And those two teams are the exact teams I'd be targeting in a trade to give up Randle. Dallas and Chicago are two places that absolutely should overpay for Randle and I would expect them to. Why wouldn't they? Especially Dallas comes to mind where Randle would make sense as a fit and could slide in to start with Dirk on his last legs. If/when they give up big money for Randle and we lose him for nothing isn't that the exact thing you railed against with players like Pau and Dwight? It's unlikely we're bringing back Randle, so why not try to get something for him? If you could get a protected 1st for him why wouldn't we? Personally, I'm not sure anyone takes Randle to dump Deng. That move is more iffy the more I think about it, but if you could dump Deng with Randle and get back a protected 1st, I'd do that. I give the FO another weapon in the draft and get rid of maybe the worst contract in the NBA (still looking at Noah). I know I keep sounding like I'm in a rush to trade Randle, I'm not. I just don't see a viable future here lining up with the obvious wishes of the FO. We all talked about this a long time ago: when it comes down to it, we're probably losing both Clarkson and Randle, but at best we're probably choosing between one of them. Right now if I had to, I'd prefer Randle, but the team doesn't seem to agree with me. It would be a mistake to assume Chicago or Dallas wouldn't put us in a compromised position this summer as well. Cuban would love to capitalize on us not moving Randle by giving him a big contract offer and making us either let him go for nothing, or screw up the timing of trying to sign two max players.
We control whether Randle stays or goes, we have > 90% chance of keeping him if we want to. That’s nothing like the Pau/Dwight situation. I’m not scared of Dallas or Chicago because we are talking about Randle in a vacuum. Smart, Payton, LaVine, Hood, Capela, Parker, Gordon, Nurkic are other RFA they could go after, not including UFA. I don’t share the doomsday outlook you have on what those two teams can do because there are other options out there to be poached. We had no other options with Dwight and Pau, they were gone 99.9%. Pau sucked for 2-3 years and I wanted him gone for 2-3 years because he had one foot out the door and said as much. And I didn’t want the FO to give him another deal, which they did like the morons they did, which he thankfully declined and moved on. Pau needed to be moved to save ourselves. Different scenario. Dwight was gone before he got here, he said and acted as such. Never wanted to be here. Foolish to not get something for a guy that was gone before he got here.
I don't consider my stance a doomsday stance, just a pragmatic one. I think in the end we'll face the same situation of losing him for nothing or worse overpaying to keep him. If we can get an asset back at the deadline I will. As much as I like Julius, it's clear we're putting him in a situation where he's greater than his role. If all we're going to use him for is an energy big, there's better ways to allocate our resources.
In regards to risk management, signing Randle to a big contract isn't the worst thing that can happen. It's this:
@therealdeal Turiaf and Nance are what I call energy bigs. Julius is much more than an energy big. His performance thus far (even in limited minutes) has shown that. He's one of the big reasons our bench is almost never outscored by our opponent. He's one of our best scorers, defenders, rebounders, and playmakers. His worth to our team is similar to what Iguodala is to GSW, so I think he's definitely worth at least a $15M/year contract.
If the prospect of signing LLLLLabron wasn’t there, I don’t think we’d even be considering trading him at this point when he’s playing so well.
Maybe, but I'm not paying that at the expense of a better player who can give us more than 20 minutes off the bench. Not to mention that 15 million may or may not be enough. There's a good chance he gets more than that. So are you comfortable letting him go this summer for nothing?
Julius's camp will definitely ask for the MAX or close to it. His true value is probably around $9-10mil/year. I am definitely not comfortable paying him more than that. Good bye!!
Salary wise, 15 million is nothing for us. For the next 3-4 years, our pay roll would be $30-$35 million combined for our 4 best players in Lonzo, Kuzma, Ingram and Julius. Letting Julius go for nothing is tricky, but it's good that he's a RFA and we are in control. It really comes down to the probability of 2 stars coming to LA, let alone 1 star, in which case we don't even need to trade him. I think keeping Julius and signing one of the stars is the safest and most realistic proposition.
15 million is not nothing. Again this comes down to whether or not you're keeping Clarkson or Randle because if we're extremely fortunate, Randle will cost something similar to Clarkson and even then the two contracts will be restrictive for Free Agency. I'm done talking about this though. I'm not in a rush to get rid of Randle. I don't know how this conversation keeps circling around.
His true value is without a doubt much higher than $9-10M. I’ll exclude the garbage like Dung, but if the Bazemores and Hardaways can get $17/18M, then Julius is undoubtedly worth more than $10M. If we trade him, then we better get 2 Max players.
Getting 2 max players has been the plan all along and everyone was all for it the entire summer. I guess now the reality that more guys will probably have to go to make that happen is settling in but honestly it’s too late in my opinion. Getting two max guys is the plan and there’s no way Magic and Rob are going to let Julius be the hold up in that. Also, they clearly showed they are willing to masked a move early to clear cap room if a deal arises over the summer. I think a trade involving Randle is pretty much inevitable and we’ve already shown we will sacrifice a young guy for cap room.
If emerges a lil more maybe someone is desperate and does say f*** it and takes on Deng, plus some to make it work.
It shouldn't be inevitable at this point. 2 pictures are worth 2,000 words. Just imagine this as our core and how good we'd be by year 2. Only bring in Paul George. Keep the Beast and the rest intact.
I agree that the 2nd max all star doesn't matter as much. If we re-signed some of our own talent and added one back player, I think we are in good shape. Golden State isn't going anywhere for a couple of years, and we won't be ready to surpass them till then anyways.
second max matters, but not enough to start trading useful players to dump deng in december. you can do that in july.
We're just as good minus Julius and Deng plus whoever they would bring in on that trade. We're definitely much much better minus Julius but adding some combo of George, Lebron, Boogie, etc.
While I do agree for most of the same reasons we all argued with Russell, I just get the feeling we're going to go ahead and pull the trigger on something. I think the chances increase once Nance is back.
Deng will not only limit us this summer but for the next summer as well. What free agent would sign here knowing that no proven help will be able to come at a minimum of 2 more seasons? The trend is that these megastars want to partner up. We’re not looking at a Milsap type FA grab. The stars like to partner up and 1 max guy won’t come here if Deng is still on the books, cause we don’t have a proven star on the roster past this season (ie BLo). If Randle is attached to Deng and that gets the dump done...you do that deal yesterday without a 2nd thought. Think about it this way...if you extend Randle (2014 7th overall pick) it’s going to be around 17M+ easy (KCP, at $18M, is a wing player and was the 8th overall pick in 2013). Keeping Randle means it’s more likely we couldn’t dump Deng, in which case stretching him adds 7.4M in dead cap for the next 5 seasons. So is Randle worth more than $25M per? Based off that value, Randle would be that 2nd star player to max with our 2018 star pickup...does that pairing make us an instant contender and is that pairing worth 60M+ in team salary (max player at 35M plus Jules at $25M)? I know it’s not fair to clump Randle with Deng, but do to circumstance and the timing of Jules contract, that might be how management is looking at Jules value. Then on the flip side (of trading Randle by himself), there is a trend where young highly drafted players are not having their options picked up....so essentially these teams are losing those assets for nothing (ie Philly with Okafor). Imagine if Okafor doesn’t get traded...Philly loses that asset for nothing to show for it at the end of this year. Getting a 1st back for Randle is at least something to show for the 7th overall pick. If Randle isn’t part of the plans and he doesn’t help get you out of Deng’s contract, then I deal for a future 1st, rather than let him walk for nothing.
Are we not allowed to dump Randle in July? 99 player rating overall cap space isn’t winning us any games this year, Randle is. Dumping players now for cap space is just not smart unless it’s Deng. And if you read reports no one is taking Deng, there is no trade market for him. Why would anyone take on Deng’s money and then take on paying Randle after? Yea it doesn’t make sense. It’s not happening. Back to the point, Randle in no way shape or form blocks us from getting to two max deals and blocks the FA plan. We get two players to commit, it’s as simple as saying ok bye Randle you are off our books. Why do we have to get rid of him now to do that? It’s all book keeping. And the options for Randle are: 1.) Let at max two teams make crazy offer to him in which we let him go. 2.) Let at max a couple teams pay him 10-12 million and match if we don’t have stars on the way. 3.) He doesn’t like his deals, he plays for his QO which we are going shrink to around 4 million by not starting him any games and he plays for that amount next season and becomes UFA. I think it’s the people worrying about everyone’s favorite player cap space that are coming to reality with needing cap space and not thinking right on our REAL options with Randle. Not paying him 17-18 million dollars based off past deals. I’ve already broken down the cap for each team, we will be fine. There’s not a lot of money going around this FA, and it just so happens we have most of it. Right now is about getting max wins this season and showing a superstar on a failing team OKC or CLE that we are on the upswing. We need all the help we can get and Randle is that. Worry about the cap space later because 12:01 on free agent night it’s book keeping to getting to max space that can happen immediately.
