ZoomSlowik

So the Kings draft Thomas Robinson over Damian Lillard and then trade him before he even finishes his rookie season. And then they wonder why they suck...

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Feb 20, 2013 -> 12:22 PM) Ive been pleasantly surprised, but you never know what can happen. Have to beat NU tonight. If you guys can crack 50, you'll beat NU. Losing Swopshire took them from merely bad to horrific.

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Feb 20, 2013 -> 08:50 AM) Apparently Hansen has a review with the NHL at 3pm eastern today. I dont see how you can argue he was doing anything other than trying to knock Hossa off the puck with a forearm to the head. Of course, the Canucks dont see it that way I happened to catch part of his interview after the game, and he used the phrase "hockey play" like 3 times in a minute. Total bulls***. So he was trying to catch the puck with his elbow/forearm?

I just wish Dickie V and his cohorts (I think some were from Magic) would stop comparing him to MJ and Wade.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Feb 19, 2013 -> 07:32 AM) Josh Smith is on the block. Should the Bulls have any interest? This quote sure seems like it's about the terrible idea of acquiring Josh Smith, unless I was meant to do some serious reading between the lines. The second post you made on this discussion was about Josh Smith too. Nevermind that it includes no suggestions about what to send in the deal, the financial ramifications of doing it, or the fact that the Bulls already have three fairly expensive big men on the roster and a glaring need for an upgrade at shooting guard. It's about the Bulls not "thinking creatively" in an attempt to improve their team.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Feb 19, 2013 -> 02:53 PM) And without creative thinking, we can keep enjoying Marco Bellinili and Nate Robinson. Overpaying a decent but not great player isn't exactly "creative thinking". In fact, that's pretty much what every non-contender does.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Feb 19, 2013 -> 02:45 PM) Mostly that the Bulls are going to waste the opportunity to do nothing, again, and probably waste Rose's career without a title win. They refuse to take any chances to make themselves better for the long run. Clearly the way to resolve that is to give a guy that's historically been the second or third best player on a high 40's/low 50's win team a max contract that would pay him comfortably north of $20 million by the end of it. That also says nothing about what they'd have to give up to acquire him in trade (if it could be done for Carlos Boozer and crap, it would have happened already).

So, I renewed this league, but I seem to remember some discussion about whether people were interested in keeping this going. To those who participated last year, please let me know if you want to keep this league going or not. I'm up for whatever, though personally I'd prefer a new draft/league with some kind of tiered keeper setup.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Feb 19, 2013 -> 12:47 PM) Kinda like Carlos Boozer was... I'm not even sure what your point is here. 90-something percent of Bulls' fans wouldn't shed a tear if they used the amnesty clause on him. He's also historically had a better TS% than Smith (they're about a push this year) and J-Smoov is looking for even MORE money than Boozer.

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Feb 19, 2013 -> 11:17 AM) The thing that really sucks about Smith is that if he abandoned his outside game, I think he could be crazy good. But he won't. Meh. His shooting percentage would go up, but his usage rate would go down because of his limited offensive repertoire. It's not like he's a really good post scorer or can take guys off the dribble. If he stops shooting jumpers, he basically becomes a guy that gets you 14 points on 10 shots.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Feb 19, 2013 -> 09:16 AM) The potential is mouthwatering. Could a coach like Thibs get through to him? You're clearly not familiar with J-Smoov other than looking at a stat sheet. The guy is a knucklehead that is way more useful to a fantasy team than an NBA team. He's also a bad fit with the rest of the Bulls: another inefficient scorer that can't space the floor.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Feb 19, 2013 -> 10:40 AM) While tanking and hoping for a decent draft pick makes sense on one hand, you have a lot of people paying a lot of money to see the Bulls in person. And for not a lot of payoff since the odds of the Bulls finding someone that can start for them in this draft are pretty slim.

QUOTE (Quinarvy @ Feb 14, 2013 -> 09:47 PM) I just want to point out that someone mentioned that you either need a genius front office that makes bold moves and cited the Thunder and Spurs OR a superstar in the draft. Yes, the Spurs front office is run by geniuses, but, um, Tim Duncan is the reason they have 4 Championships. That was a luck into superstar draft. Same with OKC. Or be the Lakers or Heat.

QUOTE (Rowand44 @ Feb 14, 2013 -> 07:16 PM) Hey look John Shurna is back! John was a better athlete, but he does look freakishly similar. Those goofy looking jumpers haven't been going in during games very often though.

I suck at dual quotes, responding to Balta and Strange :re the cap floor... The problem is that they're doing it in unison with gang-raping the teams that spend over the luxury tax, so they're dragging everyone to the middle. The Lakers can't spend $100 million anymore unless they want to subsidize the rest of the league. So basically the teams that make money and are trying to compete are sending money to the s***ty teams so they can pay Tyrus Thomas $8 million a year. Huh? That's fine if it's like football and there are a ton of different positions where you can spend money and you can maybe make up the difference on the field by paying two good defensive players the same money the Patriots are paying Tom Brady. However, spending $16 million on Lebron and spending $16 million on Ben Gordon and Charlie Villanueva are very different things.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Feb 14, 2013 -> 04:12 PM) Do you honestly need a summary of how bad at winning championships NBA GM's are? You can write an article like this every year, and then every year we gawk at how much money got handed out by some GM who had cap space to spend and found a guy whose sole talent was being tall. The NBA GM's are actually in a terrible position. The best way for an NBA Team to suddenly become a title contender is to hit the lottery, but that means, for most GM's, building the worst team you possibly can. One way to do taht would be the Marlins route...but the NBA Has a salary floor so you can't just sell everything off. The end result of this is a lot of GM's waste enormous amounts of money on guys who they hope will make them good enough to keep their jobs for one more year. The NBA GM's can't stop themselves from spending $8 million a year on Tyrus Thomas (while giving up a draft pick to boot!). A workable system for the NBA Basically requires the owners to protect their franchises from their GM's, because the GM's best method for success means risking his job on a 25% (at best) lottery chance. This is another thing I don't get: why is the salary floor like 85% of the salary cap? You're basically forcing teams that are rebuilding to sign stupid, cap-clogging contracts on mediocre players, and then they wonder why these teams are losing money. Make the salary floor something more reasonable (maybe like $25 million) and then lay off some of the crazy luxury tax penalties so teams that are actually trying to compete aren't forced to let good players go. Are we really going to see a substanial difference in the caliber of the team if the Kings or Bobcats only have a $20 million payroll?

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Feb 14, 2013 -> 04:05 PM) Yeah but a lot of the provisions that were negotiated (amnesty clause, for example) was the NBA throwing up it's hands saying "our GM's are f***ing stupid, they keep throwing money and long term deals to s*** players and killing their franchises, so let's do something about it." That was my point. I never really got the logic of the amnesty clause. "Well, we signed a lot of stupid contracts and they're clogging up our cap. I know! Let's create this rule where we can pay off 100% of the player's contract, let some other team pay them to play for them on top of that, then sign NEW guys to contracts equally as stupid!"

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Feb 14, 2013 -> 03:41 PM) Zoom, I guess you just explained my NBA/NCAA working together better than I could. Its both entities screwing the player, thats why its such a problem. If 1 one of them was acting in favor of the player, it likely wouldnt be an issue. The NCAA is a different story. The NBA offers the opportunity for these guys to make tens of millions of dollars, so I don't consider making them wait a year to be that much to give up.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Feb 14, 2013 -> 03:32 PM) Zoom, If it was about both sides they would allow people to enter the draft and not lose college eligibility. That way if you are drafted top 5 you can leave and make your money. If you arent you can stay in college and hopefully get better. The only people it hurts is the NBA, who want to have, like you said, a free system to evaluate talent. The two things are separate issues. The NBA is doing what's in their best interest independent of what the NCAA is doing. The NCAA is doing their own things that IMO are much worse than this, like making the deadline to pull out of the draft and retain your eligibility earlier than the NBA's deadline to declare. That makes it so you can't work out or interview with teams to improve/evaluate your stock before making a decision, all because a couple of coaches b****ed that they wanted to know if they had to recruit someone during the Spring signing period (like you have any hope of replacing an NBA prospect that late in the game).

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Feb 14, 2013 -> 03:26 PM) But if they are being selected isnt that evidence that NBA teams believe that they are ready for the NBA? Isnt it counter-intuitive that NBA teams are selecting players who they think are worse or not as ready? When they pick Kobe over a college player, isnt that saying someone in the NBA believes Kobe right then is better than numerous college players? No, it means that they think they MIGHT be ready for the NBA at some point in their career. The draft isn't about drafting the best players right now, it's about drafting the players that people think are going to provide the most value to their franchise. Nerlens Noel (pre-injury) and Alex Len are not better college players than Cody Zeller, but both of them were projected to go in front of him.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Feb 14, 2013 -> 03:23 PM) I guess if this is no big deal, then there really is no reason such an unnecessary and prohibitive rule is in place to begin with. And I dont know whether or not $8mil is a big deal to you, to most people that is a pretty big deal. If you make $50k a year, that is over 100 years of income. So Im not really agreement that $8mil isnt a big deal. I just dont think that industries should be allowed to collude like this. Its one thing when the Bulls make a rule "no headbands" its another when every employer in a certain sector agree that they are going to create an arbitrary rule. For example, I dont think it would be fair if all the law firms in the US agreed that they would not hire any new lawyers under the age of 40. It would be great for me, but it would be pretty unfair to everyone else who wants to be a lawyer. It's a necessary rule because 99.something% of basketball players aren't ready to contribute after their high school career is over. It prevents people on both sides from making horrible decisions. The second paragraph is ridiculous. Yes, $8 million is a lot of money. However, it's not like he went from $8 million to zero, he's going from $22 million to $14 million. $14 million is still a lot of f***ing money, and he still has a chance to make signficantly more after that contract. It's not drastically going to affect his life, he can still buy a bunch of Bentleys and gaudy jewelery.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Feb 14, 2013 -> 03:20 PM) All the more reason NOT TO SELECT HS players! I'm not sure why you are acting as if the teams don't have their own free will or something, and need an arbitrary rule to keep them from f***ing themselves. Because if high school players are in the draft, they're going to get selected. It's not like there are an unlimited number of players that are good enough to play in the league.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Feb 14, 2013 -> 03:11 PM) You could determine that someone that has not played above the high school level was too big of an economic risk to bother drafting. Just like some MLB teams will often times practically refuse to draft high school players in favor of college players. It is a decision that can clearly be made by the teams themselves, simply by refusing to take the risk. Baseball isn't really comparable because they can bury guys in the minors for years and hope they develop. The financial investment is also significantly lower. The bonus slot for the #1 pick in baseball is $7.2 million and they're not going make significantly more than that until they've played at least 3 years in the majors. They also don't eat up a roster spot like they do in the NBA. For the NBA, the payout over the first 4 years on the #1 pick is over $20 million, and they don't have a minor league system that allows them to play and develop (Well, not a good one that is frequently used I should say, legitimate prospects are rarely sent to the D-League). So instead, they use the NCAA as a free minor league system.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Feb 14, 2013 -> 03:04 PM) Its clear the rule benefits the NBA. The question is whether its in societies best interest to allow entities to create rules like this. Some people think yes, some people think no. For the majority of history discrimination was allowed in hiring. The question is whether age discrimination is something that also should be protected. You're making way too much out of this. There's been less than 10 guys since I started following basketball that can legitimately argue that they were ready to contribute to an NBA roster in their first year out of high school. And this whole thread started because instead of Noel going #1 and making like $22 million on his first deal, he's going to go somewhere around #5 and make somewhere around $14 million on his first deal. Wow, that guy is f***ed!

QUOTE (iamshack @ Feb 14, 2013 -> 03:04 PM) But the point is that the League and its teams have decided then, by obvious action, that the risk was bearable, by continuing to draft those players! This is why banks determine risk thresholds. Imagine if there was a law which stated "no bank can make a mortgage loan to anyone under a 750 credit score." The institutions themselves determine where the appropriate thresholds should be by their own individual risk tolerances. The teams should be able to do the same. And those moves largely backfired, so they decided to get those guys out of the draft. If they're in the draft pool, you're going to have to evaluate them and try to take the best course of action. There's no magic number you can use to say "well, this guy is worthy but this guy isn't."