Instant offense off the bench, great basket getter. We’ve been needing someone like him in a long time
Whomever was telling others that we could really use Malik and to disregard his off the court issues for a trial run really needs to be congratulated. I’m hoping it was Rob.
I had been against starting him because we need his scoring punch off the bench. But as this roster and rotations are currently constructed (might be different in a couple weeks), I think he needs to take Bradley's spot. AD, Stan, and in situations Bron have the defense handled. We need shooting to offset Stan, Russ, and non bubble AD and Monk is respected more as a bucket getter than Bradley by a long shot.
We can resign Monk. We just need to restructure Westbrook. Alternatively you could try and dump THT, and sign Monk into the exception, but I think we’d still be over the salary cap to be able to do that.
Buddy Hield sucks. Monk can be the better player on a far better contract if we keep and develop him.
not sure about that second one. if you move THT into someone else's cap space, you get a TE, but i don't think you can use TEs to sign people can you? they can only be used to accept players in trade who are already under contract. guys can be s&t'd into exceptions, but they'd have to follow s&t rules, which i think involve having already been under contract with the sending team (thus preventing a weird scenario like us getting a TE and monk getting s&t'd to us). i think removing or drastically reducing russ's salary is the only path to having more than 6 million to spend.
Of course and now you mention it, it’s so obvious. Not sure why I had a brain fade and thought you could sign into TE’s. Well that about settles it, unless Monk wants to take 6m, we’d need to restructure Westbrook or take much less in a trade back for him to free up the cap space. In an ideal world he takes 20m and we resign Monk and another wing.
i've been trying to type it into existence. get russ down to 20, mle on monk, nunn re-ups, vet min and BAE to shore up other spots. all of a sudden, you've got a similar or better team to this year plus a lot more trade flexibility with monk, nunn, THT, and now even westbrook on deals that could move if necessary. i just don't think recycling vet mins is a winning strategy.
^ That would actually be super solid. While Russ is not ideal, if Nunn comes back to limit his minutes somewhat and we get a young big... we'd suddenly be in great shape.
Clearly this guy cannot be had for under 10 mill per year. For what he brings to the table, esp for offensive needs, and consistency. No chance for a cheap signing again w him IMHO. He knows it, front office SHOULD know it. Pay him what is fair within what we can offer Rob.
he'll have his choice of full MLEs is my guess. which is why we need to be able to make a competitive offer at that range. if we can get the first year salary close enough, i think rob can sell him on the value of establishing early bird or bird rights here as a means to bigger future paydays. a 2 year 20 million dollar deal with us is probably a better bet than a 4/40 with a new team, barring serious injury.
Maybe we can dump Russ into a team with cap space. Maybe OKC.. We'd have to give up picks though so hopefully only a couple second rounders to entice them. That would free up cap space for Monk.
I don’t think OKC will take Russ back. They’ll be forced to play him and it’ll be at the expense of developing SGA and Giddey further.
