REALGM: Atlanta's Inactivity Could Lead To Johnson's Departure

[dlpin]

This year won't be effected by Joe signing over the summer either. Your argument here is terrible. You were arguing luxury tax. Obviously not this year's luxury tax... so what the hell are you arguing? I just pointed out that regardless of how you give Joe 17 per year, we're going over the luxury tax... Weather if we had given it to him last summer or this summer, we're going over the luxury tax... So your POINT SIR is Meaningless. The fact that we offered the extension means that our owners are willing to go over the LUXURY tax.

JJ is being paid 15 mill this year and the hawks are still about 4 mill under the luxury tax. Barring a major contraction, the offer made to JJ would still put them under the luxury tax.

It is that simple.

If the hawks were willing to spend into the luxury tax, why did they hold on to the MLE?

Fact remains that if JJ wants to win, he's better off following Lebron or Bosh to a team that will be able to sign 2 max players than staying in Atlanta.

[niremetal]

JJ is being paid 15 mill this year and the hawks are still about 4 mill under the luxury tax. Barring a major contraction, the offer made to JJ would still put them under the luxury tax.

It is that simple.

If the hawks were willing to spend into the luxury tax, why did they hold on to the MLE?

Fact remains that if JJ wants to win, he's better off following Lebron or Bosh to a team that will be able to sign 2 max players than staying in Atlanta.

As I recall, there was some effort to get Rasheed Wallace early on, but he rejected us for your boys. After that, it was "gee, would we rather offer the vet minimum for Joe Smith or four times as much for another mediocre big man, who probably will end up rejecting us anyway?" Keep in mind that we needed to convince someone to come here and be ok with playing 10 minutes a game, barring injury. We weren't going to lure a Hakim Warrick to take on that kind of role. We could have offered the MLE to a McDyess, but 1) he almost certainly would have gone to the Spurs anyway; and 2) is McDyess really that big an upgrade over Joe Smith (if you've watched Spurs games this year, you know the answer to that is "barely, if at all," which is why DeJuan Blair has overtaken him in the rotation)?

I don't think management would have shied away from spending all or part of the MLE if there was a player willing to come here and take on the role of being the second big man (or third wing player) off the bench. But we couldn't offer a bigger role than that to most of the guys on the market, and those that we maybe could have offered a slightly bigger role to were guys that would have rather played elsewhere because they wanted an even bigger role on a team with a better shot at title contention (Wallace, Bass, McDyess, Gooden). For younger guys like Frye and Warrick, they weren't about to sign with a team where they'd be the 9th man at this stage in their careers (and Frye also wanted to play in his hometown). That is precisely why it's tough for middling playoff teams - especially in the East - to lure good value free agents.

This summer, assuming we win 52-55 games, we might be able to attract a couple "ring-seekers"

Edited February 18, 2010 by niremetal

[TheNorthCydeRises]

That's not necessarily true. Even if we re-signed JJ to the max this summer, we wouldn't necessarily be in the luxury tax.

Remember that the salary cap and the luxury tax threshold are both a defined percentage of the NBA's revenues. The maximum contract amount for a player, in turn, is based on a defined percentage of the salary cap - which, of course, means that it varies directly with both the cap and the tax threshold.

Here is a hypothetical payroll for the Hawks next year:

JJ: $15.8M*

Josh: $11.6M

Jamal: $10.1M

Marvin: $6.7M

Bibby: $5.6M

Horford: $5.4M

Zaza: $4.3M

Mo: $2.5M

Teague: $1.5M

Minimum salary x 4 = $3.4M

TOTAL = $66.9m

* That is the lowest amount a max contract could start at (105% of his current salary).

JJ's salary conceivably could be higher if the cap stays the same or goes up, but that is unlikely. Right now, the tax threshold is $69.9M, and the max player contract for someone with Joe's experience is $16.2M. No way in hell his max will START at $17M, because that would require that the cap would go UP by a significant amount this summer - and that, in turn, would require that league revenues be up this year compared to last year (and no one thinks that'll happen). And even if that happened, that would mean that the luxury tax threshold would go up as well. And if you can do the math, adding $1.2M to JJ's above salary would put us below even today's tax threshold. So if the max contract amount and the tax threshold both increased, that actually would make it easier to sign JJ to the max and still stay under the tax threshold.

If the cap drops by a significant amount, it could make it tough to keep JJ without going into the tax - but then again, that would also reduce the number of teams that would have the cap space to sign JJ. For instance, if the cap dropped to $52M this summer, only 5 teams (New York, New Jersey, Chicago, Miami, and Minnesota) would have the cap space to sign another team's free agent for $13M or more. That lack of competition for JJ might make it easier for the Hawks to retain him with a strong first offer that starts lower (but perhaps is longer and/or includes higher annual raises).

Also, I'm not at all convinced that JJ will draw literal max money - my guess is that his contract will start a few clicks below the max (ie ~$15M).

And even if it did put us in tax territory to start the year, we would have until April 1, 2011 to shed salary and get below the tax threshold (eg by trading Crawford or trading/buying out Mo, both of whom will be expiring).

And lastly, if re-signing JJ would require us to just barely go into the luxury tax, I'm pretty sure management would be ok with that. In that sense, you're right. People who still call our owners cheap are still stuck in 2006. We've increased payroll substantially each of the past 3 years. The fact that the owners offered JJ the max extension they could offer this past summer, knowing that the tax threshold would likely be much lower come the summer of 2010, indicates that if the choice is between losing JJ without compensation and going just barely into the luxury tax to keep him, I can't imagine the owners would let him walk. They would lose a lot more money if the team lost JJ and went back into the lottery than they would by paying $1-2M in luxury tax.

Somebody should frame this and put it on their wall. Excellent post.

[coachx]

Somebody should frame this and put it on their wall. Excellent post.

Agreed !

Excellent post by niremetal.

[YP2K]

Joe should've been the one traded; especially since he'll be gone next year . . .

[macdaddy]

People who still call our owners cheap are still stuck in 2006

I just don't how you can make this case unless you are comparing them to the average joe on the street. I'm not saying that being cheap isn't smart in their situation, but compared to what Cleveland, Miami, Portland, Dallas, Boston are doing to win a championship I wouldn't say they are throwing money around.

[coachx]

I just don't how you can make this case unless you are comparing them to the average joe on the street. I'm not saying that being cheap isn't smart in their situation, but compared to what Cleveland, Miami, Portland, Dallas, Boston are doing to win a championship I wouldn't say they are throwing money around.

They are not cheap when compared to the average NBA owner. All Portland did was trade 2 expiring contracts for 1 expiring contracts. They have not invested any extra money as of late (I'm not sure why you included them).

I thought we were in the top 1/3 of the pack as far as team payroll goes.

1. Traded expiring contracts for Bibby who had 1 year longer on his over paid contract at the time (which costs the owners more money).

2. Traded expiring contracts for Crawford who had a longer contract (which cost the owners money).

3. Resigned our top 3 FAs last year (Marvin / Bibby / ZaZa) to longterm finiancial committments.

4. Unlike Phoenix..........we actually used our 1st round pick on Teague rather then sell it for cash.

5. We did not ship off JJ at the trade deadline b/c the owners did not want to pay him

Those are 5 points where ownership has increased their spending consistently over the last 3 years.

We are never going to spend like LA, Cleveland, Dallas, or Boston........if that is what you want just go ahead and trade in your Hawks hat now.

Edited February 18, 2010 by coachx

[niremetal]

I just don't how you can make this case unless you are comparing them to the average joe on the street. I'm not saying that being cheap isn't smart in their situation, but compared to what Cleveland, Miami, Portland, Dallas, Boston are doing to win a championship I wouldn't say they are throwing money around.

Basically, after it became clear that Belkin would not be entitled to buy out the other owners for pennies on the dollar, they have acted like every other playoff-bound team without coffers made deeper by a deep playoff run. I've only ever heard people cite three things as evidence that, since 2006, Hawks management has been stingy with money. 1) We didn't (over)pay to keep Childress; 2) we didn't spend the full level on a mediocre 8th/9th man this past summer, and instead signed Joe Smith for the minimum (which I addressed above); 3) they waited until Josh got an offer sheet from Memphis to re-sign him. Those three things frankly are more "let's not throw money away when we can do just as well by spending less" than "let's not spend what we need to win." On the other hand, they made major payroll-increasing trades twice in the past 2 years (Bibby and Crawford), offered a near-max extension to JJ, and re-signed Zaza, Bibby, and Marvin to contracts that lots of people are now b!tching about being too much and/or too long.

On the Crawford trade...the Hawks actually would not have been able to do the trade of Acie and Speedy for Crawford if they had waited until the free agent period due to the fact that Speedy was due for a big annual paycut on July 1 (his contract is frontloaded) while Crawford was due for a big annual pay raise on July 1 (because his contract is backloaded). Today, we’d have had to throw in RandMo’s contract to get the deal done. Presumably the Warriors wanted to do the trade before July 1 was for that very reason - they wanted to get the savings from Speedy’s imminent paycut. The fact that the Hawks basically ate $900k to ensure the deal got done says something. Again, one would think fact that that fact plus the fact that the Hawks basically guaranteed an increased payroll (thanks to the annual raises for Joe/Josh/Al and the acquisition of Crawford) even before the would convince people that ASG has the means and the desire to spend what it takes to win. Really, what the people who continue the "ASG is cheap" mantra are doing is just crapping on management for not throwing money at players who aren't worth it, Isiah Thomas-style.

You're right, they're not "throwing money around." But the Hawks management is doing exactly what the Pistons, Heat, Cavs, and Magic did before their respective Finals runs - maintaining a budget within ~$5M of the cap, but not going over. People keep forgetting that - with the exception of the Knicks, Lakers, and Celtics (ie the three teams that have massive revenues even when their teams suck), no team has gone into the luxury tax until AFTER they made a run to at least the conference finals. For all of Cuban's flamboyance, the Mavs didn't pay the tax in '02-03 (though the tax system was different back then). The Heat didn't pay it in '05-'06. The Cavs didn't in '06-'07. The Magic didn't in '08-09. The Blazers didn't pay the luxury tax between 2004 (the end of the 'Sheed era) and last year, and only paid it last year because of the Darius Miles fiasco (remember how their President threatened to sue any team that signed Darius Miles, since Miles playing would mean that his contract would be re-activated, putting the Blazers into the tax?). This year, the Blazers aren't paying the tax - on the contrary, the Hawks' payroll is ~$8M more than the Blazers'.

Those teams weren't "throwing money around" either, at least not before they made super-deep playoff runs. So saying the Hawks management has shown itself less committed to winning than the teams you listed is just plain false.

Edited February 18, 2010 by niremetal

[dlpin]

Just to clarify two things:

1- hawks payroll is on the bottom third of the league, at 21

http://hoopshype.com/salaries.htm

2- the problem with the luxury tax goes beyond paying an additional dollar for every dollar over it. The problem is that if you are even just a penny over the luxury tax you forfeit your share of the proceeds from the luxury tax. Last year, each team under the luxury tax received 3 million back. So if the hawks go even one dollar over the luxury tax, they might have to pay just one dollar extra, but they give up a few millions in income too.

That said, I don't think the hawks ownership is cheap.

Being 21st in payroll is actually pretty good when your team is also just 21st in revenues.

Cheap ownership is being top ten in revenues and trying desperately to dump your top young player to get even farther down on the salary list, like the suns are doing.

[coachx]

Thanks for the correction.

I had been looking for a list of payroll by team rather then by player.

Edited February 18, 2010 by coachx

[spotatl]

Hoopshype is worthless. This site is FAR better. http://www.storytellerscontracts.info/resources/09-10salaries.htm

[macdaddy]

But i'm not making a judgement on what being 'cheap' says about the ASG. I'm not saying they don't want to win, or they are refusing to spend any money to make the team better. Or that even being cheap is a bad thing.

So we're 21st out of 30 in payroll? To me that's an indicator that we are cheaper than average but really i think its more fair to compare us to our rivals. We think of the Hawks as a legitimate contender in the east which this year they've proven to be. compared to teams in a similar situation (meaning they have a shot at the finals) I'm guessing we're dead last. Compared to other eastern conference top 4 they all have more than one guy making over $15 million. All i'm saying is that among contenders we are spending way less than the other teams which to me is an indicator of cheapness but its also great value. They should be proud of what they are getting out of this team.

We are in the same payroll league as : Indy, Sacramento, Golden State, Charlotte, Philly, Minny. All pitiful teams. Granted there are some good teams at the bottom: OKC, Memphis, Portland all benefiting from young talent but lets face it they aren't contenders.

[niremetal]

But i'm not making a judgement on what being 'cheap' says about the ASG. I'm not saying they don't want to win, or they are refusing to spend any money to make the team better. Or that even being cheap is a bad thing.

So we're 21st out of 30 in payroll? To me that's an indicator that we are cheaper than average but really i think its more fair to compare us to our rivals. We think of the Hawks as a legitimate contender in the east which this year they've proven to be. compared to teams in a similar situation (meaning they have a shot at the finals) I'm guessing we're dead last. Compared to other eastern conference top 4 they all have more than one guy making over $15 million. All i'm saying is that among contenders we are spending way less than the other teams which to me is an indicator of cheapness but its also great value. They should be proud of what they are getting out of this team.

We are in the same payroll league as : Indy, Sacramento, Golden State, Charlotte, Philly, Minny. All pitiful teams. Granted there are some good teams at the bottom: OKC, Memphis, Portland all benefiting from young talent but lets face it they aren't contenders.

What about the fact that until they made a run to the Conference Finals or deeper, the Mavs, Pistons, Heat, Cavs, and Magic did not spend any more than we did and didn't pay the luxury tax? For the latter 4 teams (not coincidentally, from smaller cities than Dallas), they didn't pay the tax until the season after they made the League Finals? Why is it so hard to understand that it's not present contention but revenues from past playoff performances that spur teams to spend more (again, unless you're one of the 3 teams that are cash cows regardless of winning percentage)?

Edited February 18, 2010 by niremetal

[Atlantaholic]

Sounds like BS to me. If the Hawks want to pay Joe Johnson they will be able to keep him. It is really as simple as that.

[dlpin]

Hoopshype is worthless. This site is FAR better. http://www.storytellerscontracts.info/resources/09-10salaries.htm

Considering how close the numbers on both sites are, I don't think it's worthless, and hoopshype has the advantage of actually ranking the teams.

But i'm not making a judgement on what being 'cheap' says about the ASG. I'm not saying they don't want to win, or they are refusing to spend any money to make the team better. Or that even being cheap is a bad thing.

So we're 21st out of 30 in payroll? To me that's an indicator that we are cheaper than average but really i think its more fair to compare us to our rivals. We think of the Hawks as a legitimate contender in the east which this year they've proven to be. compared to teams in a similar situation (meaning they have a shot at the finals) I'm guessing we're dead last. Compared to other eastern conference top 4 they all have more than one guy making over $15 million. All i'm saying is that among contenders we are spending way less than the other teams which to me is an indicator of cheapness but its also great value. They should be proud of what they are getting out of this team.

We are in the same payroll league as : Indy, Sacramento, Golden State, Charlotte, Philly, Minny. All pitiful teams. Granted there are some good teams at the bottom: OKC, Memphis, Portland all benefiting from young talent but lets face it they aren't contenders.

Being cheap isn't determined by how much you spend, but by how much you spend in relation to how much you make.

http://www.forbes.com/lists/2009/32/basketball-values-09_NBA-Team-Valuations_Revenue.html

Hawks are 21st in revenue, 21st in payroll. If anything, they spend just right.

It spends about as much as indy, sacramento, charlotte and minny because they earn about that much. Philly and Golden State, on the other hand, are cheap. Both have revenues that were 10 million of more higher than the hawks last season, even though they either didnt go to the playoffs or were bounced in the first round.

[spotatl]

Hoopshype for years hasn't even bothered to correct their mistakes. If they have gotten better in the last year or so then great- but to me the Storyteller site is miles ahead and I know he works hard to get the right numbers.

[macdaddy]

What about the fact that until they made a run to the Conference Finals or deeper, the Mavs, Pistons, Heat, Cavs, and Magic did not spend any more than we did and didn't pay the luxury tax? For the latter 4 teams (not coincidentally, from smaller cities than Dallas), they didn't pay the tax until the season after they made the League Finals? Why is it so hard to understand that it's not present contention but revenues from past playoff performances that spur teams to spend more (again, unless you're one of the 3 teams that are cash cows regardless of winning percentage)?

I totally understand WHY they aren't spending more money and the fact that they don't HAVE more money. But just because there are valid reasons for being cheap doesn't make you not cheap. In other words, all i'm arguing is that you cannot make the case that we are spending as much money as other contenders in an effort to win the championship.

The original statement was basically that saying ASG is cheap is wrong. Then for proof there was a lot arguments showing how we don't spend as much as other teams and don't have as much as other teams and won't have as much as other teams. So if that's not cheap I guess you could call it frugal, smart, thrifty, savy or whatever but it adds up to not spending as much money as any other contender.

[niremetal]

I totally understand WHY they aren't spending more money and the fact that they don't HAVE more money. But just because there are valid reasons for being cheap doesn't make you not cheap. In other words, all i'm arguing is that you cannot make the case that we are spending as much money as other contenders in an effort to win the championship.

The original statement was basically that saying ASG is cheap is wrong. Then for proof there was a lot arguments showing how we don't spend as much as other teams and don't have as much as other teams and won't have as much as other teams. So if that's not cheap I guess you could call it frugal, smart, thrifty, savy or whatever but it adds up to not spending as much money as any other contender.

Why are you still not admitting that the other "contenders" (save for Boston) didn't spend until after they made a deep playoff run? And if you are admitting it, are you saying that those teams were being cheap too?

Edited February 19, 2010 by niremetal

[Joker]

They are not cheap when compared to the average NBA owner. All Portland did was trade 2 expiring contracts for 1 expiring contracts. They have not invested any extra money as of late (I'm not sure why you included them).

I thought we were in the top 1/3 of the pack as far as team payroll goes.

1. Traded expiring contracts for Bibby who had 1 year longer on his over paid contract at the time (which costs the owners more money).

2. Traded expiring contracts for Crawford who had a longer contract (which cost the owners money).

3. Resigned our top 3 FAs last year (Marvin / Bibby / ZaZa) to longterm finiancial committments.

4. Unlike Phoenix..........we actually used our 1st round pick on Teague rather then sell it for cash.

5. We did not ship off JJ at the trade deadline b/c the owners did not want to pay him

Those are 5 points where ownership has increased their spending consistently over the last 3 years.

We are never going to spend like LA, Cleveland, Dallas, or Boston........if that is what you want just go ahead and trade in your Hawks hat now.

Great post coachx. It's not like we're the Thrashers. Our owners do care about us.

Edited February 19, 2010 by nbasuperstar40

[macdaddy]

Why are you still not admitting that the other "contenders" (save for Boston) didn't spend until after they made a deep playoff run? And if you are admitting it, are you saying that those teams were being cheap too?

Yes.

Unfortunately for us they aren't being cheap now.