Siakam trade for basically nothing is now showing its effect

[JB7]

Outside of the paint, he actually only made 19 shots in 638min
Man, I didn't think it was that bad.

Ochai needs to take some massive steps forward offensively. Fortunately he’s on a rookie scale contract and is young enough to project upside. If he turns into a 3&D guy that’s all we’re looking for. IMO the trade was for Kelly, not Ochai.

If the trade was for Kelly, we wasted a pick. Unless Utah planned on S&Ting him, we could have approached him in FA. I don't foresee a 33 year old olynyk, pulling in a 13mil/yr contract on the free market.

If a playoff team offered Kelly the MLE, which is probably about $14M this year, he could have easily taken that deal.

The fact that the Raps traded assets to acquire Kelly, gave them a window to negotiate with him, and also showed a clear desire to have him on the team. And they got two assets Kelly and Ochai, for one (draft pick) they clearly didn't want, as they already could be sitting on 2-3 draft picks in a weak draft.

[Duffman100]

Not only was the fit atrocious, what we gave up to make our offence worse was borderline criminal. I literally don’t understand how fans correctly called it as a bad move the instant it was announced but no one in our front office stopped to think that this was a bad trade.

“Borderline criminal” is silly. And someone posted a poll from the time of the trade that showed the fans were pretty evenly split between good vs bad + atrocious. The team was decent with bad fitting Jak at C, and I am willing to bet that if the Raps traded picks for Myles Turner instead of trading Pascal and tanking, for example, you wouldn’t be reacting positively to that either.

This board is full of homers that defend every bad move the front office makes

Just not true ..

[canada_dry]

The biggest issue is timing and the value of each player. Having 3 key free agents all expire within a year of each other was, imo, too risky to let play out. Especially with players who were primed to be overpaid (FVV and OG). The upside just wasn’t there.

FVV: good player who fits everywhere but not a player you’d want to max. All it takes is one team to outbid you and then you’re screwed because a) you have to match and you’re stuck with a bad contract or b) you lose him for nothing. We saw that play out with HOU

OG: similar to FVV. Don’t want to max him but someone could and then you’re stuck with a bad deal if you match. Also wasn’t extendable so it had to go to free agency

Siakam: don’t want to supermax him so then you open yourself up to all bidders. So now instead of having an incumbent advantage everyone with cap space is on equal footing and Siakam might be mad at you for not maxing him.

The odds on keeping all 3 guys as free agent signings must have been very low. And to do so with all on fair value deals? Even lower. If you have 3 good players go to free agency the odds have to be in favor of losing at least 1. The odds of overpaying 1-2 of them also have to be high. There was no path to retaining all 3 on positive value contracts and total salary would have become an issue once Barnes extension kicked in. The front office should have realized that retaining all 3 was going to be incredibly difficult given all could have commanded huge salaries and the general league sentiment of “it only takes one a**hole” (in our case Houston).

IMO it wasn't even just the odds of retaining all 3, but rather what does your team look like with them. It's been pretty evident that it results in an ok to above average team at most, sometimes the issue isn't the players themselves, but rather the cost, fit, flexibility, and timelines.

Our FO grossly mismanaged those aspects and moved forward with the assumption that we could make due with those 3 players eating up massive chunks of the cap. There was no world where you could pay market rates for all 3 of them, and still field a team that would end up with any real accomplishments.

Treadmill doesn't always have to mean a .500 team, you can be a treadmill team in the 2nd round. The Joe Johnson/Josh Smith Hawks are a perfect example, a couple peaks but never a real threat. Good for business since the fans always have that twinkle of hope, but realistically they go nowhere.

You have to assume that they thought/think Barnes could have grown into a #1 option. I think when he didn't really develop in year 2 that put a wrench in things.

Siakam/OG/FVV is a good trio to put around a real "star". The salaries also wouldn't have been untenable had FVV been paid a reasonable amount. When Barnes extension kicks in 2025/26 they could have had:

Siakam: $50m
FVV: $35m
OG: $35m
Poeltl: $20m
Barnes: $42m

They could have retained everyone and hovered around the tax. We also would have been fine this year and in '24/25 as far as salaries go as Barnes would still be on his rookie deal. They really wouldn't have had to deal with the financial implications until '25/26. Barnes rookie deal and the cap spike in '25/26 would have given us some breathing room.

So the team could have stayed well under the tax in Barnes 3rd/4th years and then pivoted in his 5th season depending on if we were contending (ie a team worthy of paying the tax for). It was doable (and probably somewhat reasonable) as long as Barnes developed into a #1 option.

If you remove Barnes from the equation it makes little sense but the whole thing probably revolved around having a future star who would still be on a cheap deal for 2 more years. And if Barnes became a true star then this team is probably contending and maybe MLSE is willing to pay the tax for a year or two.

Exactly this. This was my thought process too. I would have done it without the poetl trade at deadline or , more importantly, the weak protections on the pick.(i was advocating for poetl/ any 5 trade in December. Not enough time left by February. )

It was a tight rope balancing act but it was possible... Then this past summer happened. Which was just not handled well at all in regards to losing fvv ( i get it. cant match that contract man) and they way masai treated pascal(if you wanted to keep the core together and hope scottie grow to a #1, why why would you treat the other most important piece like garbage in the summer?).

I said at at the time but last summer was masais worst offseason performance yet.

Now we're on another timeline and im feeling good about our core 3 going forward. The OG trade in particular saved a lot.

Sent from my SM-G960W using RealGM mobile app

[ConSarnit]

IMO it wasn't even just the odds of retaining all 3, but rather what does your team look like with them. It's been pretty evident that it results in an ok to above average team at most, sometimes the issue isn't the players themselves, but rather the cost, fit, flexibility, and timelines.

Our FO grossly mismanaged those aspects and moved forward with the assumption that we could make due with those 3 players eating up massive chunks of the cap. There was no world where you could pay market rates for all 3 of them, and still field a team that would end up with any real accomplishments.

Treadmill doesn't always have to mean a .500 team, you can be a treadmill team in the 2nd round. The Joe Johnson/Josh Smith Hawks are a perfect example, a couple peaks but never a real threat. Good for business since the fans always have that twinkle of hope, but realistically they go nowhere.

You have to assume that they thought/think Barnes could have grown into a #1 option. I think when he didn't really develop in year 2 that put a wrench in things.

Siakam/OG/FVV is a good trio to put around a real "star". The salaries also wouldn't have been untenable had FVV been paid a reasonable amount. When Barnes extension kicks in 2025/26 they could have had:

Siakam: $50m
FVV: $35m
OG: $35m
Poeltl: $20m
Barnes: $42m

They could have retained everyone and hovered around the tax. We also would have been fine this year and in '24/25 as far as salaries go as Barnes would still be on his rookie deal. They really wouldn't have had to deal with the financial implications until '25/26. Barnes rookie deal and the cap spike in '25/26 would have given us some breathing room.

So the team could have stayed well under the tax in Barnes 3rd/4th years and then pivoted in his 5th season depending on if we were contending (ie a team worthy of paying the tax for). It was doable (and probably somewhat reasonable) as long as Barnes developed into a #1 option.

If you remove Barnes from the equation it makes little sense but the whole thing probably revolved around having a future star who would still be on a cheap deal for 2 more years. And if Barnes became a true star then this team is probably contending and maybe MLSE is willing to pay the tax for a year or two.

I think expecting Scottie to blow up as a star in his second year was a ridiculous thought, if that was their line of thinking. Nothing indicated he would be a first option even with the stellar rookie campaign.

An paying the 5 of them having us right around the tax, is still pretty bad, considering we need 10 more roster spots lol.

He won rookie of the year in a pretty good draft class. Expectations had to be pretty high. If he hadn’t stagnated and played like he did this year in his 2nd season (improved shooting and defense) then that might have moved the chains as far as the team’s ceiling was concerned. ROY’s usually make progress in their 2nd year, they don’t usually regress like Barnes did imo.

As per having 5 guys taking up most of the cap, those guys are more easily moveable if they aren’t on bloated deals (like Houston gave to FVV). Even with those 5 signed we would still have been $20m below the tax. The team probably wouldn’t have been tenable long term but we wouldn’t have been handcuffed anywhere.

I don’t think it was a great plan but I bet if you asked the front office they thought they’d be able to keep everyone on moveable deals (which seems to be Masai’s M.O even dating back to the Nene deal).

[Pointgod]

“Borderline criminal” is silly. And someone posted a poll from the time of the trade that showed the fans were pretty evenly split between good vs bad + atrocious. The team was decent with bad fitting Jak at C, and I am willing to bet that if the Raps traded picks for Myles Turner instead of trading Pascal and tanking, for example, you wouldn’t be reacting positively to that either.

This board is full of homers that defend every bad move the front office makes, I’m not surprised that a poll would have a lot of support. Trading a pick for Myles Turner makes more sense than trading a pick for Poeltl even if I don’t necessarily agree with the direction. Like that move actually makes us better. I’m convinced the team played better with Poeltl more due to our competition post deadline than any type of roster improvement, or else we would have played better with Poeltl to start the season.

We were very famously missing Fred to start the year compared to last season and shopping Pascal and OG.

Tell that to the losing Fred was addition by subtraction crowd lol. And whose fault was it that Fred left for nothing? If you weren’t ready to pony up money to keep Van Vleet, Siakam and OG, then the Poeltl trade makes even less sense.

[Fairview4Life]

This board is full of homers that defend every bad move the front office makes, I’m not surprised that a poll would have a lot of support. Trading a pick for Myles Turner makes more sense than trading a pick for Poeltl even if I don’t necessarily agree with the direction. Like that move actually makes us better. I’m convinced the team played better with Poeltl more due to our competition post deadline than any type of roster improvement, or else we would have played better with Poeltl to start the season.

We were very famously missing Fred to start the year compared to last season and shopping Pascal and OG.

Tell that to the losing Fred was addition by subtraction crowd lol. And whose fault was it that Fred left for nothing? If you weren’t ready to pony up money to keep Van Vleet, Siakam and OG, then the Poeltl trade makes even less sense.

I did. It was Houston’s fault mainly. I don’t think you need to be able to pony up to the max for all your players in order to drive your decision making. Once they crapped the bed in the play in the writing was on the wall anyway.

[mdenny]

You have to assume that they thought/think Barnes could have grown into a #1 option. I think when he didn't really develop in year 2 that put a wrench in things.

Siakam/OG/FVV is a good trio to put around a real "star". The salaries also wouldn't have been untenable had FVV been paid a reasonable amount. When Barnes extension kicks in 2025/26 they could have had:

Siakam: $50m
FVV: $35m
OG: $35m
Poeltl: $20m
Barnes: $42m

They could have retained everyone and hovered around the tax. We also would have been fine this year and in '24/25 as far as salaries go as Barnes would still be on his rookie deal. They really wouldn't have had to deal with the financial implications until '25/26. Barnes rookie deal and the cap spike in '25/26 would have given us some breathing room.

So the team could have stayed well under the tax in Barnes 3rd/4th years and then pivoted in his 5th season depending on if we were contending (ie a team worthy of paying the tax for). It was doable (and probably somewhat reasonable) as long as Barnes developed into a #1 option.

If you remove Barnes from the equation it makes little sense but the whole thing probably revolved around having a future star who would still be on a cheap deal for 2 more years. And if Barnes became a true star then this team is probably contending and maybe MLSE is willing to pay the tax for a year or two.

I think expecting Scottie to blow up as a star in his second year was a ridiculous thought, if that was their line of thinking. Nothing indicated he would be a first option even with the stellar rookie campaign.

An paying the 5 of them having us right around the tax, is still pretty bad, considering we need 10 more roster spots lol.

He won rookie of the year in a pretty good draft class. Expectations had to be pretty high. If he hadn’t stagnated and played like he did this year in his 2nd season (improved shooting and defense) then that might have moved the chains as far as the team’s ceiling was concerned. ROY’s usually make progress in their 2nd year, they don’t usually regress like Barnes did imo.

As per having 5 guys taking up most of the cap, those guys are more easily moveable if they aren’t on bloated deals (like Houston gave to FVV). Even with those 5 signed we would still have been $20m below the tax. The team probably wouldn’t have been tenable long term but we wouldn’t have been handcuffed anywhere.

I don’t think it was a great plan but I bet if you asked the front office they thought they’d be able to keep everyone on moveable deals (which seems to be Masai’s M.O even dating back to the Nene deal).

Fred's deal is totally tradeable next season. It's a 40 million expiring. Those have alot of worth notwithstanding who the player is.

[Scase]

How is the statement above true?

They drafted Barnes 3 years ago, and then traded Pascal and OG halfway through this season before their contracts expired. They only spent 2 1/2 seasons together, and never had to pay all 3 near max salaries all at the same time.

Are you suggesting that the moment they drafted Scottie, they should have dumped Pascal immediately, even if the return was similar to what they just received?

Or are you suggesting they should have drafted Suggs to avoid overlap with Pascal?

Ideally after the ROTY campaign, we should've moved Siakam. But they fell for the fools gold that was that season, and the covid travel benefits we capitalized on.

The plan was to keep OG/FVV/Siakam, and slot Scottie in. One walked in FA, one got a good return most likely due to his connection to the knicks, and one got traded for peanuts.

Unless you think the above was part of their initial plan? Cause there have been no rumours I have seen or heard to indicate otherwise. If it wasn't for the Rockets and their absurd offer, FVV would still be a raptor.

They tried to trade for Durant two summers ago. It was probably Siakam that was offered in that deal. They then tried to trade for Dame last summer. Again, probably Pascal that was being offered.

The one name that was clearly rumored to not be offered in any of those deals was Barnes.

If your best argument to them not wanting to keep Siakam, is that they tried to trade him for players 10x better than him, you're not making a very convincing argument lol. Tons of teams were trying to acquire both those players.

[Scase]

You have to assume that they thought/think Barnes could have grown into a #1 option. I think when he didn't really develop in year 2 that put a wrench in things.

Siakam/OG/FVV is a good trio to put around a real "star". The salaries also wouldn't have been untenable had FVV been paid a reasonable amount. When Barnes extension kicks in 2025/26 they could have had:

Siakam: $50m
FVV: $35m
OG: $35m
Poeltl: $20m
Barnes: $42m

They could have retained everyone and hovered around the tax. We also would have been fine this year and in '24/25 as far as salaries go as Barnes would still be on his rookie deal. They really wouldn't have had to deal with the financial implications until '25/26. Barnes rookie deal and the cap spike in '25/26 would have given us some breathing room.

So the team could have stayed well under the tax in Barnes 3rd/4th years and then pivoted in his 5th season depending on if we were contending (ie a team worthy of paying the tax for). It was doable (and probably somewhat reasonable) as long as Barnes developed into a #1 option.

If you remove Barnes from the equation it makes little sense but the whole thing probably revolved around having a future star who would still be on a cheap deal for 2 more years. And if Barnes became a true star then this team is probably contending and maybe MLSE is willing to pay the tax for a year or two.

I think expecting Scottie to blow up as a star in his second year was a ridiculous thought, if that was their line of thinking. Nothing indicated he would be a first option even with the stellar rookie campaign.

An paying the 5 of them having us right around the tax, is still pretty bad, considering we need 10 more roster spots lol.

He won rookie of the year in a pretty good draft class. Expectations had to be pretty high. If he hadn’t stagnated and played like he did this year in his 2nd season (improved shooting and defense) then that might have moved the chains as far as the team’s ceiling was concerned. ROY’s usually make progress in their 2nd year, they don’t usually regress like Barnes did imo.

As per having 5 guys taking up most of the cap, those guys are more easily moveable if they aren’t on bloated deals (like Houston gave to FVV). Even with those 5 signed we would still have been $20m below the tax. The team probably wouldn’t have been tenable long term but we wouldn’t have been handcuffed anywhere.

I don’t think it was a great plan but I bet if you asked the front office they thought they’d be able to keep everyone on moveable deals (which seems to be Masai’s M.O even dating back to the Nene deal).

The same issue persists though, just cause you can, doesn't mean you should.

Nothing about Scotties rookie year gave even a slight impression he would be a first option on offence, he's beyond raw offensively. If the FO saw that and thought "We've got our #1, lets keep Siakam", sweet lord that is some bad judgment lol.

The only movable contracts there would be Jak, and OG. FVV woudl've been on a 4 or 5 year contract, Siakam the same. Aint no one trading for those. Either way, the end result would be a pretty mid team, so even if it works financially, still a terrible idea.

[ConSarnit]

I think expecting Scottie to blow up as a star in his second year was a ridiculous thought, if that was their line of thinking. Nothing indicated he would be a first option even with the stellar rookie campaign.

An paying the 5 of them having us right around the tax, is still pretty bad, considering we need 10 more roster spots lol.

He won rookie of the year in a pretty good draft class. Expectations had to be pretty high. If he hadn’t stagnated and played like he did this year in his 2nd season (improved shooting and defense) then that might have moved the chains as far as the team’s ceiling was concerned. ROY’s usually make progress in their 2nd year, they don’t usually regress like Barnes did imo.

As per having 5 guys taking up most of the cap, those guys are more easily moveable if they aren’t on bloated deals (like Houston gave to FVV). Even with those 5 signed we would still have been $20m below the tax. The team probably wouldn’t have been tenable long term but we wouldn’t have been handcuffed anywhere.

I don’t think it was a great plan but I bet if you asked the front office they thought they’d be able to keep everyone on moveable deals (which seems to be Masai’s M.O even dating back to the Nene deal).

The same issue persists though, just cause you can, doesn't mean you should.

Nothing about Scotties rookie year gave even a slight impression he would be a first option on offence, he's beyond raw offensively. If the FO saw that and thought "We've got our #1, lets keep Siakam", sweet lord that is some bad judgment lol.

The only movable contracts there would be Jak, and OG. FVV woudl've been on a 4 or 5 year contract, Siakam the same. Aint no one trading for those. Either way, the end result would be a pretty mid team, so even if it works financially, still a terrible idea.

As for Scottie being a number 1, I’m sure they were hoping he’d grow into that role. In the meantime we wouldn’t be facing salary constraints because of Barnes rookie deal.

I don’t know how you think FVV wouldn’t be tradable on a 4/120ish contract. In his 3rd and 4th years of his deal he’d be making the equivalent of $24-25m this season. You don’t think FVV is tradable at $25m this year? And guess what Siakam’s deal would have been in his 3rd year: 28% of the cap. Care to guess what Siakam’s deal is as a percent of the cap this year? 28%. All of these guys projected contracts were tradable. They all would have been signed under the old cap environment and thus retained trade value. The problem wasn’t each individual number as much as it was having a bunch of guys making $30m+, which exhausts your cap space pretty quickly.

[JB7]

I think expecting Scottie to blow up as a star in his second year was a ridiculous thought, if that was their line of thinking. Nothing indicated he would be a first option even with the stellar rookie campaign.

An paying the 5 of them having us right around the tax, is still pretty bad, considering we need 10 more roster spots lol.

He won rookie of the year in a pretty good draft class. Expectations had to be pretty high. If he hadn’t stagnated and played like he did this year in his 2nd season (improved shooting and defense) then that might have moved the chains as far as the team’s ceiling was concerned. ROY’s usually make progress in their 2nd year, they don’t usually regress like Barnes did imo.

As per having 5 guys taking up most of the cap, those guys are more easily moveable if they aren’t on bloated deals (like Houston gave to FVV). Even with those 5 signed we would still have been $20m below the tax. The team probably wouldn’t have been tenable long term but we wouldn’t have been handcuffed anywhere.

I don’t think it was a great plan but I bet if you asked the front office they thought they’d be able to keep everyone on moveable deals (which seems to be Masai’s M.O even dating back to the Nene deal).

Fred's deal is totally tradeable next season. It's a 40 million expiring. Those have alot of worth notwithstanding who the player is.

The Rockets need the money off the books so they can re-sign Green. They can’t take back contracts from another team.

Fred might be left with having to take an MLE deal from another team. Unless a team with cap space wants to overpay a 31 year old Fred.

[JB7]

He won rookie of the year in a pretty good draft class. Expectations had to be pretty high. If he hadn’t stagnated and played like he did this year in his 2nd season (improved shooting and defense) then that might have moved the chains as far as the team’s ceiling was concerned. ROY’s usually make progress in their 2nd year, they don’t usually regress like Barnes did imo.

As per having 5 guys taking up most of the cap, those guys are more easily moveable if they aren’t on bloated deals (like Houston gave to FVV). Even with those 5 signed we would still have been $20m below the tax. The team probably wouldn’t have been tenable long term but we wouldn’t have been handcuffed anywhere.

I don’t think it was a great plan but I bet if you asked the front office they thought they’d be able to keep everyone on moveable deals (which seems to be Masai’s M.O even dating back to the Nene deal).

The same issue persists though, just cause you can, doesn't mean you should.

Nothing about Scotties rookie year gave even a slight impression he would be a first option on offence, he's beyond raw offensively. If the FO saw that and thought "We've got our #1, lets keep Siakam", sweet lord that is some bad judgment lol.

The only movable contracts there would be Jak, and OG. FVV woudl've been on a 4 or 5 year contract, Siakam the same. Aint no one trading for those. Either way, the end result would be a pretty mid team, so even if it works financially, still a terrible idea.

As for Scottie being a number 1, I’m sure they were hoping he’d grow into that role. In the meantime we wouldn’t be facing salary constraints because of Barnes rookie deal.

I don’t know how you think FVV wouldn’t be tradable on a 4/120ish contract. In his 3rd and 4th years of his deal he’d be making the equivalent of $24-25m this season. You don’t think FVV is tradable at $25m this year? And guess what Siakam’s deal would have been in his 3rd year: 28% of the cap. Care to guess what Siakam’s deal is as a percent of the cap this year? 28%. All of these guys projected contracts were tradable. They all would have been signed under the old cap environment and thus retained trade value. The problem wasn’t each individual number as much as it was having a bunch of guys making $30m+, which exhausts your cap space pretty quickly.

Siakam won’t be tradeable on that new deal. The Raps got relatively little for him and that was with him expiring. So the Pacers know they can keep him by giving him the max, or if it didn’t work out they could have walked away.

If Pacers decide to trade Pascal after resigning him, he’ll probably have negative value on that new max contract.

[mdenny]

He won rookie of the year in a pretty good draft class. Expectations had to be pretty high. If he hadn’t stagnated and played like he did this year in his 2nd season (improved shooting and defense) then that might have moved the chains as far as the team’s ceiling was concerned. ROY’s usually make progress in their 2nd year, they don’t usually regress like Barnes did imo.

As per having 5 guys taking up most of the cap, those guys are more easily moveable if they aren’t on bloated deals (like Houston gave to FVV). Even with those 5 signed we would still have been $20m below the tax. The team probably wouldn’t have been tenable long term but we wouldn’t have been handcuffed anywhere.

I don’t think it was a great plan but I bet if you asked the front office they thought they’d be able to keep everyone on moveable deals (which seems to be Masai’s M.O even dating back to the Nene deal).

Fred's deal is totally tradeable next season. It's a 40 million expiring. Those have alot of worth notwithstanding who the player is.

The Rockets need the money off the books so they can re-sign Green. They can’t take back contracts from another team.

Fred might be left with having to take an MLE deal from another team. Unless a team with cap space wants to overpay a 31 year old Fred.

They have to extend Sengun too. But fred's only on the books for 40 next season. The year after that is a team option.

And noone is getting fred for the MLE the season after next. That's not happening unless he suffers a major injury or something.

[JB7]

Fred's deal is totally tradeable next season. It's a 40 million expiring. Those have alot of worth notwithstanding who the player is.

The Rockets need the money off the books so they can re-sign Green. They can’t take back contracts from another team.

Fred might be left with having to take an MLE deal from another team. Unless a team with cap space wants to overpay a 31 year old Fred.

They have to extend Sengun too. But fred's only on the books for 40 next season. The year after that is a team option.

And noone is getting fred for the MLE the season after next. That's not happening unless he suffers a major injury or something.

If the Rockets don’t pick up that 3rd year option (because they need to sign Sengun and Green), Fred loses his bird rights. So it would take a team with cap space choosing to use it on Fred. Rockets were desperate to sign someone, that’s why they signed Fred. I don’t see him getting maxed out by another team.

[mdenny]

The Rockets need the money off the books so they can re-sign Green. They can’t take back contracts from another team.

Fred might be left with having to take an MLE deal from another team. Unless a team with cap space wants to overpay a 31 year old Fred.

They have to extend Sengun too. But fred's only on the books for 40 next season. The year after that is a team option.

And noone is getting fred for the MLE the season after next. That's not happening unless he suffers a major injury or something.

If the Rockets don’t pick up that 3rd year option (because they need to sign Sengun and Green), Fred loses his bird rights. So it would take a team with cap space choosing to use it on Fred. Rockets were desperate to sign someone, that’s why they signed Fred. I don’t see him getting maxed out by another team.

Am i missing something? He's just gonna be a free agent yah? He's not gonna get a max but there's no reason why he won't get 25ish, maybe up to 30. Noone is gonna get him for the MLE.

[JB7]

They have to extend Sengun too. But fred's only on the books for 40 next season. The year after that is a team option.

And noone is getting fred for the MLE the season after next. That's not happening unless he suffers a major injury or something.

If the Rockets don’t pick up that 3rd year option (because they need to sign Sengun and Green), Fred loses his bird rights. So it would take a team with cap space choosing to use it on Fred. Rockets were desperate to sign someone, that’s why they signed Fred. I don’t see him getting maxed out by another team.

Am i missing something? He's just gonna be a free agent yah? He's not gonna get a max but there's no reason why he won't get 25ish, maybe up to 30. Noone is gonna get him for the MLE.

Depends on how much cap space teams have, and whether Fred is fine to chase the money. Ok, ya, as long as a bottom feeder team has space, Fred might get paid $20-$30M.

[Scase]

He won rookie of the year in a pretty good draft class. Expectations had to be pretty high. If he hadn’t stagnated and played like he did this year in his 2nd season (improved shooting and defense) then that might have moved the chains as far as the team’s ceiling was concerned. ROY’s usually make progress in their 2nd year, they don’t usually regress like Barnes did imo.

As per having 5 guys taking up most of the cap, those guys are more easily moveable if they aren’t on bloated deals (like Houston gave to FVV). Even with those 5 signed we would still have been $20m below the tax. The team probably wouldn’t have been tenable long term but we wouldn’t have been handcuffed anywhere.

I don’t think it was a great plan but I bet if you asked the front office they thought they’d be able to keep everyone on moveable deals (which seems to be Masai’s M.O even dating back to the Nene deal).

The same issue persists though, just cause you can, doesn't mean you should.

Nothing about Scotties rookie year gave even a slight impression he would be a first option on offence, he's beyond raw offensively. If the FO saw that and thought "We've got our #1, lets keep Siakam", sweet lord that is some bad judgment lol.

The only movable contracts there would be Jak, and OG. FVV woudl've been on a 4 or 5 year contract, Siakam the same. Aint no one trading for those. Either way, the end result would be a pretty mid team, so even if it works financially, still a terrible idea.

As for Scottie being a number 1, I’m sure they were hoping he’d grow into that role. In the meantime we wouldn’t be facing salary constraints because of Barnes rookie deal.

I don’t know how you think FVV wouldn’t be tradable on a 4/120ish contract. In his 3rd and 4th years of his deal he’d be making the equivalent of $24-25m this season. You don’t think FVV is tradable at $25m this year? And guess what Siakam’s deal would have been in his 3rd year: 28% of the cap. Care to guess what Siakam’s deal is as a percent of the cap this year? 28%. All of these guys projected contracts were tradable. They all would have been signed under the old cap environment and thus retained trade value. The problem wasn’t each individual number as much as it was having a bunch of guys making $30m+, which exhausts your cap space pretty quickly.

I think I might not be following the details of the deals you are suggesting they would've been on. So cost, and what years they are active from.

If we are talking about a brand new contract for Siakam, that means he's making 50mil as a 33 year old. That is absolutely not a moveable deal, we were barely able to move him for anything valuable as a 29 year old at that same ratio of the cap.

FVV I need more info what your idea of the contract was to be. But honestly, this doesn't matter much at all, cause there was no way that team was going anywhere seriously. Too many flawed players with big holes in their games, as they age and become more and more injured.

[bluerap23]

“Borderline criminal” is silly. And someone posted a poll from the time of the trade that showed the fans were pretty evenly split between good vs bad + atrocious. The team was decent with bad fitting Jak at C, and I am willing to bet that if the Raps traded picks for Myles Turner instead of trading Pascal and tanking, for example, you wouldn’t be reacting positively to that either.

This board is full of homers that defend every bad move the front office makes

Just not true ..

I'm a pretty diehard Masai supporter and I hated this trade. Most on this board were not on board with the alternative though...
I would have extended and looked for a trade later. Masai decided it was time to rip the bandaid at let Scottie have the team.

[ConSarnit]

The same issue persists though, just cause you can, doesn't mean you should.

Nothing about Scotties rookie year gave even a slight impression he would be a first option on offence, he's beyond raw offensively. If the FO saw that and thought "We've got our #1, lets keep Siakam", sweet lord that is some bad judgment lol.

The only movable contracts there would be Jak, and OG. FVV woudl've been on a 4 or 5 year contract, Siakam the same. Aint no one trading for those. Either way, the end result would be a pretty mid team, so even if it works financially, still a terrible idea.

As for Scottie being a number 1, I’m sure they were hoping he’d grow into that role. In the meantime we wouldn’t be facing salary constraints because of Barnes rookie deal.

I don’t know how you think FVV wouldn’t be tradable on a 4/120ish contract. In his 3rd and 4th years of his deal he’d be making the equivalent of $24-25m this season. You don’t think FVV is tradable at $25m this year? And guess what Siakam’s deal would have been in his 3rd year: 28% of the cap. Care to guess what Siakam’s deal is as a percent of the cap this year? 28%. All of these guys projected contracts were tradable. They all would have been signed under the old cap environment and thus retained trade value. The problem wasn’t each individual number as much as it was having a bunch of guys making $30m+, which exhausts your cap space pretty quickly.

Siakam won’t be tradeable on that new deal. The Raps got relatively little for him and that was with him expiring. So the Pacers know they can keep him by giving him the max, or if it didn’t work out they could have walked away.

If Pacers decide to trade Pascal after resigning him, he’ll probably have negative value on that new max contract.

The Raps got relatively little because he was expiring. Expiring players don't fetch more in trades, they fetch less.

Also consider Siakam's new contract relative to the cap.

Siakam's current salary as % of the cap: 28%

Siakam's future salary as % of the cap: 29%

As an expiring on the the exact same deal he is about to get, Siakam got 3 1sts. We sold him at his lowest value. He'd have to have a huge decline in value to go from 3 1sts as an expiring to negative value. He could be negative value by his 4th-5th year of his new deal but that wouldn't have precluded us from trading him before that point and as we've seen teams (stupidly) don't usually factor those possible decline years when trading for a player. As long as Pascal keeps playing near the same level he's playing at other teams aren't just going to assume he'll suddenly fall off in his 4th year. Over and over teams have shown they will take that risk.

Siakam's new deal will likely be tradable for positive (or neutral at worst) value. He's just barely going to turn 34 when his new deal ends. Maybe the 4th year gets rocky for the Pacers but by that time he's expiring.

[Scase]

As for Scottie being a number 1, I’m sure they were hoping he’d grow into that role. In the meantime we wouldn’t be facing salary constraints because of Barnes rookie deal.

I don’t know how you think FVV wouldn’t be tradable on a 4/120ish contract. In his 3rd and 4th years of his deal he’d be making the equivalent of $24-25m this season. You don’t think FVV is tradable at $25m this year? And guess what Siakam’s deal would have been in his 3rd year: 28% of the cap. Care to guess what Siakam’s deal is as a percent of the cap this year? 28%. All of these guys projected contracts were tradable. They all would have been signed under the old cap environment and thus retained trade value. The problem wasn’t each individual number as much as it was having a bunch of guys making $30m+, which exhausts your cap space pretty quickly.

Siakam won’t be tradeable on that new deal. The Raps got relatively little for him and that was with him expiring. So the Pacers know they can keep him by giving him the max, or if it didn’t work out they could have walked away.

If Pacers decide to trade Pascal after resigning him, he’ll probably have negative value on that new max contract.

The Raps got relatively little because he was expiring. Expiring players don't fetch more in trades, they fetch less.

Also consider Siakam's new contract relative to the cap.

Siakam's current salary as % of the cap: 28%

Siakam's future salary as % of the cap: 29%

As an expiring on the the exact same deal he is about to get, Siakam got 3 1sts. We sold him at his lowest value. He'd have to have a huge decline in value to go from 3 1sts as an expiring to negative value. He could be negative value by his 4th-5th year of his new deal but that wouldn't have precluded us from trading him before that point and as we've seen teams (stupidly) don't usually factor those possible decline years when trading for a player. As long as Pascal keeps playing near the same level he's playing at other teams aren't just going to assume he'll suddenly fall off in his 4th year. Over and over teams have shown they will take that risk.

Siakam's new deal will likely be tradable for positive (or neutral at worst) value. He's just barely going to turn 34 when his new deal ends. Maybe the 4th year gets rocky for the Pacers but by that time he's expiring.

Doesnt his new deal start next year? Where he will be half way to 31 already, and 31 by the playoffs, making his 3rd year of a 4 or 5 year contract 33.5 years old making 50mil/yr.

If they sign a 4 year, it's not terrible since his final year is an expiring, so someone else might see that as a way to shed salary. But if they do a 5 year, that is an absolutely negative contract. And if the rumours were correct, that the offers out there were no better a year ago, when he wasn't an expiring AND was significantly younger than the future contract. There is virtually no reason to assume it won't be a negative contract at that point.

Dame who is a WAY better player than Siakam has ever been, and is 4 years older with 3 years left on his contract, was a solid deal, but by no means did the Blazers walk away with a fleece. I don't see how Siakam can be anything but a negative at that point in his career.