Free Agency with Other Teams

[longstrangetrip [enjin:6600564]]

Yes, I agree with Drew's post that this is the best off-season in the history of the Wolves, and there has to be a lot of optimism going into the season. But while we were able to convince Teague and Gibson to sign as free agents, I still note that Thibs was unable to land any free agents who can significantly help our bench (I think he sees Gibson as a starter), and we have to examine the reasons for this.

We often talk about the relative attractiveness of Minnesota as a free agent destination, but I think we overstate factors such as city desirability and climate in assessing this market. More important are other factors, I think, namely:

1)Money...most (but not all) free agents are going to pick the best contract financially for them

2)Chance to win...NBA players want to win, want a chance to compete for a championship. All things equal, they are going to select the team that they think has the best chance of being competitive.

3) Fit and opportunity to play. NBA players generally overstate their value, and believe they should be starting or at least playing significant minutes off the bench. There were reports that JJ Reddick was a Thibs' target, but there was no chance he was ever going to come here. He will be able to play 30 minutes plus every night with an up-and-coming 76ers team that could really surprise in the East this year, but he had to know the presence of Butler/Wiggins and Thibs' ranking at the bottom of all coaches in playing his bench (JJ had to note how his teammate and friend Cole Aldrich languished on the bench after thriving in LA the previous season) added up to fewer potential minutes than he and his agent think he deserves. Not playing hurts a player's ego and performance, and also hurts his chances for landing the next big contract.

I'm delighted with the Butler signing, and getting over my pouting about Rubio gone (and warming to how Teague will perform here), and I admit that Gibson adds some needed toughness. But I also think Thibs has swung and missed at adding a good-shooting bench wing, and needs to look in the mirror as he does his offseason post-mortem. We could compete with almost any team in the first two criteria above, but we fall far short in the third.

[60WinTim]

That notion that Gibson is not that much better than Luc is kinda laughable. Out of the 4 FAs discussed -- Gibson, Luc, Crawford and Tucker -- we got the best player. Some would argue we got the 2nd best player as well.

And while we don't have the extra shooting -- yet -- the bench has been upgraded, first with Crawford and second with Dieng. Many would argue Tyus is an upgrade to Dunn. Maybe we bring back Rush, who really didn't play with the bench much at all, but would now with Bazz moving on.

Yeah, we didn't get all the best FAs at discounted prices. But it really has been one hell of an offseason.

[Monster]

Yes, I agree with Drew's post that this is the best off-season in the history of the Wolves, and there has to be a lot of optimism going into the season. But while we were able to convince Teague and Gibson to sign as free agents, I still note that Thibs was unable to land any free agents who can significantly help our bench (I think he sees Gibson as a starter), and we have to examine the reasons for this.

We often talk about the relative attractiveness of Minnesota as a free agent destination, but I think we overstate factors such as city desirability and climate in assessing this market. More important are other factors, I think, namely:

1)Money...most (but not all) free agents are going to pick the best contract financially for them

2)Chance to win...NBA players want to win, want a chance to compete for a championship. All things equal, they are going to select the team that they think has the best chance of being competitive.

3) Fit and opportunity to play. NBA players generally overstate their value, and believe they should be starting or at least playing significant minutes off the bench. There were reports that JJ Reddick was a Thibs' target, but there was no chance he was ever going to come here. He will be able to play 30 minutes plus every night with an up-and-coming 76ers team that could really surprise in the East this year, but he had to know the presence of Butler/Wiggins and Thibs' ranking at the bottom of all coaches in playing his bench (JJ had to note how his teammate and friend Cole Aldrich languished on the bench after thriving in LA the previous season) added up to fewer potential minutes than he and his agent think he deserves. Not playing hurts a player's ego and performance, and also hurts his chances for landing the next big contract.

I'm delighted with the Butler signing, and getting over my pouting about Rubio gone (and warming to how Teague will perform here), and I admit that Gibson adds some needed toughness. But I also think Thibs has swung and missed at adding a good-shooting bench wing, and needs to look in the mirror as he does his offseason post-mortem. We could compete with almost any team in the first two criteria above, but we fall far short in the third.

LST both Jon K and Wolfson reported Redick wanted to come here but the Wolves never made an offer.

People say FA aren't taking a discount to come here. Look at a couple of other contenders. The Cavs had to pay a legit contract to keep Korver. GS ponies up healthy contracts to keep Iggy and Livingston and paid 5 million to Nick Young. Zaza will come back cheap but compared to last year I'm not sure how much less he will take than what another team would pay. Even the top teams sometimes have to pay to keep or get talent on their roster. GS spent 3 years 48 million to keep Iggy. Compare that deal to Taj and get back to me about paying guys to get them on your roster and GS is the cream of the crop and Iggy plays a legit role there also.

The people that complain about Teague's deal that said we had to pay to get him here...duh. Other teams did have interest. Note the Kings ended up paying to get George Hill there and that was after the market dried up. They may have offered even more money and they weren't the only teams with interest.

[longstrangetrip [enjin:6600564]]

Thanks for that info on Reddick, monster...I remember reading that from Wolfson, but discounted it. Didn't make sense to me that a guy who started 78 games for the Clippers would have taken a diminished bench role. But Jon K has more credibility with me.

If it's true that Reddick would have come here on a short-term deal, that makes me even less happy with the Teague and Gibson deals. I think the math works that we could have kept Ricky and not signed Gibson, and been able to sign Reddick to a short-term deal that would have made us a much better 3-point shooting team while not handcuffing Thibs in 2019-20 when he has to pay all his stars. The question is what moves would have helped us more? I would argue Rubio and Reddick is a much stronger pair than Teague and Gibson.

[Monster]

Thanks for that info on Reddick, monster...I remember reading that from Wolfson, but discounted it. Didn't make sense to me that a guy who started 78 games for the Clippers would have taken a diminished bench role. But Jon K has more credibility with me.

If it's true that Reddick would have come here on a short-term deal, that makes me even less happy with the Teague and Gibson deals. I think the math works that we could have kept Ricky and not signed Gibson, and been able to sign Reddick to a short-term deal that would have made us a much better 3-point shooting team while not handcuffing Thibs in 2019-20 when he has to pay all his stars. The question is what moves would have helped us more? I would argue Rubio and Reddick is a much stronger pair than Teague and Gibson.

That's the catch LST it sounds like Redick (Jon reported all this as well) wanted a 3 year deal and it seems the consensus was for around 16 million per. If you wanted him for just 2 year it would have been more per if he would do that at all. If they were not wanting to do a 3rd year that makes a lot of sense to go another direction. I like both players but at this point if I had to choose between Gibson 2 years 28 million or Redick for 3 years 48 million Gibson seems like a better move even if it doesn't directly address 3point shooting.

[60WinTim]

Not to mention Gibson comes in as the starter. Redick would come off the bench, and there goes the advantage you gained when you moved Zach so Wiggins can see more time at the 2...

[longstrangetrip [enjin:6600564]]

Interesting points, Tim and Monster. I note that Reddick did eventually take a 1-year deal with Philly, so there was clealry flexibility in his demands. If he took $23 million for one year in Philly and wanted $48 million for three years here (or elsewhere), it's logical to assume a 2-year offer would have split the difference...say $19 million per year. I have a difficult time concluding that Gibson at $14 million is a better deal than Reddick at $19 million. We had a huge need for a good-shooting wing off the bench, while I would argue that we already have a player similar to Gibson on our roster...Cole Aldrich. Both are offensively limited but tough players who don't get pushed around. If you look at their career per 30 numbers, Cole is clearly the better rebounder, shot blocker, assister, and stealer, while sporting a far superior TS%.


https://www.basketball-reference.com/play-index/pcm_finder.fcgi?request=1&sum=1&player_id1_hint=Taj+Gibson&player_id1_select=Taj+Gibson&player_id1=gibsota01&idx=players&player_id2_hint=Cole+Aldrich&player_id2_select=Cole+Aldrich&player_id2=aldrico01&idx=players

We certainly don't know, but I sense that Thibs' familiarity with Gibson and lack of confidence in Rubio led him to some deals that are not as helpful as other potential deals would have been. As for me, I would much prefer JJ Reddick's 43% 3-point rate coming off the bench to Crawford's 35% rate that we are saddled with. I would argue that Tyus, JJ, Belly and Cole backing up Ricky, Wig, Butler, Gorgui and KAT would have put us in the conversation for a top seed, and would have been a much stronger rotation than the one we enter the season with.

[Lipoli390]

Morey is a heck of a PBO. He signs Tucker for $8.3 million per year then signs Luc at the vet minimum of about $2.5 million per year for one year. Both of those guys for $10.8 million per year. Compare that to Taj at $14 million per year and Crawford for $4.3 million, totaling $18.3 million per year. I'd take Tucker and Luc on their contracts in a heartbeat over the two we have. In fact, I would have preferred Luc at $7 million per year, leaving another $7 million to sign CJ Miles. I think Luc is as good a defender as Taj. Moreover, Luc is a better perimeter shooter and two years younger.

Note that, even with Jimmy Butler, we haven't become a FA destination and we're not getting any bargains or discounts from FAs. Even the fact that Taj once played for Thibs didn't get him here on a discount. According to Doogie, we had to offer Taj more that OKC to get him here. I really doubt anyone was going to offer Teague more than we're paying him.

It's tough to build an NBA championship contender here. You absolutely have to do it primarily through the draft, supplemented if possible, by a good trade. And then you have to find those diamonds in the rough in free agency -- G-Leaguers or Euro prospects. Further, when you find them, you have to convince them to sign here over other alternatives for the minimum salary.

Good points Lip. I see the glass being a bit more half full though by shifting the point of comparison away from one of the other 29 teams in the league to our own history and the rest of the teams.

The Morey signings are good for the price, and I agree we're not a highly-respected franchise (yet), but I wouldn't dismiss our offseason because Morey got a couple of good deals. We might not have gotten great deals on our free agents, but when was the last time any decent free agents signed with us, for any price? Rush and Aldrich aren't that good. Prince and Andre Miller were basically retired. Kirilenko? Maybe, but he wasn't really considered to be that good. I literally cannot think of any other decent free agents who have signed here. Brandon Roy's bone-on-bone knees were already shot when he signed with us.

Can anybody think of an offseason when we improved as much through free agency? In Teague, Gibson, and Crawford, we got a starting PG, a possible starting PF, and an aging but still potent scorer off the bench. All through free agency.

We've been the laughingstock of the league for over a decade now. David Kahn (ugh, it hurts just typing that guy's name), Kurt Rambis, our post-KG history is just embarrassing. And we have to face it, regardless of how much you might love the state, to many basketball players, Minnesota looks like a boring, white, rural backwater. The fan base is tepid (how many small, quiet crowds have visiting NBA players heard at Target Center now?), and more broadly, Minnesota sports teams attract a pretty casual suburban fan base. We're not quite Utah or OKC or maybe Indiana or Sacramento in terms of undesirability of location, but it's bad, and at least Utah and OKC have more rabid fan bases for basketball. Maybe you could throw Detroit and Cleveland and Orlando into that list on par with us, but at least Detroit and Cleveland have more black people (if they'd have called us the Minneapolis Wolves we might have been somewhat better off in terms of perception), and Orlando is warm. San Antonio isn't great, but they win so much it doesn't matter. Given the challenges of the perception of Minnesota, we have less room for error when it comes to winning, and sadly, all we've done since KG left has basically been committing errors. No wonder we haven't attracted a decent free agent (that I can think of) in over a decade. We haven't made the playoffs in 12, check that, 13 years, the second longest streak in history.

This summer, we got three. They're not perfect, but they're pretty good, and it's clear that without Thibs and Butler, we would not have signed 3 pretty good players. It's arguably not as good as getting the deals Morey got, but I'd say it's a huge step forward, and at least we're not dealing with front office insanity like the Knicks or Cavs, locking up insane money on mediocre players like Portland, or starting the downward spiral like Indiana and Atlanta. And that's the other point of comparison I think we need to make to be fair to our front office. Boston and the Rockets did well, as did OKC with the Patterson deal, and I kind of like Utah's offseason (if you ignore losing their best player!), but other than that, who did a better job this summer in free agency?

So to me, I feel a bit better about the direction this team is heading in terms of its perception in the league and its ability to build in multiple ways moving forward.

I agree with all you point, LST. What our current front office has done this summer compares very favorably with what prior Wolves' front offices have done in all the summers gone by. Getting FAs to come here, especially at any sort of discount, is challenging for all the reasons you stated. That was really the central point of my post. Even after acquiring Butler to go with two of the most talented up-and-comers in the League (KAT and Wiggins), we haven't been able to attract any FAs on discounts like Tucker, Luc or Patterson. Whether you look at the glass as half empty or half full, at least there's water in our glass. That's a welcome change after 14 years of oppressive drought.

[Lipoli390]

We're also in different stages of development to Houston. We can't expect free agents will take a significant discount with us because they think might put us over the top and counted with us. That's the main reason free agents take discounts (I still don't understand the Patterson contract with OKC).

We're making good steps progressing towards being a much better team that may be in a position to contend in a couple of years. At this stage, it's clear that we're improving. I'm not sure it's realistic to expect much more than that.

Remember last season, when Houston were an 8 seed coming off a 41-41 season, they didn't have guys signing for bargain contracts. They were giving Ryan Anderson a 4 year $80 million contract.

In that regard, the relatively short contracts that are not too onerous can look great over the next couple of years.

Shumway -- You're right about being at a different stage of development than Houston. And I agree with your take on the positive aspect of the relatively short contracts the Wolves have given out to FAs this summer.

But I hope you're wrong that we "may be in a position to contend in a couple of years." This team should be in a position to contend in the next two years. Butler and Teague are in their prime the next two years and they can both opt out after two years. Taj is already 32 and his contract expires in two years. We'll have Towns and Wiggins hopefully locked up long term, but the moves Thibs has made this summer are designed to do more than just set us up the 7th or 8th seed and a one-series elimination over the next two years.

[Hicks123 [enjin:6700838]]

Interesting points, Tim and Monster. I note that Reddick did eventually take a 1-year deal with Philly, so there was clealry flexibility in his demands. If he took $23 million for one year in Philly and wanted $48 million for three years here (or elsewhere), it's logical to assume a 2-year offer would have split the difference...say $19 million per year. I have a difficult time concluding that Gibson at $14 million is a better deal than Reddick at $19 million. We had a huge need for a good-shooting wing off the bench, while I would argue that we already have a player similar to Gibson on our roster...Cole Aldrich. Both are offensively limited but tough players who don't get pushed around. If you look at their career per 30 numbers, Cole is clearly the better rebounder, shot blocker, assister, and stealer, while sporting a far superior TS%.


https://www.basketball-reference.com/play-index/pcm_finder.fcgi?request=1&sum=1&player_id1_hint=Taj+Gibson&player_id1_select=Taj+Gibson&player_id1=gibsota01&idx=players&player_id2_hint=Cole+Aldrich&player_id2_select=Cole+Aldrich&player_id2=aldrico01&idx=players

We certainly don't know, but I sense that Thibs' familiarity with Gibson and lack of confidence in Rubio led him to some deals that are not as helpful as other potential deals would have been. As for me, I would much prefer JJ Reddick's 43% 3-point rate coming off the bench to Crawford's 35% rate that we are saddled with. I would argue that Tyus, JJ, Belly and Cole backing up Ricky, Wig, Butler, Gorgui and KAT would have put us in the conversation for a top seed, and would have been a much stronger rotation than the one we enter the season with.

LST, I typically find your insight to be fantastic. But the fact that you even put Cole Aldrich and Taj Gibson in the same stratosphere as players means 1 of 2 things has happened over the past week: 1) You went completely senile; 2) It has been a while since you have seen either Taj or Cole play basketball. While it is great to play the "per 30" numbers, we all know that the numbers for limited, part-time players don't transfer out to similar production over the course of 30 minutes. Cole is a HORRIBLE basketball player....we could clearly see it last season. When you say "both are offensively limited", again, this is not a fair statement at all to Taj. I agree with the premise (as Taj will never be confused as a top offensive player), but Taj's limitations still allow him to be a servicable scorer when needed. With Cole, he is simply not capable of anything remotely close to offensive capability. There is a difference between being a capable scorer and being a liability as a scorer. Taj is clearly a capable scorer....and I will let everyone guess who the liability is.

And frankly, for every decent defensive play I saw Cole make a year ago, it was mixed with 3-4 other horrendous plays from him as well. He has little in the way of basketball IQ, and seems easy fooled and confused on the court. You won't see that from Taj this season.