i'm surprised lexi didn't declare for the draft and not work out for anyone. of course, someone would probably scoop him up before the Spurs anyway.
The MLE can be used to sign for contracts up to five years with raises of 8%. Yes, it can be be used to sign a player to a one-year contract. It can be split as many ways as possible.
This summer, a max MLE contract runs about 5-years and $32M ... so it's a pretty nice chunk of change. The LLE can be up to a 2-year, $4M contract.
I fully expect the Spurs to use as much of these exceptions as possible this summer.
By my calculations, the Spurs have about $57M in contracts for next season. That's counting TD, TP, Ginobili, Bowen, Oberto, Bonner, Vaughn, Udoka, Mahinmi and Barry. Add in a couple rookies and then it basically comes out to the Spurs having about $10-$12M in wiggle room to add the remaining two or three players they need.
That's a lot of money ... especially compared to the pennies the Spurs have had in prior summers.
It would be great if they would spend it right for the first time in many summers.
the west is the best it has been in more than a decade. maybe ever. the hornets are good. really good. and they're only going to get better. the spurs can't beat the hornets if the hornets have a legit bench. the blazers are going to be much improved next year. the lakers are going to be much improved next year. the rockets are going to be a contender if yao can stay healthy.
manu and tim are not the players they once were. you can chalk it up to manu's ankle being hurt. but what is more likely at this point in his career, manu being hurt or manu not being hurt?
you think even older versions of manu and tim, plus tony and some FA they sign for $10/year is going to cut it two years down the line? keep dreaming.
i thought i fully answered your question when i said they can sign a player to how ever long they want, meaning that if the team only wants to sign him for 1 year, then 1 year it is. there are no requirements in minimum number of years.
Again, it doesnt matter if steve smith sucked or if he worked out, it really doesnt. the fact of the matter is that we had Manu Ginobili who was ready to take over, and Sjax. Sure steve smith was on the decline, but we had two absolute studs coming up, and with derek anderson here, it would have been 3 young wing players, at least steve provided some leader that derek anderson could not.
Rasho-most quality big men in this league get paid damn well, esp the starters. we signed rasho partly because of a concept called money management. Sure we can give JO the max, Jkidd the max, and live with 40 million+ dedicated to two players. so we now have 37 million to spend on 10 more JUST TO REACH THE LEAGUE MINIMUM in players. We paid rasho 7-8 million a year, and because of the limited quality bigs, i think that is a appropriate signing. Btw, with 40 mill dedicated to 2 players, we would probably have no room for ginobili, parker, or even brent. ginobili probably would have taken that 5 year 60 mil from denver and parker would have taken a 10 mil somewhere else.
I think giving out the max to more than one player on a team is just hurting your salary cap. Look at the suns, they havent been able to surround their team with enough talent for the past 4 years. theyve have to trade their rookies for cash. They could have had Deng, Nate Robinson, etc. But they couldnt, you know why? because nash has a near max, amare has a max, marion when he was here had a max, shaq, now has a max, barbosa has a 7 mil, diaw has a 9mil bell has the full MLE. WITH JUST 6 PLAYERS THEY HAVE A 62 million dollar payroll. surely you can see why handling out max contracts to 2 more players can be devastating. I can use the Lakers as an example too, they look awesome now, but they will run into trouble as soon as next year. unless odom or bynum is willing to take a HUGE paycut, lakers are screwed. Kobe 20+ gasol 13+ odom 13+, Vlad/Walton 10+ b/t the 2 and you have bynum ready for an extension. Lets not kid ourselves, bynum is gonna get 10+. there you have 6 players again potentially earning 66 million.
barbosa and howard, as i explained before, our man was finley. we traded/passed up those players to acquire michael finley. again, in retrospect it doesnt look great because we could have used howard or barbosa. but you must understand that AT THE TIME, Finley was absolutely the smarter move.
you want us to make a play at players when their value is low, what happens you do understand that if they break out, their going to get offers and we'll lose them anyways right? if we went after Caron, sure that would have been absolutely deadly, but the very next year when he becomes a FA hes gonna walk out and make 10+ somewhere else because we cannot afford him. and if you want to trade for him, then we are trading our pieces away for 1 potentially good season. also you make it seem like its easy to land a player when a team is having a fire sale with their players, you have 29 other teams to compete with. sometimes other teams can just offer better deals, doesn't mean they didn't try, doesn't mean our FO is worthless.
And how soon we forget, i honestly think you are not a spurs fan, and if you are it HAD to be recent. we didnt win 2 championships JUST because of 2 dominant big men. Incase you forgot, AJ hit the game winner in 99. Also we acquired veteran pieces like Steve Kerr, Jerome kersey, Mario Elli, and we had sean Luck_The_Fakers_Luck_The_Fakers_Luck_The_Fakers_Lu ck_The_Fakers_Luck_The_Fakers_Luck_The_Fakers_ and already mentioned, the little general. In 2003, we were EVEN deeper than 99, We had a monster in Duncan, but Robinson was barely a shade of his old self. In a strict statistical sense, rasho had better numbers than robinson. This was also the year we introduced Manu ginobili and saw the emergence of Sjax. Ofcousre Bowen was there, steve smith, speedy, kevin willis, kerr, ferry, to round out our bench. As you can clearly see, rather than the two headed monster that people conveniently attribute our championship to, we actually had what you call a basketball team.
Yeah that Tim Duncan is washed up, as evidenced by his play.
Also, where is the guarantee the Lakers will be better?
Where is the guarantee that Peja and Chandler will stay healthy?
Where is the guarantee that the Blazers will improve and or stay healthy?
who the is talking about guarantees? i'm making rationale guesses based on the evidence. you're clutching at pipe dreams.
In general I don't quite fault the Spurs for Rasho, though I was sure at the time that the deal sucked and Rasho wasn't the right fit.
The problem was that PJ Brown turned down their 4 year, 32 million dollar offer. After that happened, there wasn't much left, so they gambled on Rasho.
The acquisition of Steve Smith was a case of the Spurs getting what scraps they could in the S&T deal once Derek Anderson announced he was going to Portland. I don't remember having any delusions about how limited he was going to be. That the Spurs went 58-24 with the garbage lineup they trotted out in 2001-02 was a testament to the greatness of Tim Duncan at the peak of his powers.
Obviously, the Spurs did not agree that it was such a good price since they were so eager to dump him. Rasho was what they settled for when they couldn't get any first-tier players with their free agent money. Rasho had a good scoring game once against the Spurs, and Pop liked him. That summer was turning into a huge bust until Sam Presti, who in actuality was the real brains of the operation, figured out a way to get Hedo Turkoglu for nothing. That was slick.
If the Spurs had acquired Kidd, they never would have had enough money to keep Ginobili. Parker would have demanded a trade. They lucked out when Kidd decided to stay in New Jersey. Had R.C. gotten his way, the Spurs contending days would have been long over. They win in spite of R.C.
It's the Los Angeles Lakers. If they want to pay the luxury tax, it doesn't kill them. If they don't, players like Radmanovic and Walton are easily expendable.
That is absolute and utter nonsense. The Spurs acquired Finley two years after the 2003 draft flub. They threw away that pick to conserve cap space for the Jason Kidd run. They lucked out in not getting him, but had they drafted Howard in 2003, he never joins the Mavericks, never creates the infamous mismatch in combination with Nowitzki, the Mavs never get far enough against the Spurs for Manu's foul to make a difference, and right now we're bummed because the Lakers just returned the favor in preventing a four-peat.
They got Finley in 2005 because of a one-time luxury tax amnesty event where Mark Cuban could waive a player and not pay the tax on his salary (though he still had to pay the salary). Finley chose the Spurs over the Miami Heat.
Neither are they the transcendant geniuses people make them out to be. When Presti was there, they could make magic things happen with the salary-cap rules. Look at what he did in Seattle: he got draft picks from Phoenix in order to take Kurt Thomas off their hands, then got another pick for passing Thomas off to the Spurs. He turned thin air and a four-month rental of Kurt Thomas into three first-round picks. That's a genius. R.C. Buford struck it rich on draft picks nearly a decade ago, and got credit for Presti's brainstorms, and people make him out to be a model GM, which is nonsense. The league has long since caught up on international scouting, he's repeatedly flubbed basic details like dates of birth and buyout clauses that have cost the Spurs chances at players who can contribute, and frankly it's hard to see where he's brought enough to the table to have any confidence that he knows what he's doing enough to restock this roster.
The Spurs have never had much of a problem getting aging veteran free agents to fill out the roster. Following 1999, that team aged out of contention rapidly, culminating in a 2001 Western final where the Lakers posted the worst beating on the Spurs in NBA playoff history. That team featured 108-year old Terry Porter at the point, who was passed up by elderly ladies in motorized carts as he brought the ball up the court.
The team was rebuilt because the Spurs struck draft gold in Parker and Ginobili, and made a sage move in acquiring Bruce Bowen as a free agent. Everything else was gravy.
Now they're back in the same boat they were in back in 2001. They lost to the Lakers in the WCF. I'm glad they at least were compe ive instead of going down 111-72 and 111-82 to close out a sweep, but clearly there are a lot of old pieces to replace. I don't even detect any sense of urgency on Pop's part that they need to get that much younger. He and R.C. seem quite content to bring in Mahinmi to replace Horry, sign a swingman with the MLE, and grab a scrub point guard to replace Jacque Vaughn. That will still leave senior citizens Kurt Thomas, Michael Finley, Bruce Bowen, and Brent Barry on the team, expected to play significant roles. That just isn't going to cut it anymore. The 2008 Spurs already were the oldest team ever to make a conference final. I don't support the apparent effort to break that record next season. It won't succeed.
Ouch.
It hurts because it rings true.
This is all excellent. We need Presti back; won't happen. But what's sad is that everything shown by Pop and Buford in the last two years (at least) has been lethargy and self-satisfaction. I don't expect them to show panic, but their tepid public pronouncements gibe perfectly with their tepid and meager personnel moves.
Ya know.... Sometimes I read some of these posts and feel the need to correct them, but this disease I have just won't allow me to. I think the Dr. called it "Lethargy?"
In any case, props to you. You're definitely a better man than I.
While I agree with some of your post, I have to vent on this pet peeve. A lot of people love to give Presti props on that move but it was nothing special. He had a $9M trade exception. That size trade exception is a once in a lifetime gift to a GM.
He turned the $9M into three future first round picks. That sounds good but when you consider that future first round picks have a market value of between $1.5M and $2M ... he basically turned a $9M asset into at most $6M in assets. Presti had a chance to go out and get a building block for the Sonics but instead rolled the dice that the Suns will be a lottery team in 2010. Only if that 2010 pick turns into a lottery selection does Presti's gamble pay off. Otherwise he just wasted a great opportunity.
Overall, I wasn't overly impressed with Presti in his first year in Seattle. He dumped Ray Allen when his value was low for the fifth pick in a draft that was four good players deep. He got a gift of a trade exception when the Magic inexplicably gave Rashard Lewis a billion dollars ... and he didn't do really take advantage of that trade exception. The Suns might die off but the more likely scenario is it'll be a pick no lower than 11 or 12.
We'll see what Presti does during this draft. He has six picks. The pressure is on for him to do some wheeling and dealing a la Portland the last couple years.
I agree with the premise that Buford has a lot to prove. He hasn't made that good of a move in a while. Not all of the bad moves in recent years were on Buford (Kid Genius Presti was the brains behind Elson, Butler, Sanikidze, Karaulov, White, Sanders, Scales ... to name a few) but he hasn't been overly impressive recently. He made the call on Brent Barry, which has worked out well for the most part. Recognizing Horry had more magic after 2003 was a good call. Thomas for Elson and a first still is up in the air.
Then again, I contend that the Spurs haven't really tried to retool for a long azz time now. In the transition between the 1997 disaster and Duncan being drafted, Buford picked up some gems off the trash heap in Malik Rose and Jaren Jackson. Two players instrumental to a championship run snagged for only training camp invites? That's gold.
Then with the pressure on once again to transition from the 1999 team to an NBA that suddenly started to run, he got Parker late in the draft, picked up SJax for nothing and along with Pop get Bowen.
Since that point, the Spurs haven't done any retooling. It's basically just been plug'n'play vets. Now with some retooling needed, Buford will once again be aggressive. We'll see what happens but he's pretty good at picking compe ors out of the trash heap that play to win. And the good news is he has about $12 million buffer to play with before the lux tax becomes a factor, so he isn't relegated to the trash heap. As a comparison, last year the Spurs had less than $2 million to work with heading into free agency. Can't expect miracles with nothing to work with.
I'd be less confident if Buford had failed again and again to retool but I don't think he's been asked to work any magic in a while. This summer, the pressure is back on and RC has to perform. I guess we'll see in a couple months if he still appears clueless or if he'll make the needed moves.
Whos idea was the Malik for Nazr deal?
Just curious.
extra_stout, i was replying to another posters comments, please read his comments because it'll make more sense to you what i was trying to say.
So I guess if RC wants to be considered a genius by internets GMs he will set up Thomas to walk into a S&T so the Spurs can get back a significant trade exception, which then can be used to perhaps find a lesser player.
RC is caught between an ownership group which is willing to pinch pennies at the expense of basketball talent and a coach who demands polished, experienced talent to fill out the supporting cast. Ownership was prepared to let Parker walk over the amount of $2 million over 6 years. Now who would have received the blame for Parker being lost in free agency?
RC managed to find complementary 2nd and 3rd stars for Duncan, stars good enough to win multiple championships, yet somehow he doesn't know what he's doing. Nevermind that the Big 3 are eating up $40+ mil of cap room year in and year out and from there it doesn't take much in supporting cast contracts, cap holds, etc... to ensure you have no cap flexibility.
Pop demands players who are ready to play championship basketball. Beno Udrih would get 25 minutes a night on just about any other team in this league. Not so in SA. Pop killed Beno's market value. The Spurs have been in 'win now' mode for a while. Predictably, they end up with an aging supporting cast. Yet again. Why is that? Is that because somehow the GM doesn't see the need to give the coaching staff and bunch of young, raw athletes to develop? Or, perhaps, it's because the GM is giving the coaching staff exactly what they wanted?
Fans like to about the Spurs when they don't win a championship (which is quite hilarious in and of itself) but RC did what he could to serve the two masters. I didn't realize CATs came with Teflon coating these days.
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