Simple Question: Will the Hawks Start the season OVER OR UNDER the Luxury Tax?

[Gray Mule]

Depends!  Who is made available in the trade mart this summer may be the determining factor.  

[macdaddy]

1 hour ago, JayBirdHawk said:

It's not to early to play the game sweeping Hawks Nation for next season:

Under the Tax or Over the Tax?

[JeffS17]

1 hour ago, JayBirdHawk said:

It's not to early to play the game sweeping Hawks Nation for next season:

Under the Tax or Over the Tax?

There's almost no practical way to end up over the tax -- it's difficult to even come up with a scenario that makes sense.  The only extension kicking in is OO and even including that, we have $15M of space before the first apron with the current roster.  Maybe you take a flyer to extend Bey and use the MLE to barely creep over the tax line, but that doesn't make much sense to do.  The one exception here is we make a splashy trade and take in a lot of salary and send out the least possible.

The most logical time to enter the tax would align with JJ's extension in the 2025-2026 season, assuming we are on an upward trajectory this year.

[Final_quest]

1 hour ago, Gray Mule said:

Depends!  Who is made available in the trade mart this summer may be the determining factor.  

For sure.  It's situational.  There are better questions to ask and the playoffs are not demonstrating that tax paying teams provide the recipe to win series.  Here are the tax paying teams:



A couple standouts that definitely made the right move to pay, but a lot of teams that are stuck with a roster and cap situation where they are totally handicapped.  Only 2/8 advanced.  

[macdaddy]

1 minute ago, Final_quest said:

For sure.  It's situational.  There are better questions to ask and the playoffs are not demonstrating that tax paying teams provide the recipe to win series.  Here are the tax paying teams:



A couple standouts that definitely made the right move to pay, but a lot of teams that are stuck with a roster and cap situation where they are totally handicapped.  Only 2/8 advanced.  

LOL. 7 of these teams were in the finals in the last 4 years. 

[Spud2nique]

57 minutes ago, macdaddy said:

Ya I’m not doin this luxury tax bet thing anymore. AHF got me last year, if anything I wanna bet on the side that the ownership is cheap as hell and will do whatever they can to stay under the tax. 
 

They better start PAYIN though, we want Trae to stay, you gotta pay to play baby comon!

[Final_quest]

1 minute ago, macdaddy said:

LOL. 7 of these teams were in the finals in the last 4 years. 

Here's where we stand for next season:


If we had signed an MLE player like everyone wanted we would be a top 8 spending team heading into the offseason.  Are you saying that we were one MLE signing away from being a Finals team?  If not, why invest in a roster pretending like it is a deep playoff team.  

If we did what yall wanted we would be paying for a Finals team with a play in roster.  We got to fix some things.  Adding an MLE player doesn't fix the need to replace three starters.  

[Final_quest]

34 minutes ago, macdaddy said:

LOL. 7 of these teams were in the finals in the last 4 years. 

Also those teams have multiple HOF and All NBA players.  They have DPOYs and MVPs.  We don't.  We have one guy who made one 3rd team all NBA. They have a players that deserve that level of spending.  Ya'll act like we were one guy like Niang away from being a top team.  

The actual truth is we are in the lottery with the 11th highest payroll headed into the offseason.  Our roster needs an overhaul.  Got to have the right diagnosis to get the cure. We just need to spend $8-20M is not the cure unless it's so that we can land an MVP, DPOY, or all NBA guy.  

[macdaddy]

4 minutes ago, Final_quest said:

Also those teams have multiple HOF and All NBA players.  They have DPOYs and MVPs.  We don't.  We have one guy who made one 3rd team all NBA. They have a players that deserve that level of spending.  Ya'll act like we were one guy like Niang away from being a top team.  

The actual truth is we are in the lottery with the 11th highest payroll headed into the offseason.  Our roster needs an overhaul.  Got to have the right diagnosis to get the cure. We just need to spend $8-20M is not the cure unless it's so that we can land an MVP, DPOY, or all NBA guy.  

We're all kind of saying the same thing.  I don't think we're one MLE player away.  We need another all star to get there.  And some real vets that can play the game.  

But getting the other allstar, or dpoy candidate is going to cost us.  We can't get to contending status without going into the tax despite what Resseler seems to think.  

But showing that 7 of the top 8 payroll teams are basically the finals matchups for the last 4 years just shows that you have to be in the tax to get there and you have to realize that you'll still be in it when you start to decline.  That's when you start over.  

[AHF]

3 hours ago, JayBirdHawk said:

It's not to early to play the game sweeping Hawks Nation for next season:

Under the Tax or Over the Tax?

[JayBirdHawk]

1 hour ago, Final_quest said:

Here's where we stand for next season:


If we had signed an MLE player like everyone wanted we would be a top 8 spending team heading into the offseason.  Are you saying that we were one MLE signing away from being a Finals team?  If not, why invest in a roster pretending like it is a deep playoff team.  

If we did what yall wanted we would be paying for a Finals team with a play in roster.  We got to fix some things.  Adding an MLE player doesn't fix the need to replace three starters.  

Again...focusing on the wrong thing as 'one' MLE.

Traded JC for Gay, traded Gay for Patty, signed Wes, drafted Kobe.....That was the extent of our offseason moves - no upgrade to the roster.

[Final_quest]

1 hour ago, JayBirdHawk said:

Again...focusing on the wrong thing as 'one' MLE.

Traded JC for Gay, traded Gay for Patty, signed Wes, drafted Kobe.....That was the extent of our offseason moves - no upgrade to the roster.

Yep, you do understand that if we kept JC, our committed salary for 2024-2025 would be about where Milwaukee and Minnesota are in spending?  

I see having $185M in committed salary on a team with one star player as a huge detriment.  So the improvement we made was eliminating toxic payroll. 

We did the right thing trying to get Siakam or KAT and aborting when the ask was too high. 

After failing to do that, adding a multiyear MLE deal to "improve" the team would put us in the camp of adding to one of the worst payroll tables in the league.  Would have been the wrong move.   

If this FO fails again this offseason to shift our roster in a positive direction, we might be headed for a fire sale.  

[JayBirdHawk]

4 minutes ago, Final_quest said:

Yep, you do understand that if we kept JC, our committed salary for 2024-2025 would be about where Milwaukee and Minnesota are in spending?  

Again...I understand moving off JC's committed future salary, but doing NOTHING AFTER (regardless of trying) while saying 'AVOIDING THE PLAYIN' just doesn't ring true with what ownership tried to sell us.

[AHF]

14 minutes ago, Final_quest said:

Yep, you do understand that if we kept JC, our committed salary for 2024-2025 would be about where Milwaukee and Minnesota are in spending?  

I see having $185M in committed salary on a team with one star player as a huge detriment.  So the improvement we made was eliminating toxic payroll. 

We did the right thing trying to get Siakam or KAT and aborting when the ask was too high. 

After failing to do that, adding a multiyear MLE deal to "improve" the team would put us in the camp of adding to one of the worst payroll tables in the league.  Would have been the wrong move.   

If this FO fails again this offseason to shift our roster in a positive direction, we might be headed for a fire sale.  

Why do you keep insisting that use of the MLE had to be for a multi-year deal?  For example, Miles Bridges was a combo forward who averaged 20 and 7 this season took a one year offer for $7.9M for last year.  We could have done a one year offer for ~$12M and still avoided the tax.  Even if he preferred the lower salary for a starting role (given that Bey started the season as our starting PF I'm not convinced he wouldn't have started here too) and/or the Hornets matched, it would have at least forced them to spend more and would have been an effort towards improving the roster when we were obviously paper thin at SF and PF.

It isn't like we had to move really quickly to lock down some amazing free agent we ended up signing.

I'm also not aware of a reason that we couldn't have done this and pursued Siakam or KAT in parallel if management was willing to pay the tax for team that they viewed as a contender after acquiring one of those players (or if they weren't willing to pay the tax but just structured the deal so that we didn't add salary like a CC + DJM + pick for Siakam deal or something).

[Final_quest]

2 hours ago, AHF said:

Why do you keep insisting that use of the MLE had to be for a multi-year deal?  For example, Miles Bridges was a combo forward who averaged 20 and 7 this season took a one year offer for $7.9M for last year.  We could have done a one year offer for ~$12M and still avoided the tax.  Even if he preferred the lower salary for a starting role (given that Bey started the season as our starting PF I'm not convinced he wouldn't have started here too) and/or the Hornets matched, it would have at least forced them to spend more and would have been an effort towards improving the roster when we were obviously paper thin at SF and PF.

It isn't like we had to move really quickly to lock down some amazing free agent we ended up signing.

I'm also not aware of a reason that we couldn't have done this and pursued Siakam or KAT in parallel if management was willing to pay the tax for team that they viewed as a contender after acquiring one of those players (or if they weren't willing to pay the tax but just structured the deal so that we didn't add salary like a CC + DJM + pick for Siakam deal or something).

I'm not really insisting that a multi-year deal was the only option, but that seems like it was the dominant suggestion of what we should have done around here.  Are you saying that would have been the wrong move?  

I don't pretend to know all the options discussed, but I'm guessing the market for 1 year deals at the MLE level was pretty limited.  Timing of that limited market was probably a barrier.  A guy like Miles Bridges who was basically a felon presents unique issues even now. 

Another thought is the FO may have had a lot of false confidence that Siakam was in the bag.  They screwed up last offseason to be sure, but in my view at least they had the right idea going for guys like Siakam and KAT. 
 

2 hours ago, JayBirdHawk said:

Again...I understand moving off JC's committed future salary, but doing NOTHING AFTER (regardless of trying) while saying 'AVOIDING THE PLAYIN' just doesn't ring true with what ownership tried to sell us.

They have not done well with messaging or having a consistent strategy.  They shifted from buyers to sellers in the middle of the season too.  Again I think they had a lot of false confidence in what they would be able to do last offseason and at the trade deadline.

None of that changes that our roster and payroll was and is a mess.  No good plan B after missing on primary targets, but adding more bench role players on multi-year deals at $8-12M/year would have been a detriment in any case.  

[AHF]

17 minutes ago, Final_quest said:

I'm not really insisting that a multi-year deal was the only option, but that seems like it was the dominant suggestion of what we should have done around here.  Are you saying that would have been the wrong move?  

I'm just saying we left ourselves a depleted roster with a horrific bench last season and we had the MLE and a huge TPE that we never used.  ~$12M in space to pick someone better than Wes Matthews means we did not optimize the 2023-24 roster.  A single year deal for me presents no complications and so I fail to see any valid argument against it, and I see people who I think could have been had on single year deals who would have been significant upgrades.  When the most clear downside risk to you of a single year deal is not getting Wes Matthews that is no risk at all.  A multi-year deal could have been used as well but at least I can see the arguments against it given that salaries are going up over time in the absence of making a trade.

[Final_quest]

1 hour ago, AHF said:

I'm just saying we left ourselves a depleted roster with a horrific bench last season and we had the MLE and a huge TPE that we never used.  ~$12M in space to pick someone better than Wes Matthews means we did not optimize the 2023-24 roster.  A single year deal for me presents no complications and so I fail to see any valid argument against it, and I see people who I think could have been had on single year deals who would have been significant upgrades.  When the most clear downside risk to you of a single year deal is not getting Wes Matthews that is no risk at all.  A multi-year deal could have been used as well but at least I can see the arguments against it given that salaries are going up over time in the absence of making a trade.

They definitely flubbed the off-season.  But since they’ve had no issue spending up to the tax line I honestly think something happened.  

My best guess is they got cocky thinking Siakam deal was getting done.  Maybe they were gonna use the TPE to take on another contract as part of the deal.  They were also looking to move Capela to Dallas.  In either deal the TPE could have been part of it.  So they wanted to avoid signing even a one year deal to keep more flexibility for the bigger trades.  

It gets difficult to bring in someone late in the offseason after they struck out.  Everyone is signed.  But they couldn’t find a deal they liked all year.  Would love to know what they were trying to do, but I don’t believe they held onto a few extra million just to pocket the money.  It really seemed like they wanted to make a move.  

As a fan you have to hope this was a year when not making a move was the right call.  They could have gambled on Siakam and lost him immediately. 

[JayBirdHawk]

 

 

[JayBirdHawk]

Steve Koonin latest radio interview:

https://www.audacy.com/podcast/dukes-bell-0fcb8/episodes/its-not-about-spending-money-just-to-spend-money-for-the-hawks-f0374

 

"There is absolutely no issue with money. No financial limit if the GM and basketball people say ‘this is what I need’, the answer is unequivocally yes.”

 

 

I really just need them to STOP TALKING ABOUT IT!!! The more you talk about it, the more you show it's the 'thing' driving most decisions.

[JeffS17]

I think they keep talking about it because they’re addressing the fan base and media who have speculatively created a false narrative.  There has not been a time that made sense to pay the tax yet, but everyone continually blames cheapness for this teams woes.  I agree they should ignore it because anti-billionaire sentiment is not going anywhere.