Points in the Paint 10.16.08: The Trash Day Edition
Posted by Rob Bonnette on 10.16.2008
Dumping Garbage!
Hey there everyone, and welcome to another edition of Points in the Paint. This week was supposed to be about the Western Conference, but after reading a comment from one of you guys last week, I decided I gotta do a better job of it than I did. So next week I'll give the East another try, and the week after that I'll go West. This week's topic came about when I starting thinking about the West, and stumbled across another idea. A lot of you are familiar with the attempts at dumping contracts that a lot of teams make every year. Basically, if you're on the way up you take on contracts in an effort to get closer to the title. If you're already there, you try to retool on the fly to stay there as long as possible. And if you're in the lower tier or on the way down, you look to shed big contracts and get ready for the future. How you manage may be a bigger part of your success than drafting, trading, etc. Some teams are going to be shedding a lot of contracts over the next year or two, and the results are going to be all over the place. I found it interesting to see who was on deck to do that, and what the immediate results might be. So this week, we're going to look at who will shedding players and contracts over the next two seasons, and what the immediate impact is likely to be.
Dumping weight soon
Phoenix: In just a year they've gone from a relatively young, up tempo team to one of the older units in the league. Their starting five now has three card carrying members of the NBA AARP club in Shaq, Steven Nash, and Grant Hill, with Raja Bell not too far behind at 32 years old. That's four guys out of their top seven who are old and slowing down; the do have three 25 years olds in Amare Stoudemire, Leandro Barbosa, and Boris Diaw, but Amare is the only bona fide 40 minute man amongst the trio. The other two are sixth man types. This doesn't bode well for the future, but in the short run they'll be able to crank out another playoff berth and go home in the first round. The decline is definitely at hand here, though; when Shaq's contract runs out in two years it's possible that he, Nash, and Hill will all be leaving the Suns together, either for retirement or to play out the string elsewhere. The days of the Suns running up and down the floor may be over as well with a new coach in Terry Porter and the replacement of Shawn Marion with Shaq on the roster (which actually happened last season). This is the beginning of the end for the team that Mike D'Antoni built; Hill's contract ends in 2009 and come 2010 the contracts of Shaq, Nash, and Bell are up; expect a major purging of talent and a rebuilding effort to begin in earnest.
New York: Finally, the Knicks can start moving out some of the dead weight they accumulated during the Isaiah Thomas reign of error (outside the draft). 2009 will the expiration of contracts for Stephon Marbury, Malik Rose, and Fred Jones. And then in 2010 Jerome James and Quentin Richardson will be shown the door. There are others that are signed for longer periods of time who will be shopped as well; Zach Randolph appears to be on borrowed time in New York, and if there are takers for either Eddy Curry (doubtful) or Jamal Crawford (possible) they're likely to be gone as well. By this time in two years it's possible that almost everyone that Zeke acquired through means other than the draft will be history. Now that doesn't guarantee better days but at least it will be a start. The key for the new regime under Donnie Walsh and Mike D'Antoni will be to get a franchise player that they can build around. If that doesn't happen, I'll be writing this again in 2012.
Chicago: The Bulls looked to be on their way to several years of playoff success before the wheels came off last season. Then they started out poorly, their coach was fired, and their entire roster was exposed for not being as good as a lot of people thought they were. At this time last year people were talking about Luol Deng being an All-Star, Ben Gordon being a star in the making, Kirk Hinrich as the solid veteran leader at point guard, and Tyrus Thomas as the phenom at power forward who would be wowing crowds and controlling the paint defensively. Now Deng is merely a good player but not a leader, Gordon is an undersized shooting guard and a defensive liability, Hinrich is destined to a career as the guy management is always trying to trade, and Thomas is a big question mark after a sophomore season that didn't get much better than his rookie one. Their big free agent pickup from 2007, center Ben Wallace, proved to be on the decline and was shipped to Cleveland in return for Larry Hughes, which brought their count of guards who think they should start up to four (Hinrich, Gordon, and rookie Derrick Rose are the others). With a logjam of good but not great players, big success is unlikely so somebody will be going. Gordon and power forward Drew Gooden are free to go after this coming season, and they likely will. 2010 will probably see Larry Hughes handed the white courtesy phone, along with Thomas if he doesn't get any better. And if a taker for Hinrich is out there, he'll likely have a new address soon. Deng, Rose, veteran forward Andres Nocioni, and second year guy Joakim Noah are the only guys guaranteed to be around past 2010 right now.
Detroit: Surprised, Piston fans? Don't be. Two of their most important players from this six year run they've been on, Rip Hamilton and Rasheed Wallace, are up in 2009. I'd bet on Hamilton being allowed to leave so that Rodney Stuckey can take over full time at shooting guard. Rip isn't washed up by any means, but he's getting around $9 million a year while Stuckey is on his much smaller rookie salary for the next few years. If he's able to build on what he showed last season, there won't be any reason to keep him on the bench any more. Wallace's situation is much more complicated. He is a major headache to deal with, and he is a few years past 30, but he brings interior defense and (when he feels like it) offense that cannot be replaced easily. The best thing to do would probably be to hold your nose and re-sign him, unless he asks for a ridiculous number of years. Two to three years would make sense, but if he asks for five or six then you have to seriously think about just letting him go. Another important piece, Antonio McDyess, is up in 2010; he's probably gone regardless of what's decided on with the others. Team president Joe Dumars could probably squeeze another two to three years out of this group, but is it really worth it just so you can say you went to the conference finals ten straight years and lost the last seven in a row? Their greatest asset, their cohesiveness and reliance on each other and not on big star, is also their biggest liability come playoff time. They'll always do well until they play a good team with a iconic figure like Lebron James or Dwyane Wade or even Paul Pierce. Joe does not want to find himself running a team that makes one last trip to the East Finals in 2011 and then immediately plummets to a long spell as a lottery team; the only way to do that is to start moving people out now and replace them with younger talent.
There are some teams that would like to do what the ones I just mentioned are going to, but just can't. Too many bad contracts that run for too many years. Here they are:
Denver: They'd like to go into a full blown rehab around Carmelo Anthony, but that isn't going to happen. The only other big contract that's due to disappear soon is Allen Iverson's, which will help but not enough. Even without him they'll have half of their salary cap space eaten up by Anthony, Kenyon Martin, and Nene. Martin and Nene have two of the worst contracts ever agreed to by a GM. They're paying over $20 million a season combined for two guys who barely score in double figures, grab fewer rebounds combined than Dwight Howard did by himself, and have trouble staying healthy all season. And they're stuck with them until 2011 (Martin) and 2012 (Nene). Good luck with that, fellas.
Indiana: They managed to unload Jermaine O'Neal's contract, but they still want to move Jamal Tinsley and would more than likely take any good offer for Troy Murphy and Mike Dunleavy. The only problem is that all three are signed through 2011, Tinsley at $6 million and year and the other two at a whopping $9 million a year. Tinsley is a pretty good player who gets hurt a lot and has developed a bad rep for off the court issues who would probably have some value if he could just play for a full season without incident, but the other two are guys who can put up good numbers in a losing effort and little else. It's no coincidence that Golden Stat was lousy with them putting up numbers and playing big minutes and got better right after they were dealt. Why anyone would take on either of these two is beyond me, especially if you have to keep them through 2011. So you're looking at around $24 million a year, over a third of the salary cap space, assigned to three guys they'd rather be rid of. You throw in Jeff Foster, a good player that could help any team but no All-Star, and now you have four guys locked until 2011 for a combined average of around $30 million. No matter what they do with the rest of the roster, they're really kind of stuck for the next two to three years.
So why is this stuff important? The NBA is the hardest league in which to move from the middle of the pack to a real contender. Many teams drive themselves into inescapable situations by throwing away money on guys that aren't as good as thier contracts, and then being unable to trade them for several years. I focus on bad contracts the way John Mcain does on earmarks; in my estimation, the biggest turning points in teams movement in the standings are when they finally land that franchise player and when they choose to sign players to big contracts. Screwing up either those can put you in a bad spot for five, sometimes ten years. The Nuggets made a bad deal for Kenyon Martin in 2004 and are still hurting from it today. Likewise, the Knicks made an offer to Allan Houston that far exceeded what anyone else offered him, and have never recovered over five years later. This year will see some teams finally get some breathing room and some others continue to choke.
That's it for this week; next week I'll comment on players going to Europe and take another stab at my East predictions. Until then....
