My man. I love all of this. Post more!
It's the same argument I had when we were having the Tyreke discussions for the level his deal received. People were making the same claims. the "We can't lose his talent." "We can trade him if it doesn't work out" "He never got a real chance here!" "We have to see what he can do with a coach"
When dealing with 10+mil contracts, you're signing your building block players. That means you have a real plan to build around that guy and he's going to be one of the main focuses when constructing the roster. There should be no guess work when you're committing a 4/50 sort of deal to a player.
I've pointed this out many times, but signing Rudy long-term really limits what we can do over the life of Cuz's contract. This is without offering IT a deal, and letting him walk for nothing. Just for giggles, we'll say we get Gay at 14mil/season long-term. If that'd happen, Rudy would still likely opt in, so Cuz+Rudy adds up to 33mil. After next season, you're looking at 28 mil tied up into both guys for the next 3 seasons after. For the next 3 seasons, including next year, we have around 13mil/season tied into Landry and JT. So after next season, we're up to 41 mil, just tied into Cuz, Gay, Landry,JT. Next, add in Ben McLemore, Ray McCallum, and our rookie this year, and you're looking at around $5-$10mil for those guys over the next 4 seasons with rookie pay scale. So long-term, we will roughly have 46-49mil committed if we can't move anybody.
So with a $63mil salary cap, here's what the DC looks like with the long-term contracts and the holes we'll have to fill with around $17mil to spend:
PG: Ray McCallum
SG: Ben McLemore
SF: Rudy Gay
PF: Jason Thompson || Carl Landry
C: DeMarcus Cousins.
2014 rookie??
So I guess this is a long-winded way of saying that we better have a long-term plan if we keep Rudy here over the Cuz contract. Because there's not a whole lot to work with there and you have 2 contracts that aren't going to bring in much value or something that teams are going to want to take on.
It's the same argument I had when we were having the Tyreke discussions for the level his deal received. People were making the same claims. the "We can't lose his talent." "We can trade him if it doesn't work out" "He never got a real chance here!" "We have to see what he can do with a coach"
When dealing with 10+mil contracts, you're signing your building block players. That means you have a real plan to build around that guy and he's going to be one of the main focuses when constructing the roster. There should be no guess work when you're committing a 4/50 sort of deal to a player.
I've pointed this out many times, but signing Rudy long-term really limits what we can do over the life of Cuz's contract. This is without offering IT a deal, and letting him walk for nothing. Just for giggles, we'll say we get Gay at 14mil/season long-term. If that'd happen, Rudy would still likely opt in, so Cuz+Rudy adds up to 33mil. After next season, you're looking at 28 mil tied up into both guys for the next 3 seasons after. For the next 3 seasons, including next year, we have around 13mil/season tied into Landry and JT. So after next season, we're up to 41 mil, just tied into Cuz, Gay, Landry,JT. Next, add in Ben McLemore, Ray McCallum, and our rookie this year, and you're looking at around $5-$10mil for those guys over the next 4 seasons with rookie pay scale. So long-term, we will roughly have 46-49mil committed if we can't move anybody.
So with a $63mil salary cap, here's what the DC looks like with the long-term contracts and the holes we'll have to fill with around $17mil to spend:
PG: Ray McCallum
SG: Ben McLemore
SF: Rudy Gay
PF: Jason Thompson || Carl Landry
C: DeMarcus Cousins.
2014 rookie??
So I guess this is a long-winded way of saying that we better have a long-term plan if we keep Rudy here over the Cuz contract. Because there's not a whole lot to work with there and you have 2 contracts that aren't going to bring in much value or something that teams are going to want to take on.
I agree that Gay is not an elite sf; I've said for quite a while he's second tier. That's what my eye-test tells me. I've never seen him make other players better; he's at best a mediocre passer, he doesn't penetrate and dish; he's primarily a back to the basket iso player who thrives against shorter players and doesn't against longer ones; his defense is average. But based on the salary cap mumbo jumbo, it appears that the Kings would still be hard pressed to maintain the same talent level as last year if he didn't sign the one year deal.
All that said, signing Gay to the one-year $19 mill contract is a Band-Aid and everybody knows it. It's going to be a one year "try-out," which has dubious implications. It's much easier for a player to lose concentration and have a wandering eye toward next year when they only have a one-year contract. If things don't go swimmingly early in the season, I can easily see Gay starting to think about his free agency for the following year rather than buying-in to the Kings' future aspirations.