Bamalawdawg

Aldridge Jersey must be sold out, Oddly, Monta Ellis jersey already in clearance section

I'm completely against giving DMC $12 mil but giving Monta $10 mil is worse

Of course if Cleveland had no injures and had Love and Irving they would have been tougher too.

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I can't imagine we would ever move Moose. His contract is good for ATL, and we'd only save like 400k replacing him with whatever. He's a guy we can Bird next year apparently

Unless the Hawks want to blow up the team Sap will have an early bird $16+ mil 5 year offer. It's hard to be insulted at that, when the best traditional contract would be starting at $18+ mil and 4 years. It's basically apples and apples. If a team offers a Lebron deal of 1 year $18 mil and and a player option with a wink wink agreement to go $25 mil + year 2 on a 4 year deal then what can you do? But unless the Hawks truly can't imagine paying a total salary that is over the cap, it would be a no brainier to offer the $16 mil deal to go over. If the Hawks truly feel like they can't afford more than $70 mil in total salaries, then this was the high water mark for the Hawks for some time and we will slip back.

Sap is hardly a dream 3, but if your 4/5 is Aldridge and Horf or Gasol and Horf you make that move and just realize that when you play an elite offensive 3 like Lebron or Carmelo you will need to make some special arrangements. 90% of the time this would lead to a dominant front line that can also step out and shoot, to go with Kover and Teague's outside work. You also might find rotations of the players that can maximize their potential. If you squeeze 48 minutes of 4 play out of Aldridge and Sap and play Sap at the 3 when both play, you own an advantage over almost every 4 in the league. Perhaps you officially use Sap as a 6th man who will average starter minutes.

Since we are talking about a scenario where Demarre signs elsewhere, let's just talk about it like we renounce him. Before renouncing players we are basically at the cap. At least there is less than 1 mil wiggle room. Dumping Carroll gives us $3.2 mil. Dumping Ayón's rights, Brand, and Jenkins clears $7.1 mil per the wonderful Peachtreehoops article. There's the easy way to signing a "big" free agent, sign them for about $11 mil. Everything else after that starts to sting a little. We can renounce Antić for another $1.6 mil. Now we're closing in on $13 mil. Still not nearly enough for Gasol or Aldridge. We trade Mike Scott to a team under the cap for a future 2nd. If you factor in a roster hold that gets us to about $15.5 mil. Trade Mack and a 2nd to a team under the cap for the rights to a 40 old Swede. Now we are around $17.5 factoring in roaster holds. Still not enough for Gasol or Aldridge (and this assumes Sap signed a for his Bird #). Good news, we saved like $200k on our pick. So throw that on the pile. We can dump Daye and Muscala and replace them with minimum players for another 600k total. Maybe we are closing in on $18.5 mil. It's a heck of a roster overhaul, but maybe we can get Gasol or Aldridge in at $18.5 then sign 5 minimum players.

Looking at his game logs the last 2 seasons. 1) he's played in a lot of games 2) he's even started a lot of games (30 this season) 3) he's had some huge 3 point nights, and made more 3s than any Hawk not named Kyle this past season 4) he's put up 25+ a handful of times and generally shot over 50% to get there 5) for every 15-29 point performance he has 2-3 with very little production and going 0-5 or so for threes Bud must feel he can fix him. If you bottle just those big nights he's had once every couple weeks, he's an all star or close to it. Maybe in an offense where he isn't under pressure to score early and often because the team is already losing he can use better opportunities. His ceiling as a shooter is certainly much higher than Baz, Scott, Dennis, or Mack, our primary bench jump shooters most of the season.

He will be the only rookie on the roster. Perhaps it factored into decisions with the 15/19 and stash 2nd rounders. Bud not wanting 2 bench rookies?

Come to think of it, maybe the Hawks should flush all their picks away with this history. Trade firsts for double digit scorers on rookie contracts from one of the two worst teams in the league with horrible coaching. Call it drafting from the NBA, instead of the NBA draft.

You act like they got 2 seconds and a 1st. That's what we got. Perhaps trading the 19 for 31, and 36 is better than THJ though.

Well, I loved the trade back for assets since we had no direct need for a project SF with a higher 1st year pay in a year where we could lose Paul or Carrol because of 1 mil in starting salary. (Stupid early bird) However, I hate trading the $1.5 mil slot 19th for a $1.5 mil THJ. That being said, Bud sees something he likes, and given his development of some low level salary players in this offense, Baz, Carroll, and Scott most notably, guys who contribute well beyond their contract rates compared to players in the league earning 4-5 times what they do, I will give him some credit here and hold my tongue for 2 years. Let's be real about what we did here though, we traded 4 years of control over Grant or another quality pick for 2 of THJ. If he scores 7-8 per game on 50% shooting or 40% for 3 it will be a big backcourt lift for a playoff team. If not, we just flushed away 2 straight 1st picks.

Most 2nd rounders just get waived and you lose the rights. How many 2nd rounders make teams in their first years so the teams even hold their rights?

We got the 19 and 2 future 2nds. That is a very good deal for the #15 I bet 6-7 of the trades involved one 2nd

When your roster is strong and you are up against the cap, stashes make perfect sense. The extra 2nds from Washington in god knows what years will probably be much of the same. You either get 1-4 rookie controlled years or free agent rights to experienced 25-30 year old international players. It can pay off in the end if you don't need players to round out your rotation. I'm shocked some team hasn't just tried to stockpile 4 2nds a year and build an effective overseas pipeline at 1-2 foreign teams. College level 2nds are pretty worthless.

If he was out for Tommy John maybe the Braves want a look.

He makes about what the 19th pick would make. And Grant would hold more trade value to most teams. It has to mean an abundance of confidence in THJ with only 2 years of salary control.

We got worse than a rookie. This guy has only 2 years on his contract. I loved the first deal, stockpile assets then pick from the herd. Essentially valuing Hardaway over everyone available is shocking. I thought the Hawks must have traded down to the 2nd or something. Or sent Mack away. Nope

Wait, that is all the Hawks got? The trade back once was smart. Tim Jr for a first is a head scratcher We traded the 2014 15 for a protected first in a future year and now the 19 for the 24 from 2014.

Trading Jeff would be dumb, unless part of a bigger plan already agreed to by key FAs. That is unlikely

ESPN lists us among the suitors, but the 4 is already held down by Paul. Hard to imagine how we sign Aldridge even if Paul goes elsewhere or is renounced since all we get back is his cap hold of $12 mil +. Aldridge will basicly take that + 100% of the remaining cap ($18.8 mil starting - a bargain for him). And we can't sign Carroll for $6 mil. So we'd lose both. The only thing that would make cap sense is to bail on Carroll if we had Paul agree to the Bird figure and put 100% of our cap to Aldridge. That means getting rid of our #15, Scott, Mack, Muscala, and maybe more. Aldridge is worth all those pieces and more, but what do we do with Paul AND Aldridge? Play Paul at the 3? Yuck

Obviously, what the Cavs do this off season impacts the Hawks as they are a likely competitor for the top seed in the East again. Excuse my ignorance of the salary cap, but I would suspect that this new information about Love does something with their likely cap situation and their ability to sign free agents. I can't think of any reason why opting out would be good for the Cavs as he should have some enormous cap hold now, right? If the Cavs can't sign anyone then they have to bring back their 2014/15 squad and at elevated prices (Smith, Shumpert, Thompson, Love all FAs or player options) due pay raises. Surely they'd blow away the luxury tax line too. Any thoughts or contributions from knowledgable squawk capologists?

He sat a bunch of games, but was still one of the best scorers in the league.

He can take $16 mil and fail to make the playoffs again in hopes of a 2016 big free agent splash and Heat reboot. No way some team gives him $100 million over 4 years though. Wonder if he'd take a Milsap sized deal with the Hawks. If DMC can't be resigned without breaking the bank, Wade would at least be a player worth dumping players to add. Dumping Scott and Mack for DMC seems insane. How much can we legitimately clear before leaving enough for Milsap? $15-16 mil?