If the Jazz have taught us anything, it's that denver firsts are extremely valuable even in the mid/late first round

He had a larger role in 2016 and averaged 22 ppg, that's about his max.

It was 70M in tax-payments, 35M in salary. More importantly not starting the clock on the repeater-tax. I understand that first-level thinkers like Nate and Danny seem to think that owners should just go into luxury tax to atone for their mistakes, but often that's not the case.

No owners have gone deep into the tax except Gilbert, and he had Lebron. Well except Bennett this year but that also appears to be a mistake.

[edit] Also I get that you want lottery tickets, but in order for those to cash out you actually have to put them on the court. Denver has 11 players on their roster that are at the very least three years from their prime. It would be hard to draft someone 12 or higher and them to even see the court let alone make an impact. They are in the exact same position as Golden State was in 2012-13, only a bit younger with a better cap sheet. I think at this stage you can't keep adding youngs without at least giving up on some of their current guys.

It hurts them if they have the means to get a star next year and they need the first to make it happen in a trade though.

Jazz are the fish that loses to everyone but happened to take a couple giant pots off a pro.

The Bulls are reportedly close to signing Jabari Parker and plan on starting him at the 3. How do you like a team with Parker and Lavine as your wing defenders?

I think they would have been better off keeping Nwaba. Seems like Lavine and Jabari got some overlap with their strengths, which might not even be as such.

Are you including the Chandler deal in there? That's a separate deal. Don't see how that is relevant to this current deal

Not starting repeater territory is a good point but if you're gonna give up a 1st to get under then seems like you could probably get a team to take Plumlee's extra year for that type of move.

Do you expect the Nuggets to be taxpayers in 2019-2020? If you don't, then talking about starting the clock on the repeater tax seems a bit excessive. Maybe it would have been better to save those draft assets and use them to get off the last year of Plumlee's contract next summer, when more teams will have cap space and can more easily accept bad contracts.

Ya, got Millsap on a TO at 30m for '19-20 which is getting exercised.

Just seems like a clear $ save. That's fine, if I owned the team I'd probably do stuff like that too, but it was a good move for someone worth 5b to save 50m (not sure on exact savings from the faried/arthur deal specifically)

They will be a playoff team so you can hate all you want. Offensively their team will be amazing.

thx

consdering schroeder is a soon-to-be felon and looks to be on the way out, this is a good 1 year rental. i'm a big fan of lin and i hope he can be a good mentor to trae.

the highest EV move would have been elsewhere so hawks could get additional draft capital absorbing bad contracts, but hawks are gonna suck and front office prob thinks its a better EV move for the franchise that they get a guy who is gonna fill a few seats (Lin). plus the whole veteran mentorship thing.

cant agree w/ it from a pure hinkie-savage GM standpoint but i get it.

Are you talking about 2020-2021?

dunn/lavine/jabari/WCJ/lauri "we dont give a **** about defense" lineup would be pretty interesting on league pass

the trouble is i dont think hoiberg is actually gonna roll that unit too often. RoLo/Portis will get too many minutes because ??????

oop sorry. everyone agreed that the first person to call Carter "WCJ" gets a one day ban

sry didnt know. see yall tomorrow.

It'll likely be under because I don't see how any way they pick up Millsap's team option. They can easily get to max space next year if needed but even sans Plumlee would never get two maxes, and they have two giant TPEs to get a player in that's less than a max and more than a MLE. I don't see how they gain anything by giving up Plumlee at this point.

They won't be picking up his option. My guess is they'll decline and try to sign him to a lower rate if they can't get traction with other free agents.

Of course it's a $$$ save, as almost any other owner ITL would do in this situation. Nate/Danny are going on this idiotic tirade about how they should have let Barton walk for his overpay (which is dumb imo), and how Wilson Chandler was actually a good player.

What Denver did was not even that egregious, and it pales in comparison to what Ferttita, Allen, or MLS&E did recently.

Nate Robinson is raining threes, and even one four against the undefeated 3 Headed Monsters

There seems to be some possibility that Milwaukee will rescind their qualifying offer and let Parker become a restricted free agent. Not sure why they do that. What about a sign-and-trade for a minor asset?

If they are going to use cap space to sign a max free agent, they would have to renounce those TPEs. If they used cap space to sign a major free agent, they would only have the room exception, so moving Plumlee to clear less than max cap space might still be effectively trading those assets to acquire a full MLE-ish player.

Just to be clear, I'm not saying they should have tried to move Plumlee now. I think they burned assets that could have been used to move Plumlee a year from now if needed, so this trade closed off some future flexibility.

With Cavs out, which team that missed playoffs last year is better than the Bulls in the east?

hornets are probably the 8 seed to beat. losing dwight is a huge win for them.

that said, borrego doesnt strike me as a sharp coach from his brief interim stint in orlando.

my east seed predictions:

1 - celtics
2 - raptors
3 - bucks
4 - pacers
5 - 76ers
6 - wizards
7 - heat
8 - hornets/bulls
10 - pistons

i think 76ers will fall back to earth a little bit, teams will be able to scout simmons a little more efficiently. some sophomore curse stuff going on.

bucks will make a huge leap forward cuz bud will fix their broken-ass defensive scheme.

Speaking of Nate Rob, anybody see Uncle Drew?

I thought it was actually pretty good.

Millsap is going to retire in a puzzle

I think there is a decent chance that the Cavs have a better record than the Bulls if they keep Love.

I'm on board with the moves Denver is making. Seadood tells you what you need to know about Denver. Could they fit Jimmy with a max next season? (100% Milsap option is declined)