Reply With Quote
Either PATFO values that leadership far more than most (if not all) other FOs, which isn't that far-fetched, or Pop was just coming up with a way to praise Patty even when he was playing badly. Pop is not one to publicly on his own players.
don't stress it was a good post.
I agree aldridge & White are the keys, with Pau being injured creating the opportunity to play better Defense on the perimeter
Either PATFO values that leadership far more than most (if not all) other FOs, which isn't that far-fetched, or Pop was just coming up with a way to praise Patty even when he was playing badly. Pop is not one to publicly on his own players.
100% accurate. To be fair at the time they resigned Mills, Parker just had a career ending injury and George Hill wanted something like 80 million for 3 years. The Parker injury and cap jump certainly factored into this. He's still overpaid and it shouldn't have been a 4 year contract
Again, ST's need to constantly hate at least one player on the team is ridiculous. You don't think a guy is a good player? Fine. I get it. I've had my share of players I didn't want on the team too. You don't like a contract? Cool. Been there too. Still there, in fact. You think a player's contract makes them a better or worse player in the context of a season? Nope. Getting off that bus. Mills could be making half his APY, and it wouldn't affect the team on the court at all. It's not like PATFO would all of the sudden make a move if they had $6 Million more. It's irrational. If the hate for Mills comes "100% due to his contract", then that hate is irrational. Didn't need to have another thread to determine that.
His contract makes it impossible to not play him minutes, and more than he deserves.
He was fine as a back up making 3-4 million when they were coming off a le.
But he wasn't a massive defensive liability against the 13-14 Heat type teams. , he's still living off fans' memories against the Heat in 13-14. But those teams had scrubs who couldn't post up or penetrate or pick and roll getting minutes and Mills could hide against them. Guys like Napier or Chalmers or James Jones, even Battier couldn't punish Mills.
Contenders nowadays have guys to punish Mills and staffs smart enough to target him. So even peak Mills who shoots well is going to have a hard time. Livingston might only play 12 or so minutes a game but I know he'll be killing Mills for that time.
Really if every team had a point guard rotation of Chalmers/Napier stoley players then Mills would look a lot better.
You're twisting things. Mills has his contract because Pop wants to play him. Pop doesn't want to play him because of the contract. If the Spurs really felt like they were under the yolk of that contract, they would have RJ'd him. Despite what you think, Patty isn't complete poison. Guys with worse deals straight-up don't play on many rosters throughout the league.
You hate Mills for what you consider to be bad play, AND you hate him because of his contract. If he got the same minutes and played the same way but made Forbes money, you'd still hate him. It wouldn't be "Guy's pure ass, and Pop won't stop giving him minutes, but it's cool because dude only makes $3 Million." Matt Bonner never made $4 Million in a season, and folks still hated the out of him. Some even hate Forbes, despite the dude provide tremendous value for his deal and role.
Get away from this idea that the contract is forcing the team to do what they don't want to do. It's not. To act like Pop doesn't believe in Mills and wants Patty to play as much as he does is dishonest. Pop loves Mills because he thinks Patty can consistently play like he did during his good stretch (15/5/5 per 36 shooting 40 percent from three and having an A:T of greater than 3:1 while being pesky on defense). That would be great backup PG play, no matter what anecdotal ideas one can whip out so argue against it.
You are correct in that Mills money doesn’t change his play on court; but that is not what we are discussing here. We are talking about where his hate justifiably comes from.
We all know money doesnt impact on-court, but it does impact off seasons, cap management and the teams ability to improve.
So while Mills making 4M this season would not change this season, it would no doubt have changed other seasons.
And while your point about hate/money makes some sense, there are plenty of examples of when Mills was not making this money people not hating him nearly as much.
The hate we are talking about here is pretty much universal as people have become more savvy about the holes in his game. But when he was making less money, there were way more people asking for him to start over Parker than there were people hating him.
Pop likes Mills personally, he didn't like Jefferson. He had to spend his own time off on Jefferson to do remedial work. And Jefferson's contract wasn't what they necessarily wanted to give him, it was a business decision to get off millions in tax dollars by getting him to opt out.
Mills contract is a symbol of just how much they believe in him (wrongly imo). That is how I come to believe that they will continue to overplay him. Pop will give him extra opportunities because of that belief. So much belief that they had to get him at 12:01. So much belief that he'll be worth the money, he'll be great. It was a 'have to keep' kind of contract. It wasn't weeks of negotiating with Pau or having to avoid the tax with Jefferson or being held hostage or in a tight spot and giving a contract under these cir stances.
Re: hate issues ... I don't hate Forbes. I didn't think he was an NBA player for a long time, and could have been termed a 'hater of his in the past. But he has improved quite a bit offensively and doesn't make too much. So no, I'm no longer a Forbes hater and even when I thought he wasn't much of an NBA player I wanted him to replace Mills. I still don't like his defense though he tries. Now, if in the future he gets played over players that I don't think he should at all, my criticism will reflect that. It may come to that with Walker, but my current hope would be Forbes replacing Mills and Walker taking some of the SG minutes. So there's a clear instance of a small salary mitigating my 'hated' of a player.
All 'hatred' I ever had for players was based on sound reasoning. For example, though I hated the Jefferson contract that they gave him to keep him and argued strenuously against it, I didn't hate the original Jefferson trade. They took a chance, options were limited, and the other possible deals like Vince Carter weren't clearly better. I thought it was a good risk. How terribly things went after didn't make me bash the front office over the trade considering the context. That would have been unreasonable.
There's no 'unreasonable' hate for Mills from me. If there are good counter arguments that should change a reasonable person's mind, I haven't heard/read them.
That's because they hated Parker more. Those people would have started a 56-year-old Isiah Thomas over Parker.
First, the hate isn't "justifiable" just because someone can try to come up with a reason. What, you hate the dude because in his final year, he may eventually cost the Spurs some cap space? What if they extend Murray? Then Patty will never be a cap issue. Regardless, not liking a guy's contract is no need to act like the team plays better without him (the premise of this thread) or that trading him is the key to a le. That's where the idea of "hate" comes from, not from just preferring that he not have been signed to that contract. The difference between me and you isn't that I somehow don't understand Mills' contract. I understand it just fine, both in terms of the team's opportunity cost and in comparison to other contracts around the league. The difference is that I can separate what he does on the court from what he does at the bank and that I don't project onto him my own disagreements with PATFO.
Ugh, the Spurs paid Mills because he was playing really well around that time. We can go on and on about how they misread the market and whatever, but when you get down to it, PATFO put a certain value on what Mills can do, and playing Mills has much more to do with them believing Mills can give them what he has previously given them than it does on reaching some arbitrary dollar threshold. Again, it's much more likely that PATFO doesn't buy into your particular head-canon about Mills' play and instead ally more with the stats he has put up in his good stretches.
Yes, it's irrational to think PATFO liked Mills' contributions enough to give him that contract but somehow don't still like him enough to continue to pay him that contract. Even if your view is 100-percent dictated by a player's salary, it doesn't make sense to argue that PATFO's was. If PATFO only liked Mills as a $4-Million player, they wouldn't have paid him $12 Million a year. They are a ton of examples of them not valuing players the same on bigger deals, and it wasn't the case with Mills. It's not going to stop being irrational to believe that Pop feels forced to play Mills unless there's actual evidence to support it.
How was Mills playing really well? His 16-17 playoffs were his worst as a Spur in any postseason where he played more than 31 total minutes.
Shooting 29% in the 'stretches' of rounds 2 and 3 sounds awesome.
You defended his deal day 1 (could have been day 2) and still going I see.
Still never presented anything that could reasonably convince people to change their mind. And I can have my mind changed, as demonstrated with Forbes. I know my shortcomings when evaluating players, my blindspots. For example with the draft, I am prone with late firsts to gravitate towards older players that I feel can do one thing at a good enough level to be role players and role players only. I liked Shelvin Mack over Cory Joseph. I liked Gary Payton II over Dejounte. I am maybe over sceptical of 1-and-done potential players, either that or too much faith in mature would-be specialists. Even in the upcoming draft I have become a Matisse Thybulle fan but not as gung-ho as I might have been in the past. I've watched full games of several prospects in the past week, including him, Roby and others, and I just really like Thybulle. But I know that I have a weakness it would seem for his 'type', older players projected as specialists. It's a bias I am keeping in mind when I watch him.
I can be convinced, I can admit when I'm wrong. But it takes more than stuff along the lines of "they liked him because of some stretches so they paid him so that means stop complaining you haters". I know I give plenty of very specific reasons backed up with facts and stats with my arguments against that Mills deal.
You don't pay guys solely based on what they do in the playoffs. That's even more true when you have evidence that such a player can perform well in the post-season. In your mind, PATFO should have acted like Green's 2015 playoffs were the only thing that determined his value, ignoring his history of great post-season play and his stellar 2014-2015 season.
I've never loved the deal. I've understood it the whole time, though. I've also accepted it. Same with the Gasol deal, in its own way. I would have preferred those deals not signed, but I don't go around irrationally hating them either. Like Gasol isn't some bad player just because he makes a ton of money. To your point, Forbes isn't all of the sudden a changed man just because he didn't get a huge deal. I can't believe you use that as an example of your open-mindedness.
I'm not even really challenging you hating Mills. That's on you. Hate is never rational, but it's understandable if you think he's a bad player. But his contract isn't what makes him a bad player. No amount of anecdotal evidence bridges that gap. That's where it goes from just your opinion to a position that needs to be defended but can't be.
Of course the 'hate' is not real hate. It's just conversational layspeak for summing up opinions or feelings. It should be obvious but I suppose that some people just might not get it.
And of course I and everyone else have accepted that the deal happened and it is whatever it is. I'm not declaring, "I do not accept these results! His contract is invalid and all game matches are illegitimate!". Accepting the deal occurred doesn't make it good. I accept that he's under contract and I accept that he has a very good chance of being a Spur for its duration. And I accept he might get another contract with the Spurs beyond that.
Re: Forbes, if that's what you got out my post, no wonder you and I are so often not on the same page. I thought it was clear when I posted that his game 'improved quite a bit' (meaning he really was an NBA player and I had been wrong to be so dismissive of him) and that by not making much, he wasn't any kind of detriment to roster change or taxes etc, thus leaving no money related reason for 'hating'. So I had been wrong about Forbes the player, and combined with the context of his deal, i don't think my posts regarding him could qualify as hating, though I still criticize his defense and still think White should have played over him last year.
Has there been any reason since Mills signed his new deal that would change my mind on the player or his contract or role? Could you give reasons and tell me, "Hey, you didn't like Mills then, but check out X, Y, and Z since then! It could change your mind!".
And you miss so much context in your Green comp ... No, it would not be like you're posting. I could list all the reasons, give the context, fill in the gaps, but why bother anymore?
So let's just continue on our ways.
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)
Posting Permissions