Official 2016 Free Agency Thread

Anyone is a major upgrade at SF for us, we don't have one, doesn't mean I want to settle for Chandler Parsons. Can he defend, is he known as a defender? I don't think so compared to other SF FA's out there. He's been a disappointment from what I've seen since he signed his big free agent deal, so unless he comes at a discount, no thanks. Gordon Hayward is an example of living UP to basically the same contract and earning it, Parsons is not, and I know he was injured for a while, still not an excuse.

 

Parsons DID have microfracture surgery. It was evidently a minor form of the procedure, but he DID have it. So theoretically, if we sign Parsons and Whiteside, we would blow all our cap space on two big question marks.

 

Whiteside!

You just described @Savory Griddles 's nightmare.

 

I'd love to max out Batum and then sign a couple 10-12M guys, but if we're maxing out two players, I hope it's Whiteside and either Durant or Batum.

 

The cool thing with Parsons/Whiteside is you're talking about two "bottom tier" max contracts worth about 21 million dollars. We're going to have a projected 65 million dollars so we'd STILL have 23 million available to go get a couple veteran types to balance things out.

At that point you can split that money among a few veterans. Maybe you can get Mahinmi or Mozgov? Maybe you bring back Roy Hibbert as a bench big for "cheap"? You can surely call Deng and offer a long-term deal worth a bunch of money.

How about 4/60 for Mahinmi? That would start at about 14 million.
Is about 8-9 million enough for Deng? 4/38.5 million or so? Maybe you'd have to give 4/60 to Deng and bring back Roy as a backup big.

Russell/??
Clarkson/Williams
Parsons/Deng/Young
Randle/Nance Jr.
Whiteside/Hibbert/Black

Get a bargain bin PG? How much will Chalmers or Vazquez get this summer? If you spread out all the cash we have we could have tremendous spending power. The key is getting a couple guys to come here first. Tall order...

 

That would be an excellent lineup, but watch your math

Russell 5.3
Clarkson 5.4/Williams 7.0
Parsons 21.0/Young 5.4
Randle 3.3/Nance Jr. 1.2
Whiteside 21

$69.3M

 

Actually that's 69.6 so you watch your math!

The cap next summer goes up to about 90-92 million which means after signing Parsons/Whiteside we'd have an available 20.4-22.4 million dollars. That's where I got my numbers from. It gets even better if you stretch Young since Deng makes him irrelevant.

 

My original numbers had tens of thousands (two digits after the points). Yeah, that's the ticket...

 

Either way! My numbers are close!
Stop destroying my argument so completely with good facts!

We can grab 2 max guys with enough cash left over to continue overhauling the roster if we went the Parsons/Whiteside route.

 

Pretty much. Someone with microfracture surgery on their resume AND one of the biggest knuckleheads the league has ever known. Awesome! That's a winning formula for sure. Maybe we can add Lance Stephenson and Josh Smith with our remaining cap space. Although we should probably heed Kirk Lazarus' advice...Never go full r*****.

If we absolutely have to sign one risky player, I can hold my nose and do it. But TWO max contracts on risky players? No. We'd be putting too much pressure on Russell and Randle to become superstars. Not stars...superstars.

 

I was doing a position by position look at what we could do in FA and what impact it might have. I'll give a very condensed version.

Small Forward: Current Crop
Kobe Bryant -0.2 wins
Nick Young 0.2 wins
Anthony Brown -1.4 wins
--Our Small Forwards are actually winning -1.4 game for us. Win Trend = 16 as a team.

Small Forward: Some FA Options
Durant +21.9 wins (37.9 wins)
Batum +11.9 wins (27.9 wins)
Parsons +8.5 wins (24.5 wins)
Afflalo +3.9 wins (19.9 wins)
--All of these players are eight figure players, so there are no small fish. That said, even the lowest of the bunch would mark a huge improvement at the SF spot. Afflalo would absorb Kobe's minutes and part of Young's, which would probably move the SF position to about +2.7 wins over this season.

Center: Current Crop
Roy Hibbert: 3.6 wins
Tarik Black: 0.0 wins
Robert Sacre: 0.3 wins
--Roy Hibbert's defense is a big lift to this team, even if it's hard to see that sometimes. The Centers are contributing about 4 wins.

Center: Some FA Options
Whiteside +7.5 wins
Pachulia +6.1 wins
Biyombo +3.8 wins
Mahinmi +1.9 wins
--Adding one FA would essentially replace Hibbert's minutes; looking at things that way, only Whiteside and Pachulia would be an upgrade. The fact is that Sacre and Black have both been inefficient (for different reasons), and they have played significant minutes combined. So, aside from Whiteside, the Lakers could add two of the other three on the list, as long as they remove Hibbert, or they could add one of these players and retain Hibbert (and still get full effectiveness from him given his limited minutes). In short, there are many options. Pachulia and Biyombo are such a tantalizing couple: they'd more than double our wins from Centers. Whiteside and any other Center would likely triple our wins from Centers. Even ditching our current Center crop and adding Biyombo and Mahinmi would be a fair improvement.

I know I'm isolating players, and we have to look at teams as units, but I don't see that adding a shooter at SF and one of those bigs would make us any less efficient as a team. In fact, I think it would help us immensely.

Real's Situation:
Add Parsons +8.5 wins (24.5)
Add Whiteside +7.5 wins (32)
Add Deng +2.8 wins (in backup role) (34.8)
Lose Kobe +0.2 wins (35)
Decrease Brown's role +1.4 wins (36.4)

So, even if the young guys don't improve, we're looking at more than doubling our win total. That would be 10th seed in the West. But by the way, Russell has gone from contributing 0.7 wins to contributing 1.3 wins - in just 22 games. It's hard to put that into context, but in the last 22 games, he contributed as much toward winning games as he did in the first 40 games of the season. Projected out over a season, if Russell plays like he's playing now, he's as valuable as Deng. Not bad for a rookie.

 

Dude. Durant at +22. lol. Replacing Kobe with Durant would probably be enough to get this team into the playoffs. Hire Thibs as our coach and we might be a 46-48 win team, just adding those two things.

 

LeBron was probably 25 in his best season. Curry might be 20 this year. Durant's numbers are incredible.

Kobe's best was about 17. Jordan had a few seasons around 25.

I'm not saying we should accept these as absolute, but they're telling that those are the players who are at 17+.

 

As always great stuff.