Anthony Davis Discussion: Thanks For The Ring AD!!!

yep. so few of the big names don't miss significant chunks of time. boston's been on top for two years because their best players don't miss games. but you can't predict this stuff as easily as people want to. maybe one day tatum goes on the IR and his trend begins. but you don't see teams rushing to trade curry, nor did you see teams shy away from trading for durant*. there's a reason.

*he's played the same number of games as AD this year, and missed about the same amount of time over the previous two years, too. he's also several years older and had a major surgery causing him to miss a full year just before all this. yet he has no rep as mr. glass.

 

Did what he could.



Some more rebounds would've helped, but other than that big first and 4th Qs.

 

hells naw...dont let okc gm fool you lol

 

Yeah. AD played hard. Needed more from the supporting cast.

 

D'Angelo makes 31 million dollars and he wants more than that in an extension. That's star money, not role player money IMO..We are still in the 3 star model, the 3rd guy just makes less than the main two, as he should. Yet D'Angelo still makes more than Dennis, Lonnie, Troy, Austin, Jarred, Max,Reed, Rui and Wenyen combined. We have some interesting money decisions coming up this summer.

 

it's not max money, nor does it make so that the rest of your team is mercenary vet mins. russell makes 2/3 what lebron/AD make. lots of teams survive that salary/roster structure.

having vet mins from 9-15 is fine. we were basically running them from 5-15.

anyway, maybe it's semantics at this point. the best teams don't have a bunch of vet mins in the rotation. we're finally in position to be one of those teams again after two years in vet min hell.

 

That’s the bottom line. it’s just tough to win if you’re depending on vet mins.

Worse for us is that it wasn’t the same guys. We were rotating in multiple minimum guys in the off-seasons so the groups couldn’t even really gel and develop some continuity from season to season.

 

right. that's why i really hope the offseason plan is to just bring as many of these guys back as possible. i'd literally bring every single guy back if we could (we probably can't). we'd be so much better for it, both from a talent and especially from that continuity standpoint. just imagine having guys who knew each other and the system from day one! now imagine that basically none of them are over the hill or entirely unproven!

 

I don't know ...I get what you are saying, but we are in a unique position. We knew that Westbrook was on the last 2 years of a max contract when we traded for him, so we knew the numbers would be bloated for those two seasons. We ended up flipping that contract for 3 players, so that addresses the more balanced salary structure angle.

Lebron was the 3rd highest paid player in the league, Russ was 2nd and then we had AD, so I understood the vet minimums situation.

Moving forward..Lebron will be the highest paid player in the NBA for the next 2 seasons (53 and 57 million) at 39 and 40 years old. AD will make 40 and 43 million.
That's almost 200 million dollars for two guys that's had some injury issues.

D'Angelo wants a raise over the 31 million that he's getting now. So if we keep him, I'm not sure that we will be willing to pay the rest of these guys, fair market value to come back next season. It depends on how this season plays out. Lebron and AD are going to miss games next season too, so if we can't get into the playoffs and win a series this campaign, I'm not sure it would be worth bringing everyone back. If we fall short, I can totally see us using D'Angelo and Malik's contracts, to go after another max player as an insurance policy. D'Angelo would have to be a S&T deal

 

1. wanting a raise and getting one are different things. who's giving russell a max this summer? feel like his market value is more like brunson's contract or jordan poole's, which both start around 25-27 per.

2. if we do what you suggest, i'm out. it hasn't worked and won't work. russ was supposed to be an insurance policy, and instead you're always saying he was only useful if both other stars were playing. i'd rather just not. the clippers have shown us that you can weather star injuries if you have high quality role players 10-deep. using all your salary on a third star is a recipe for disaster, imo.

 

Russell is in his prime, he's not taking a pay cut, I just don't see that happening at all. The difference between him and those guys, is that he's a former lottery pick, and he's made an All-Star team. We are going to pay him, even if it's so that we can move him somewhere else. You can't just let him walk for nothing, after giving up a FRP for him.

Westbrook is a facilitator not a scorer, the only way it was going to work here, was with both Lebron and AD playing. I already pointed out the salary situation that we were in, when we made that trade. It was a gamble, but Lebron and AD were hurt a lot and 22-22 wasn't the worst trade of all time or something, considering the roster we had. Moving Russ though, opened up the ability to chase another star IMO.

The only teams winning recent chips used the 3 star model. Except us and Toronto, and Toronto gets an asterisk, because they would have gotten swept, if KD had played in that series. It's nothing wrong with the concept, you do have to have all 3 guys healthy.

We won't have all vet mins anyway. Bamba and Vanderbilt are under contract, Austin is going to get a pay raise, we have the MLE, and either Rui or Beasley will probably be here, but one of them will get moved with Russell. Hopefully we'll finish strong and it will be an easy decision to make.

If not...I don't see nothing wrong at all, with bringing in another high end talent, with the 47 million dollars Russell and Beasley are making. I'd still consider Kyrie, Beal or the Turner/Hield idea everybody liked around here. We have better options now, because we already have Jarred, MO and I'm counting Austin as a no brainer, locked up. We'll be over the cap and Rui might be a reasonable resign at a decent price. It's not as bad of an idea as you may think. The arms race never stops, especially in the West.

 

no, but you can s&t. also, what's the list of teams paying him 30+ as a starting salary?

yeah, it did, but i hate this idea.

disagree again. first, you except like, half the teams. second, you try to call middleton and holiday stars. you know better than that. milwaukee is a 1-star team that pays two semi-stars good cash but also has several consistent, non-vet-min players in the supporting cast.

gs won as a 2-star team and then as a 3-star team. cleveland was a 2-star team (no, love doesn't qualify, and again, non-vetmin supporting cast).

fair point here. though we used salary as an excuse to just let caruso walk. who says we don't let austin walk in order to pay a kyrie or beal? i mean, we've literally already done it recently. hated it then, hate it now.

caruso was locked in, too. we're not the clips, warriors, or nets.

also, i'm really not sure that beal or kyrie is actually better than russell/beasley at this point. but they both take up more salary space.

 

We're going to have to go over what's considered to be a star in this 3 star model again. There are superstars, and then there are stars. It's not having 3 Hall of Famers or something. At least that's not what I'm talking about.

If you are making 30 million or more that is star money for me. Russ made more than Lebron or AD, but he was a star, not a superstar. I still consider Lebron and AD superstars but I'm biased. Folks can argue against AD, cool. There aren't many superstars in the NBA. Giannis, Joker, Luka, Steph, Embiid, KD, Tatum, Dame, I hate to add Kawhi, but him too.

D'Angelo is getting paid star money, he's a star in this model. That includes guys like Middleton, Holliday, T. Harris, Harden, George, CP3, Booker, Beal, Klay, Wiggins, Kyrie, Trae, Brown, Siakam, Simmons, Lavine, Gobert, KAT, Mitchell, Murray, Porter jr.,Horford, Ingram, CJ, BAM, Butler, Fox, Ayton, the unicorn, even Hayward's sorry a**.

They aren’t all equal as players, but thier salary is a significant chunk of thier teams cap space, and they aren't any scrubs on this list besides Gordon Hayward, Simmons? Horford? Some are the highest paid players on their team, but aren't their team's best or 2nd best player. Some teams don't have any players that would be classified as a star, some only 1. There are some exceptions..I think Ja is a star but he doesn't make the money yet. The 3 star model is still fully alive in the NBA IMO. If you have 3 guys making over 30 million, you are using the 3 star model. The recent chip winners all followed it except us and Toronto. Back in the day, the money wasn't the same, but it's the same concept, 3 guys that are eating up 50-60 or more % of your cap space.

 

If DLO makes us a 3 star team then our 09-11 teams were a 4 star team with Bynum and Odom. The 04 Pistons were a 5 star team because every starter on that roster was better than DLO.

 

They weren't paid like it. I follow the money. The average NBA salary is 9 million dollars, due to some of these huge contracts. There are 437 players in the NBA under contract. 40 of them make at least 30 million dollars. That's 9% of the League. That is a highly valued asset, these contracts are around 3.5 times the average salary. To me these contracts are valued as star players. You are valued as a "star" to these organizations, whether the fans agree with that assement or not.

The NBA salary cap is 134 million dollars, if you have 3 players earning at least 90 million dollars, that's 67% of a team's salary cap. That means that you have an additional 33% to divide amongst 12 players in order to fill out your roster. If you want to look at it that way instead, these players are obviously valued at a much higher rate than the rest of the players on these teams. That's a star to me.

If you follow the list of the 40 players making that kind of money. The vast majority are considered the best players on their teams, the best players in the NBA at their positions, and recieved the most individual professional recognition at their positions, IE All Star teams, all Defense, etc. They are the stars in a league of professionals.

There are some exceptions here and there..some younger guys haven't achieved the contract level due to time in the league, some guys were injured and aren't high end players anymore, but are finishing out max contracts etc.

This is where I'm coming from when I'm talking about 3 star, 2 star or 1 star teams. Again most of the recent chip winners fall under the 3 star model. There are some nuances to it as well. Next season Phoenix will have 4 players making over 30 million a piece. Golden State will have 2, and 2 more borderline stars, guys making 28 million a piece.

 

Top paid players in the NBA list.

https://boardroom.tv/highest-paid-nba-players-2022-23/

 

Lakers in top third of league with salary per that chart hardly warrants the “cheap” and “mom and pop organization” tags tossed around so freely here.

 

It's the Lakers Nation man...a lot of stuff gets exaggerated, over critiqued and over critized. It's what some of us do.

 

point is being lost by useless semantics: you can't win with a roster full of vet mins. nobody ever has. if your pursuit of a third star (or someone who makes third star money) depletes your ability to have non-vetmin players from 5-10 in the rotation, you're not going to win. especially if the two highest paid players on your team are going to miss at least 20 games a year, and one of them is almost 40.