previous season, where we ended up trading for Varejao to get above the salary floor. That got us Swanigan, essentially.
The use it or lose it many expressed was knowing we were going to be extending CJ, and Damian's big extension, and others being free agents, it was our last real opportunity at cap space. So use it, and get people, or you lose that opportunity.
I disagree on allowing CJ to go to RFA. I think it says a lot to go to your guy with loyalty, and lock him in when he is eligible, if he is a cornerstone of your franchise. There's been a good amount of discussion on that this offseason, around a guy like Hayward, who Utah had go out and get an offer for them to match when he was a RFA.
But, regardless, assuming we match on Crabbe, pass on Turner, get Leonard for 8 instead of 10, and allow CJ to be a RFA, we don't have 50 million in cap space. And who knows if we have Nurkic. We are currently at ~136. Remove 17 for Turner, we're at 119. Take away 2 from Leonard, we're at 117. Take away 24 from CJ, we're at 93. Now add ~8 back for his RFA cap hold, we're at 101. That still has us over the cap. We have the full MLE instead of the tax payers MLE. We might not have Nurk, and if we didn't, add an additional few million for Plumlee's cap hold onto the books.

 

[Orion Bailey]

I think some of the info is wrong in here. The "split it among the rest of the players" portion of the salary was for the previous season, where we ended up trading for Varejao to get above the salary floor. That got us Swanigan, essentially.
The use it or lose it many expressed was knowing we were going to be extending CJ, and Damian's big extension, and others being free agents, it was our last real opportunity at cap space. So use it, and get people, or you lose that opportunity.
I disagree on allowing CJ to go to RFA. I think it says a lot to go to your guy with loyalty, and lock him in when he is eligible, if he is a cornerstone of your franchise. There's been a good amount of discussion on that this offseason, around a guy like Hayward, who Utah had go out and get an offer for them to match when he was a RFA.
But, regardless, assuming we match on Crabbe, pass on Turner, get Leonard for 8 instead of 10, and allow CJ to be a RFA, we don't have 50 million in cap space. And who knows if we have Nurkic. We are currently at ~136. Remove 17 for Turner, we're at 119. Take away 2 from Leonard, we're at 117. Take away 24 from CJ, we're at 93. Now add ~8 back for his RFA cap hold, we're at 101. That still has us over the cap. We have the full MLE instead of the tax payers MLE. We might not have Nurk, and if we didn't, add an additional few million for Plumlee's cap hold onto the books.

Okay, well I guess I fucked that one up then. Blending both years offseason I suppose. I thought it was all when we signed everyone last offseason.

 

[Trackjack]

You sign players what they are worth it doesn't matter how much money got the left over will continue the the next year.

 

[BigGameDamian]

You sign players what they are worth it doesn't matter how much money got the left over will continue the the next year.

Well Meyers Leonard is worth a cool 10 mill by Olshey standards. That's what he's trying to sell to all the NBA GM's anyway.

 

[Trackjack]

Well Meyers Leonard is worth a cool 10 mill by Olshey standards. That's what he's trying to sell to all the NBA GM's anyway.

What Olshey thinks and what i think is two different thing. But he has Paul wallet and I don't but I do have opinion as fan that he over paid last season.

 

[Rhal]

If we hadn't signed anyone of significance last summer, you can do all the finagling to get us cap room that you want but then your just assuming these deals about absorbing contracts other then Carrols deal were actually real and we could get the assets that other teams demanded for the use of their capspace. The reason teams want to get ride of these players is mostly because they are vastly overpaid and don't fit well on their teams and have little to no value to other teams. Also the picks given up are not great picks, we aren't getting an unprotected pick to absorb a player so most will be outside of the lottery picks.
There is also another thing that gets overlooked by almost everyone when talking about the contracts we signed last year. Outside of Turner they are all young and have room to improve, you judge a contract for a young player based on what they are at the end of it not the beginning. Yes Crabbe/Turner under preformed the first year of their deals and Harkless was good not great but that doesn't mean they don't have room to improve and will most likely improve. Look at Conley, when he signed his first big extension it was ridiculed by the league and was seen as a "franchise killer" by a few GM's.

 

[SlyPokerDog]

When a team is so far below the Cap they need to spend money....

I read your post to the tune of When a Man Loves a Woman.