Final_quest

5 hours ago, AHF said:

We've got a great chance to put ourselves on a different path this offseason between the #1 pick and our need to trade Trae or DJM.  As I said a month or so ago, this is arguably the most important offseason in the history of the team.  Fields needs to bring his A game and Ressler needs to let his basketball people make the decisions.  If we put ourselves right back in this position where we have to cut talent every year to keep from paying the tax, I have very little confidence we will do anything other than continue to dwell in mediocrity.  We either need a lower baseline in salary where we can add quality pieces in the offseason or we need to put ourselves in a position where pushing into the tax makes sense.  (To credit Fields, DJM and OO's contracts are both first good steps down this path, imo.)  

We had to cut John Collins and there's a reason why we couldn't get anything back for him:

Would you be surprised to know that the Jazz perform worse in Collins minutes than any other player on the roster?

Would you be surprised to know Collins is dead last of all starters in the NBA in on/off net rating?

Would you be surprised to know that Collins -7.7 on court net rating is the worst of any player on a team even close to .500?

Would you be surprised to know the Jazz have a 124.4(!!!) defensive rating when Collins is on the floor? (The worst defensive rating for a team in history is 121)

Collins can be productive on the offensive-end, and can even pass the eye test. But do not get it twisted he has been really far from being really good.

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I do agree that we have a really good opportunity to pivot this year.  I keep hoping to hear a good trade rumor for Murray or Capela.   JC TPE expires 7/8, but we pretty much have $175M on the books after landing the #1 pick.  What can you do with that TPE unless you cut some salary before then?  

2 hours ago, marco102 said:

I hate the NBA is smoothing the cap.  The Hawks could have had big money to spend, but this makes it better in a way. 

 

Extend Jalen.  Just give him Cam Johnson money.  

It's possible for two things to be true.  Ressler won't invest enough in the team because he only cares about profit and there was no way we were gonna put a contender together in a short amount of time after we signed everyone to big contracts and traded for Murray.

Even if Ressler goes all in and we trade Huerter for a guy like Josh Hart (which that is basically a fantasy move), that team has $200M committed in salary the next year and only 1 first round pick available to trade.  Your starters are still Trae, Murray, Hunter or Hart, Collins, and Capela.  What the heck do you do when the second apron is $182M?  Add another MLE player and have $212M in committed salary?  We were gonna cut Collins any way this went down, whether we traded Huerter for substance or not.  
    
There's only complete fantasy scenarios where a fully supported roster gets you on par with the other contenders.  The one thing that could have propelled us they tried to do, Siakam.  What I hear you guys saying that fully supported by the owner also looks like roster malpractice to an insane degree.  Everyone is in their feelings about losing talent, but that was an inevitability like the Titanic headed for an iceberg.  

What actually happened is a much better outcome than Ressler spending up to the first apron two years in a row.  We got a first for Huerter and because we were just bad enough we miraculously get the #1 overall pick.  Even with our cuts do you guys realize we have some of the most committed salary in the league?  That's STILL one of our main problems.  More spending in the past two years makes that a bigger problem.  

In the Ressler goes all in scenario we'd have about $175M in committed salary going into the offseason, no pick next year, a mid first rounder this year in a weak class, and two years straight of luxury spending headed towards the repeater penalties.  Meaning one more year of paying the tax and we would be in deep doo, severe restrictions.  

50 minutes ago, hawkman said:

This doesn't have to be a one off. This team can still be fixed. Trae is not the problem, and he is VERY much a part of the solution with the right pieces around him. Those pieces don't have to be superstars or All Stars either. This team can be right back on track as soon as next season if upper management is committed to putting a competitive product on the floor. 

Yes, we can turn it around.  Need to trade Murray for the right piece.  A couple key moves could make a big difference.

1 hour ago, Gray Mule said:

Seems that my choice in a draft a few seasons ago is going to the finals in the east this season.  Haliburton has looked pretty good so far.  Still haven't decided who I want to win it all this season.  Who do you have??

Only team I like is Minnesota.  Only want to see the Pacers win against Boston, and only because they play Boston.  Would have preferred to see Milwaukee fully healthy take on Boston and in the finals.  

Looks like this debate isn't going away.  ATL and 29 takes a stab at Sarr v Clingan.  They have a pretty balanced view on both, but clearly gives an advantage to Clingan on a variety of fronts.  Connecticut ran the offense through Clingan and won a title because of rebounding, paint protection, and Clingan's surprising ability as a secondary facilitator and passer.  The duo of Jalen and Clingan gives a more clear success recipe where you have that paint protection and rebounding fairly well covered, plus Clingan's ability to feed guys like Jalen cutting while he is in the high post.  

Supes is hammering the issues created by drafting Sarr and you have to be a believer in Sarr's star upside to dismiss the real concerns.  When I saw that we moved up in the top 4, my immediate excitement was getting Clingan at pick 3 or 4.  Having #1 overall changes your thinking in this draft because you have to consider who is most likely "the" star to come out of this draft.  

Listen here:

9 hours ago, JayBirdHawk said:

 

 

Headline doesn’t really match the article.  They do think we should resign Bey, and then they discuss Hunter’s pros and cons.

With Bey, Vit, Hunter, Lundy, and AJ were either set at SF or need to move somebody.   

Our roster is so funky.  In some ways we have holes everywhere in other ways we have a full roster.  

8 hours ago, JayBirdHawk said:

 

@Vol4ever also noted that Ressler wasn't willing to pay him, so why would he want to come?

I don’t think he ever said that about Siakam specifically, and I remember he said there was a mid season deal that he thinks got killed because of Tony not wanting to spend.  

He also seemed to say his insider info was pretty limited.  Pretty sure this one is a rumor unless he clears it up.  

2 minutes ago, AHF said:

 

Why make a "go for broke" trade like giving up control of 3 consecutive first round picks if you aren't going for it?  How do you go for it while pairing back the talent and payroll on the roster?  

If you trade Huerter and get a pick back it’s a much less go for broke trade.  That takes it down from two 1sts and a swap to one first and a swap.  Be glad we’ll get a pick next year.  Takes most of the sting out of that trade.  

DJM first year we eventually had one of the best bench lineups in the league the second half of the year.  The starters weren’t getting it done.  Even with a top bench lineup the net net of the starters that tied up our payroll was nothing close to a contender.  So we saw that team with a highly functional bench.  It was a definite flop.  

Huerter or no Huerter we know the outcome.  Pipe dream to wish the Trae + DJM would be a contender.  No serious analyst would say otherwise.  

We were always going to need to make a major shift after the trade happened.  

1 hour ago, AHF said:

If you are determined to get under the tax then trading for DJM is a dumb as rocks move.  You don't trade for him and then take talent off the roster.  Just admit you made mistakes.  Dump those players and get your house in order and then start building again.  You done ****ed up.  Don't double down by giving away unprotected future picks knowing you won't be adding salary and will be shedding it and making your roster weaker instead of stronger.

If you are going to trade for DJM, the natural thing is to add more talent to the roster because the only reason you trade for him is to try to improve the team.

Most of the teams in the playoffs that won their series were below the line. Adding Murray doesn’t mean we have to go on to spend $200M.  That’s the number that keeping Huerter brings us to going into 2023-2024.  Why does adding Murray mean we should be that reckless?  And we have one less first round pick.  That plan gets you a talent poor but expensive roster with even less draft capital.  

Still not really an answer to my earlier question either.  How would paying the tax have substantially changed anything for us?  We trade Huerter or keep Huerter.  Then we still have all the same problems we do right now.  

14 minutes ago, Jody23 said:

I could be wrong, but the talk about interest in Edey could indicate Tony Ressler influence.  We've seen the Hawks trade down in a draft because he preferred a college star over an international player.

We have one poster talking about their interest in Edey (talking a lot).  I have yet to hear any serious interest from the Hawks.  

3 hours ago, AHF said:

I see it as highly unnatural to trade for a young All-Star in DJM with whom you expect to compete and perhaps even contend and then REMOVE talent from the rest of the roster and bring in nothing to replace it.  To then REMOVE more talent the next year without bringing anything in to replace it is also unnatural if your goal is to compete.  You don't naturally get better by taking talent away and not replacing it.

These moves make perfect financial sense if your goal is to avoid the tax.  This is the same reason why it was perfectly predictable that we didn't pay the tax last year.  I was so confident in that happening that I made a bet on it and, of course, won the bet.  

So the frame of reference that I am using to describe something as natural or unnatural revolves around the idea that you naturally expect to trade a player and get talent back in return that can help the team in the near term.  That can be indirect like making a dump trade and then immediately acquiring Kyle Korver or direct and simply trade talent for talent.  You unnaturally dump talent for no replacement value which makes financial sense but is not the natural expectation for fans.

OK, with the benefit of hindsight don't we know that most any move we could have made after acquiring Murray still would not have worked?  Ignore that keeping Huerter and JC puts you on par with Minnesota's spending because we know keeping those guys would put us in cap hell, right? 

Let's say we make your wildest dream come true.  We somehow traded Huerter for Josh Hart.  Even then we still have to deal with bad contracts of Capela, JC, and Hunter, plus Murray's poor fit with Trae.  We would be a better team but with many of the same problems we have today.  Not remotely a contender, and paying as much as teams like Phoenix and Minnesota.  

The problem is making the perfect roster acquisition is needed to make that plan seem remotely feasible.  And even then "working" means still having major contract and roster construction problems.  So it's not even spending that saved your roster to make it competitive, it was making one of the best role player acquisitions of the past 3 years in a guy like Josh Hart.  The plan doesn't work at all if the guy you get plays on par with most $12M/yr players.  

At the end of the day our flaw has been committing the wrong amount of money to the wrong guys, and making the wrong major acquisition in Murray.  Not even Josh Hart would fix that. 

Your premise has a huge problem in that it's very difficult to come up with a scenario that spending even more makes us look like one of the top cap positioned teams in the league or a contender.  

1 hour ago, NBASupes said:

His agent flat out told us that Siakam didn't want to come here. Trae even talked to him and he was unwavering about it. 

We tried. We really did

I like that they went for it.  All NBA players are hard to get.  Siakam would have been a gamble that was maybe too much for us.

6 hours ago, Sothron said:

Oh boy....this is where we go into why we haven't talked about this in public until now.

If you are an owner and your FO tells you this draft doesn't have a real #1 pick, we can trade that pick, get more assets and get a guy we feel has the same value...and save the owner $$$ for not paying #1 pick money...what would you do?

So the FO is saying similar value as #1 pick is further down the board?  Any word on a specific player or player(s) they like?  Or what kinds of packages we are being offered?

1 hour ago, kg01 said:

 Their road was easy AF. 

Think about the Celtics road.  Looking like a cake walk to the finals.  

28 minutes ago, AHF said:

Let’s be real.  It isn’t just that they haven’t decided to pay the tax.  It is that they have done unnatural things that negatively impacted the team’s competitiveness the last few years to avoid the tax by giving away talent for no immediate return.  This isn’t just passing on the opportunity to add more salary to improve the team.  It is hurting the team to ensure the tax isn’t triggered.

They need to shut up about saying they are ready to pay the tax. Most fans hear that and expect the front office to go into the tax.  

I see their moves as natural.  Having Murray as Huerter’s replacement, the natural move is to replenish draft capital spent on Murray.  Bogi is a sixth man candidate as back up and Huerter is redundant.  

Keeping an ineffective starting JC at a huge salary would put us on par with the top 5 spending teams in the league.  To me, the NATURAL thing to do is cut payroll or else you become the worst payroll in the league.  

Not paying the tax for a low talent and poor fitting core is correct.  The top spending teams have at least two and sometimes three all NBA players.  Why we think we should spend the same as them without their talent is what would be unnatural.  

I saw value in Siakam.  Get a guy like that and then it makes sense to spend more.  Even then we would probably be a bad luxury level team.  

This is beating a dead horse at this point.

10 minutes ago, JayBirdHawk said:

Here's a question:

Will the Hawks use the JC TPE $23 mil (or even half of it) OR will they just let it expire?

 

Situational.  We need the right player to be available.  It’s a card we have to use under circumstances if it helps us long term.  

Adding salary with purpose and an eye on our long term commitments.  I hope we find a good use for it, but I do see the reality of having $163M committed in spending already.  

5 minutes ago, NBASupes said:

Zach Edey and Patrick Mahomes are the two players I've seen with the most miscategorized scouting reports I've ever seen. Add Lamar Jackson as well. Those three. 

Here’s a question you may have already answered.  Apart from Sarr and Edey what other options do you like for the Hawks?  Could be a trade or picking someone else.

We do have the Kings pick next year.  If we took someone else this year but took Dame Sarr next year he would be the cinnamon babka.  

12 minutes ago, benhillboy said:

The high risk of injuries sours me on exorbitant payrolls alone, let alone there are only a handful of worthy max guys anyway.  
 

Amassing as much expensive talent as possible without regard to roles, makeup, and fit is just amateur hour… paging James Jones & whoever the hell is running the Clips.  

Most people think/ thought Dame was some prize so I won’t roast Horst too tough but still lol.  

GS’s core built their shiny new arena off the backs of their pre-max deal performances, they wholly deserve to get fat on the back end.  

The Celtics are paying less than $6M for elite shooting between Hauser and Pritchard and White just signed a very team-friendly deal.  They better bring it home this season (which I  doubt) I just can’t fathom Jaylen Brown at $50M next season.  To his credit I used to hate dude but I can’t front on him any longer as he’s tightened his dribble a bit and posting his best playoff metrics by far granted they’ve faced two terribly hobbled teams.  Always been a boss slasher.

The main thrust is our focus should be acquiring the right pieces to have a solid core that fits.  

Using Collins TPE and an MLE to put us on par with the top 8 payrolls would mean we have the worst roster of all the biggest spenders. We can do that, but for what purpose?  

But no I don’t think we are close to a rebuild.  Soonest that would happen is 2025-2026, and only then if San Antonio is  having an abysmal year.  
 

2 hours ago, AHF said:

I agree and disagree about things being binary.  I mean there are many flavors of how this could play out.  When Trae expresses some want to the front office:

• They can ignore Trae entirely. 
• They can meet with Trae and listen politely but disregard what he says and make their own call. 
• They can meet with Trae and listen to what he says and decide whether trying to meet his expressed desire is a good idea; and if it is a categorically bad idea they can disregard but if it is promising they can then explore opportunities and make their own call about (a) whether anything makes sense and (b) identifying which scenario is best for the team. 
• They can meet with Trae and hear what he wants and then despite having the abilitiy to make their own decision decide to do whatever he asks.
• They can meet with Trae, come to their own decision, and then be overridden by ownership who tells the front office that their own judgment be damned they will do what Trae wants.
• They can meet with Trae and Trae make a demand of a more general nature like "get me help because if I don't believe this team is serious about winning then I will probably leave when I am an UFA in two years" and then the front office has fairly broad discretion about whether they want to make a move, the timing for the move, and what move they make and what form it takes.  Assuming a goal is to convince Trae they are serious about winning, they will have to factor that in similarly to how they have to convince the fan base that the team is serious about winning (except this requires probably more concrete action than it does for the larger fan base).  They can elect to move Trae knowing he is flight risk, to add a FA, to trade for someone, to bank on internal development, to draft a player who is more NBA ready and who they think will move the needle in the near term, to convince Trae that they will make their big move next year, etc. 
• They can meet with Trae, Trae can threaten to walk or force a trade if his specific demand isn't met, and then the front office can decide whether to trade Trae, let Trae walk, persuade Trae to accept another outcome, or meet Trae's demand.  If they can't talk Trae off the demand and decide to move Trae, then the front office will have a limited range of options and will make the decision which trade to accept.  If they decide to give in to Trae's demand, then the FO has made a voluntary election not to move Trae but may have no choice over the terms of the personnel move demanded by Trae.
• And probably 50 other scenarios that I don't think are any more difficult to dissect.

What is binary is whether the front office retains the authority to make their own decision or if their authority is stripped away in whole or in part.  Where they do retain authority, they own the decision to the full extent of their discretion and authority because that is exactly their job.  Where that authority is stripped from them, whoever took that authority owns the outcome of how and/or to what extent they limited the FO's authority.  Do you see why whether the FO retains authority and discretion makes a difference?

So let's look at these again.  Trae expresses some desire to the front office:

• They can ignore Trae entirely. Front office owns the decision.
• They can meet with Trae and listen politely but disregard what he says and make their own call.  Front office owns the decision.
• They can meet with Trae and listen to what he says and decide whether trying to meet his expressed desire is a good idea; and if it is a categorically bad idea they can disregard but if it is promising they can then explore opportunities and make their own call about (a) whether anything available to them makes sense and (b) if there are options that make sense then identify which scenario is best for the team. Front office owns the decision.
• They can meet with Trae and hear what he wants and then despite having the ability to make their own decision decide to do whatever he asks. Front office owns the decision.
• They can meet with Trae and Trae make a demand of a more general nature like "get me help because if I don't believe this team is serious about winning then I will probably leave when I am an UFA in two years" and then the front office has fairly broad discretion about whether they want to make a move, the timing for the move, and what move they make and what form it takes.  Assuming a goal is to convince Trae they are serious about winning, they will have to factor that in similarly to how they have to convince the fan base that the team is serious about winning (except this requires probably more concrete action than it does for the larger fan base).  They can elect to move Trae knowing he is flight risk, to add a FA, to trade for someone, to bank on internal development, to draft a player who is more NBA ready and who they think will move the needle in the near term, to convince Trae that they will make their big move next year, etc.  Front office owns the decision.
• They can meet with Trae, come to their own decision, and then be overridden by ownership who tells the front office that their own judgment be damned they will do what Trae wants.  Ressler and Trae own the decision by virtue of Ressler stripping the FO of their authority and then giving it to Trae.
• They can meet with Trae, Trae can threaten to walk or force a trade if his specific demand isn't met, and then the front office can decide whether to trade Trae, let Trae walk, persuade Trae to accept another outcome, or meet Trae's demand.  If they can't talk Trae off the demand and decide to move Trae, Trae owns the fallout from his demand crippling his trade market and the FO owns the responsibility for the offer they select among available offers.  If they decide to give in to Trae's demand, the FO owns the decision not to trade Trae and to cede authority to him and Trae owns the outcome of the personnel decision.

Throw out your own scenarios that you think would be useful for illustrating the variety and complexity of these scenarios if you'd like but I tried to hone in on a variety of realistic ones here.

After reading that I think the disconnect is I'm not focused on who owns the decision.  I'm more interested in the narrative of how a decision was made, what were all the factors involved.  

Like right now with Landry Fields I'm wondering if he really is a shadow GM that basically does what Ressler wants, or at least wondering if he's got a very short leash.  To the public they are making it look like Landry owns the decisions, but how much power does he actually have?  

You can have a powerful person who acts mostly independently that makes decisions and owns decisions.  You can have a powerful person who leans on a lot of talented people to make good decisions, but technically they alone own the final decision.  Have you ever experienced a no backbone "leader" who makes decisions but only after talking to a lot of people to try and figure out what will be the most popular decision?

Understanding who owns the decision is a small part of the how a decision is made.  When it came out that Nick Ressler had a bigger voice than anyone realized, even if Tony or Landry owns the decisions, it's still quite shocking that this kid even has significant influence.  

So you are focused on what you wrote in bold, and I'm more interested in the story leading up to the bolded part.  

Here's a question for you.  Take your example below.  In that scenario what actually happens in a public facing story?  Landry is STILL the public face of the decision, and in your world owns the decision.  The only way that changes is if the behind the scenes story gets leaked, which can happen years later.  The true story may never come out.  
 

• They can meet with Trae, come to their own decision, and then be overridden by ownership who tells the front office that their own judgment be damned they will do what Trae wants.  Ressler and Trae own the decision by virtue of Ressler stripping the FO of their authority and then giving it to Trae.

2 minutes ago, AHF said:

What are we even talking about if Trae doesn't apply enough pressure on the front office to get them to do something they would not have chosen to do on their own?  What are we talking about if there is no causal link between the outcome and Trae's statements to the front office?

If Trae is the causal link and gets the front office to do things they would not have otherwise done, how is that different than saying he overrides them?

Exactly. If you can only imagine a scenario where Trae overrides or he doesn't, there isn't a conversation to be had.  That's what I've been trying to say.  It's only a conversation if you see this outside of a binary.  

1 hour ago, JeffS17 said:

The idea isn't that he is overriding anyone.  It's clearly not that black and white-- didn't realize we needed to explicitly state that.  But he does have opinions, and he absolutely can have influence if he strongly suggests he wants to keep playing with JC, and JC wants more money than the FO is otherwise willing to pay him, and they make a small concession and extend him to a contract thats too rich.  That type of thing is extremely plausible, if not probable.  "Do we pay JC an extra $2-5M per year to keep Trae happy" would be the decision point for the front office and even decent FOs could accept that trade off, as the risk of your star player being continually unhappy is a big financial risk.

So ultimately, yes, I agree with you the front office shouldn't listen to Trae's desires for the roster, but the disconnect is many people here absolve him of responsibility of influencing decision making, while simultaneously trashing the FO and ownership.  And would absolutely continue to blame the front office if Trae asks out, which is part of the reason they might be considering his input anyways.  The mental gymnastics is nauseating.

It's exactly this, and no it doesn't mean Trae overrides the GM.  This isn't a binary where they allow Trae to draw up the contract terms if they take his input into consideration.  Also, I'm not talking about just the JC contract, so for me this is not exclusively or primarily about Collins.
Trae is the main revenue driver and makes the most impact on the court.  Biggest star since Nique.  They want to keep him content.  If you have to say that means nothing or means something on occasions, I think it has been a factor.
We don't know the details on what his impact has been on the front office.  There's a lot of speculation, but also good reasons why people think he's been vocal and that ownership has made some efforts to listen.  

Repeating the GM makes the final decision or a dozen analogies demonstrating that concept isn't very impactful.  That is easy to understand.  A binary where either GM or Trae decides is not the dynamic, so we're talking past each other it seems.  

5 minutes ago, Afro said:

Am I the only one who is slightly concerned with the testing? 

Sure, he didn't get hurt at Purdue, but he didn't play this level of "athletic" basketball. Evidenced by the fact everyone was shocked lol. 

It's the one thing that I don't think gets talked about. If you increase the athletic requirement(which I think is fair to assume. It's the NBA).... He's 7'6" and huge. That almost never works health wise in the NBA. When paired with big minutes. 

Every time we see a big THIS big, everyone criticizes his ability to hold up long term. It's a bit odd that this one gets a pass. 

One of my BIG questions with Wemby and Chet Holmgren.  No history of their build type holding up.  In my mind it may take 5 or 6 years, but it will happen.