Yeah Randle and Russell might be stars but it'll take 3-4 years until then. Are we going to just wait it out? Nope. Go get a couple studs and speed up the process.
It's not the MO of the front office. Always have and always will swing for the fences. With the local broadcast deal, we can't hang all our hopes and dreams on unproven talent. Also it's rare for drafted talent to equate into a contender, especially in the AAU, buddy-buddy, team up league we play in now (and yes I'm aware of GS and the anomaly that is SA).
We can go over the cap to re-sign our own Free Agents when the young guys are due for big contracts(next summer for Clarkson). The idea is to add stars with cap space now, because after we hand out contracts to all of our young guys, we won't have much if any capspace left.
I don't think Clarkson's deal will be that big. As a second rounder only in his 3rd season, his max deal will be quite reasonable. The way they are structured is weird, but his signing won't be that big of a hindrance. Our problem in signing Durant is going to boil down to us not having NBA players ready to rock and roll. If we are going to be perfectly honest, Cousins at the end of his contract, maybe Ibaka at the end of his...Biff when his runs out. Those are the player who's contracts line up with the development of our younglings. The Summer of 2018 is our Golden Summer where they are on rookie deals, and Clarkson is on his first extension. Summer of 2018 will have Cousins as an unrestricted free agent, still in his prime with Randle entering year 5 (or year 4 if you don't count last season) and Russell entering his 4th season. Biff also might be an UFA if he opts in, if not he'll be an UFA the season before along with Ibaka. That puts Randle and Russell entering their 3rd seasons. Probably not quite ready for prime time just yet, but hopefully showing enough to get Ibaka to give us a look.
I know the amount Clarkson can make is limited due to being a 2nd rounder in his 3rd season, but teams can still throw a huge 3rd year at him. The same Poison Pill type contracts Morey used to get Lin and Asik could be given to Clarkson, the difference being the huge jumps in the salary cap the next 2 seasons could make that 3rd year very expensive. With Kobe playing SF most likely, JC is the best guard on our team right now. I could definitely see him playing his way into a big contract.
Clarkson's best deal as a 2nd rounder will be something close to the MLE for two seasons, then a huge jump the third. If he stays on his current trajectory, we'll just pay it. No big deal.
If that 3rd year ends up being the max, with the way the cap is already scheduled to go up over the next 2 seasons, he's going to be making atleast 25M in that 3rd year. With the 2 years at near MLE money it balances out to a fair deal, but that 3rd year is going to take away a lot of our flexibility if we haven't already spent on the team we want by then.
If a team has, for example, 20 million in cap space and they want to spend all that on JC (4 year deal for 80 million). The offer would like.... 1st year - 5.6 (MLE) 2nd year 5.6 (MLE) 3rd year - 34.4 4th year - 34.4 That's a hypothetical, but that's what the deal would look like on our end. The team making that offer would be charged 20 million on the cap every season. Even if a team wanted to just pay him 15 million, we would still be giving him 24 million in year 3 and 4. If a team wanted to give him 10 million, we would be dishing out 14.4 million. We have the potential to be screwed over by a team throwing out cash to throw it. But, this is where someone with a brain in the FO, please let there be somebody by this time, goes up to JC and tells him not to sign a sheet anywhere and we will pay him, so we don't get screwed.
While our front office seems a bit dense in the Big Time FA pitch arena and we can't hire a decent coach that isn't named Phil Jackson, Mitch seems to be pretty smart as it pertains to dealing with the cap.
Granted that he gave Blake too many years, MWP too many years, Nash guaranteed 27 million at the age of 40 over 3 years, Pau 3 years 30 million with a no trade clause before he left and Kobe 25 million a year, I guess I shouldn't worry about Mitch in this situation. Lets see if he dishes out the money to keep good young players instead of names to keep viewers happy.
The Kobe thing is moot. Blake and MWP were terrible, Nash was terrible too. Worst part of Nash was the picks though IMO. The Pau situation with the NTC is the only shot we had at keeping him in LA. It was out of respect for the rumors he went through since 2010. I'm not saying it was smart but it was our best shot at keeping Pau. Mitch has made bad deals over the years but he's made great ones as well. You can cherry pick the bad ones and make it look all bad.
I'm convinced the Kobe deal was a Buss thing in order to keep Time Warner happy with ratings. Blake, at the time, was lauded as a fantastic signing, and to be honest, it wasn't horrible. Blake was a pretty solid player for us over his tenure. Remember he was supposed to be a backup pg and 4 million for a backup pg isn't bad. He just was forced into the starting role. Nash was a good signing at the time and everyone was really excited. MWP? Doesn't matter how long that contract was for because he helped us beat the Hated Ones. If I was going to point at atrocious contracts, I would point to Walton's and Gump's. Although I'm not entirely sure Gump was Mitch or the tail end of West's tenure.
It doesn't matter the reasoning behind the Kobe deal, it still doesn't make it a good deal. It's one of the reasons we've struggled to sign free agents because the FO doesn't want to spend, but rather keep the remaining room they have open. That extra 5 million from his deal could have brought back Ed Davis this year. Blake sucked in his time here, but that's not the point, the point is the FO was left with a contract they didn't want and had to sell in a dump, which is a bad deal. Nash, it doesn't matter if fans were excited, the FO still had his dead weight 9 million deal on the cap and had to seriously think about stretching him, which is a bad deal. MWP, he brought us a ring, but that's not the point, we had to amnesty that contract, which is a bad deal. Walton we had to dump a 1st into to get rid, which is a bad deal. In response to the above, Pau would have been a bad deal because we would have been on year 2 of a deal we couldn't trade eating a cap space to sign players, which again is a bad deal. Another example is Jordan Hill, he signed to the Pacers for 4 million, we gave him 9 million last year, did he tank his value in half? I don't think so. My points in all of this is..... 1.) Mitch is not the best at judging value when it comes to signing players. He throws out money and years no matter the cost, just as long as he gets said player. 2.) When has Mitch been put in a position to sign a young RFA that is our own? I think it is a legit concern that he would say go see what the market will pay you and come back to me and then just end up paying the bloated price. I like JC, but having to pay him 20 million dollars in year 3 and 4, would be a bummer.
Yes, they end up being bad deals, but I know you're a very smart guy and you know as well as I do that sometimes in sports, you have to put extra years at the end of the contract to get the player while they're productive. Everyone knew MWP and Nash were going to be albatrosses at the end of their deals, but you sometimes do that in order to open up a 2-3 year window. If you think MWP can get you a ring (which he did) then the other 3 years of the contract where he's worthless are totally worth it. Would you rather have had one ring, and cap flexibility 1 year later or 2 rings with cap flexibility coming 4 years later? As for the Kobe deal, I was saying MITCH was pretty good with handling the cap. So if the Buss family was behind the Kobe extension (which I think they were) it shouldn't be used as an example of Mitch's incompetence. And let's also admit that while Walton, Blake, MWP etc may have ended up being bad contracts (although I think the MWP contract was a good one because without him, we don't have that second ring) they were smaller in size. We don't have the 12-18 million dollar contracts hanging around our necks like a lot of teams. The Jordan Hill deal was a good deal as well. We gave him the 9 million AFTER everyone was off the market, and we gave him that much not because anyone thought he was worth it, but because it allowed us to add a team option after the first season, essentially turning it into a one year deal. He would have never signed with us for one year at 4 million. There is a cap floor so we needed to spend the money somewhere. We overpaid Hill to give us cap freedom the next offseason.
For the next off-season, I say we sign Andrew Bynum to a Max. Get Lamar here for the min.. Trade Russel and Randle for Pau Gasol, and trade a 1st round pick to the NY Knicks to get Fisher. We'd be set.
The last time I can remember him being put in that position was when we had restricted free agencies on Turiaf and Vujacic. We didn't match the Warriors offer on Turiaf which was about $4 mil/per I believe. We re-signed Sasha to around $5 mil/per. Both were relatively modest deals compared to what we're potentially facing with Jordan next summer. Someone mentioned this around here a few weeks back, but the situation is pretty similar to what the Warriors had to face with Draymond Green this summer.
