Can We Have a Thoughtful, Considerate Discussion about This?

[Coolbreeze44]

Look at this, the thread is turning exactly into what Drew didn't want to see. I'm done, sorry Drew.

[Monster]

Page 4 and nothing really new here (regardless of how well thought out the posts are) except Drew learning Wiggins is basically untradeable this season.

[TAFKASP]

"unlike a player like middleton who might theoretically be a better fit, he doesn't have the take over the game potential wiggins has shown in his career."

Boy, oh boy. This thread has been relatively fair except this line. I don't think it was intentional, but this sentence alone should show how unappreciated Khris Middleton is. What more does the guy have to do to get some respect? He literally does everything better than Wiggins (score, facilitate, rebound, defend, shoot, etc.).

Not even close Cam. You must not watch Middleton play. The game isn't played on a spread sheet. You make this moronic argument all the time. No one with a speck of basketball know how would trade Wiggins for Middleton at this point. Just no way, stop it.

The reason people don't do that trade is because of the potential argument. But there is no question Middleton is the better player TODAY.

No he's not. I don't care what measure you're using, you're wrong.

Whelp, there it is. /thread

[Camden [enjin:6601484]]

"I don't care what you have to say, or what numbers support your argument, you're wrong! You're misguided! You don't even watch basketball!"

This is basically what's wrong with the discussions surrounding Wiggins. Some people irrationally believe he's better than he is and get dismissive when the topic arises. That's not even Wiggins' fault.

[Coolbreeze44]

"I don't care what you have to say, or what numbers support your argument, you're wrong! You're misguided! You don't even watch basketball!"

This is basically what's wrong with the discussions surrounding Wiggins. Some people irrationally believe he's better than he is and get dismissive when the topic arises. That's not even Wiggins' fault.

You want to have this out? Let's take it off line so the rest don't have to read it. Unless that's your MO.

[thedoper]

I have said multiple times we will be able to trade Wiggins with his contract to Toronto moving forward. This is barring injury of course. There is no doubt in my mind with my knowledge of the Toronto ownership group (Maple Leaf Sports and not Masai) that they would jump on any Wiggins deal they could provided he continues his slow ascent to being a relative star in the NBA. My only worry about Wiggins contract in relation to our team is that we have a colossal idiot as the owner of our team who will eventually put pressure on Thibs to be thrifty as the primary objective. Wiggins has year by year made improvements in his game. When he stops doing that I will join the call for trading him.

I'd argue the improvements have been around the margins. At some point if someone is really improving, it translates to more win shares, a better PER, a better VORP, better TS% etc. Not the case with him. Go look at Tyus Jones' trajectory. Now THAT Is improvement.

His defensive win shares have gone up. He's really making strides on the defensive end. We all saw his shooting slump last month. No surprises there. In the interest of being thoughtful and considerate I never said his improvement was anything beyond the margins. Improvements nonetheless. Yes Tyus has exceeded expectations, from 3rd pg to solid backup. Different thread though?

[SameOldNudityDrew]

Because Wiggins signed his extension he basically can't be traded this season. I hope Wiggins discussions can stay respectful but why not let this season play out and go from there?

Really? Is that a policy? I didn't know that. How was the Blake deal different? Was he a UFA last summer so it's different?

http://www.cbafaq.com/salarycap.htm#Q91

"91. What is the Poison Pill Provision?

"Poison Pill" isn't a defined term in the CBA, but there are a couple situations that are commonly referred to as a poison pill -- meaning a contract clause that creates a potential difficulty because the cap accounting can vary from the norm.

The first is when a team extends a first round draft pick's rookie scale contract (see question number 58) and then trades the player between the date the extension is signed and the date it takes effect. When this happens, the player's trade value for the receiving team is the average of the salaries in the last year of the rookie scale contract and each year of the extension. The sending team uses the player's actual salary when calculating their total outgoing salary, and uses the current-year maximum salary in place of the (unknown) maximum salary for a future season, if necessary.

For example, if a player on the last year of his rookie scale contract earns $5 million in 2018-19, and his contract is extended for four seasons starting at $10 million, with 5% raises, then his salary in each season will be:

Season Salary
2018-19 $5,000,000
2019-20 $10,000,000
2020-21 $10,500,000
2021-22 $11,000,000
2022-23 $11,500,000
If this player is traded during the 2018-19 season, then his outgoing salary from the sending team's perspective is his actual salary -- $5 million. But the player's incoming salary from the receiving team's perspective is $9.6 million -- the average of all five seasons. Such a player would be very difficult to trade -- a legal trade can only be accomplished if both teams add additional salary to the transaction, or if they include a third team that is able to absorb excess salary.

The Gilbert Arenas provision (see question number 43) also has been described as containing a poison pill. This is in reference to the third season of contracts signed according to this provision, which can contain substantially higher salaries than the first two seasons. Houston used this provision to its advantage when signing Jeremy Lin and Omer Asik in 2012. However, the impact of this poison pill was reduced in the 2017 CBA, when matching teams were given the ability to choose whether the actual or average salary counted toward their team salary."

I'm just going to ignore the last two pages and go back to this.

So if I understand correctly (and I probably don't), trading Wiggins now would be like sending 7 million dollars out for us, so we'd have to take back comparable salary. But the team getting Wiggins would have to somehow send out the equivalent of the average of Wiggins' contract, which would be something like 28-29 million? And since we are at the cap, we couldn't take on that extra salary because it would violate the rule about salaries needing to be close? So that's why we'd need to find a third team with the cap space or trade exceptions to just take on salary from the team getting Wiggins, and therefore somebody would need to give that team an asset to do that?

Woof. I didn't know that.

Wait, would it still be possible if one of the teams (the one getting Wiggins) was well below the cap? I don't totally understand when salaries need to match, but could that give us flexibility?

Still, that does sound like it would make it really hard to move him now, and any smart team would know that and push for a better deal for themselves. Damnit.

Why is that a rule? That is a weird one.

[SameOldNudityDrew]

There is many reason why we shouldn't trade Wiggins now or in the offseason.

1) First off his value is going to be at its all time low right now because of the poison pill so teams have to pay more to obtain him, than even in this offseason. How weird it is his value goes up during the offseason than it is now because of the poison pill.

2) Who are we going to trade him for. You mention trading him for expiring contract and a rookie. Here is the problem with that, pretend we trade wiggins for bradley (expiring), Decker (a player on a rookie deal/this is also just an example I bet we could get a lot better young player) and a 1st. First off Bradley or the expiring player can just leave and if he doesn't want to be here we don't have any cap space to add any other player. We are maxed out right now and we only have the MLE this offseason and Towns is up for the same extension wiggins just got (he is eligible now for more because he made the all star game). So we won't be gaining any cap space to acquire a max like talent or for that case even an above average role player like Taj. That cap space is just not there even if we trade wiggins for expirings.

3) I think everyone in todays NBA agrees that we need to have 3 stars to compete for a championship in todays game. So if we trade Wiggins for expiring contracts and/or good role players how do we obtain that 3rd or 4th star. We have a lot of big contracts in Teague (19 mil), Gorgui (15 mil), Taj (14 mil) that are going to be hard to unload without giving up significant assets because teams don't have the cap space they did 2 years ago. So how are we going to acquire a player who would have any chance to have the talent to become an all star.

4) Also there is no guarantee that we get better trading wiggins. Pretend we trade Wiggins for expirings and those players are solid but don't put us over the top. Jimmy could be just like we have no chance at getting any better, he could look at the situation and say well we have ME, Kat and a bunch of solid role players but no cap space and the role players don't have the potential to get us over the top. So Jimmy can leave in a year, and instead of a team with 2 young players in Wiggins and Kat. We just have Kat and who wants to come to minnesota in free agency if we just have Kat (I mean Taj, Kevin Martin and Teague are 3 of the top 5 wolves free agent signings of all time). So in my opinion the floor is so much bigger if we traded wiggins.

5) This is so much different than the blake situation. Blake will be 33 off of 6 lower body surgeries (as of now) and is going to take up 35% of there cap. The Clippers do not even have the upside, Deandre is a free agent, Lou williams is a free agent so 2 of their top 3 players are free agents. They could leave this offseason and they still wouldn't have solid cap space with the contracts of Gallo, Rivers, Millo on the books. Wiggins will be 27/28 in his last year of his contract, what should be his prime, totally different situation. Clippers have no upside players left and the Wolves have at least 2 young players in Kat and Wiggins who theoretically could take big jumps.

6) Wiggins plays every game (huge +), he is improving on the defensive end. He is shooting around his career averages from 3 but in a lot more attempts what is huge. (still needs to improve). He has the potential to take over a game when Jimmy is out. Like he did in 2 of the 3 games Jimmy missed last month. He cant do it every game but I think that is huge, unlike a player like middleton who might theoretically be a better fit, he doesn't have the take over the game potential wiggins has shown in his career.

7) Has wiggins played like a max player. I think the obvious answer is no. But he still is only 22 and I know we are all sick of the word potential but I will take my chances on him figuring it out over trading him for role players who might be a better fit but Jimmy and Kat are not enough even with the best role players in the world to win a championship. Also I will take my chances with Wiggins because we still have no cap space to fill the void that will be left by wiggins.

8) Of course though if an all star player becomes available you have to look at trading wiggins. If porzingas, davis, Kyrie like this year become available of course you look at it and you make the trade. Wiggins is not even close to untradable but I think were we are as a franchise it would be a bad move to trade wiggins for role players just to get role players. Those players will not get us over the top. I will take my chances that wiggins has the talent to possibly one day get us over the top, even if that % is super small. Because I think it is a 0% chance we could get over the top if we trade him for less talented players just to get out of the contract

Good post kek.

1. See my previous post. Do I understand that situation correctly?

2. That's a good point. We're not going to be able to offer a max contract this offseason to anyone either way. So let me clarify I'm not thinking about cap space for this offseason, but maybe for a year and a half from now when Taj, Cole, and Jamal's contracts come off in summer 2019, or at least when Teague comes off in the summer of 2020 (I'm assuming he'll pick up that option). With Wiggins' contract, that won't get us any cap space when those contracts come off. But without it, I'm thinking that could give us room to add a max player to Butler and Towns. Thoughts? It sounds weird, but the players I'd want to get back in return are kind of just to keep us competitive for the next year or two until they come off the books. It's the future cap space and flexibility that I think would be the real acquisition by trading Wiggins' contract.

One caveat--Gorgui's contract. Man, I forgot how many more years are on that. I love G, and that contract isn't his fault, but after Wiggins' contract, that's the next big obstacle. Ugh, we'd have to give up an asset to dump that contract.

3. See comments in my number 2. But you're right, those middle-size contracts are also a problem. Luckily they are relatively short, except for Gorgui's.

4. Here's where our opinions on Wiggins as a player matter. Personally, I don't think Wiggins moves the needle that much, so an average wing for a year or two replacing him would not limit us significantly in my view, although I respect the view of those who disagree. I don't want to go down the road of arguing about Wiggins' ceiling here. But let's assume we do replace Wiggins with a guy like Bazemore (whose contract comes off in the summer of 2020, same as Teague's). And assume we end up with the 4th or 5th seed the next couple of years because Baze is not going to significantly improve the team over what Wiggins would have provided even if he doesn't improve (I don't see us falling any lower than that with the strength of the rest of the roster). Would we really be so bad that Butler would leave his favorite coach and Towns to go play someplace else? Would Butler leave a team that was a solid playoff team with the cap space to add a max player? Personally, I don't think so. By the way, Kyrie is a free agent that summer (I would totally have given up Wiggins and a future first for him last summer). I'm not saying we should bank this all on getting Kyrie in 2020. That's just an example of who we could potentially add to Butler and Towns.

5. Good points on the problems of the Blake comparison. Just because it might have been smart to get out of Blake's contract doesn't mean it would be smart to get out of Wiggins'. I agree. But even setting aside the idea that Blake is a better player, the fact that Wiggins is younger and healthier doesn't necessarily mean we should do the opposite of the Clippers and hang on to Wiggins' contract. Here's where Towns and Butler's contracts are the strongest argument for me. Here's my thinking.

A) We can't possibly have more than 3 max contracts.
B) Butler and Towns deserve the max.
C) If we keep Wiggins, we will never have a better player than those three, and our team is right now about as good as it will ever be and will arguably get worse as we lose these vets and can't add much more around Towns, Butler, and Wiggins because those three max contracts will eat up whatever space we could have added when Taj, Teague, Jamal, Gorgui, etc. come off the books.
D) Since I don't think we're good enough now or that we will be even if you assume the same trajectory of improvement from Towns and Wiggins (and possibly some decline from Butler down the line), it's fair to conclude that we won't really ever be a legitimate contender with Butler, Towns, and Wiggins on max contracts and we must therefore dump one and look for a better player for our third max contract.
E) In my opinion, it's clear that Butler and Towns give us more bang for the buck than Wiggins, therefore, Wiggins' contract has to be the one to get moved.

6 and 7. These are fair points are about Wiggins' talent level and durability now and his potential. We've argued this to death, and I know it can't be totally separated from the contractual issues I'm thinking about. At the same time, I think even the more optimistic projections on Wiggins would not claim that he'll be a better player than Butler or Towns. If that's the case, the logic of A-E above still holds, in my view. Now, if people believe that Wiggins will actually improve so much that he'll become better than Butler and Towns and/or we could compete with the Warriors, then obviously keeping Wiggins is the logical conclusion. But even from the most pro-Wiggins arguments, I haven't really heard anybody make either of those two claims.

8. Good point. We could try to trade Wiggins at some point in the future for the guy who could be that third max player. If I understand this trading restriction correctly, it would obviously be tough to trade him now, and there is the potential to trade him in the future. And maybe a trade like that would be able to get us the right third max guy, although given the size of Wiggins' contract and his reputation throughout the league, I'm really skeptical about what level of talent we could get back. That's why it's not about the player we get back for him as much as the cap space and/or tradeable assets we could get for him.

I think kek, you hit the nail on the head here because you highlight that it's all about risk. Both paths carry risk. You keep him, and you risk that we won't be good enough to win or that we won't be able to trade him in the future for somebody who could make us good enough to win. You trade him soon, and you risk that you won't be able to turn the cap flexibility and possible assets you receive for him into a max player who would be good enough to win. Evaluating the percentage of those risks is exactly what this decision should turn on, in my view. And in my view, with Wiggins on the third max, I think the risk that we won't be good enough to compete with the Warriors is larger than the risk that if we cleared that salary over the next couple years and maybe got some assets, that we won't be able to use that to acquire a max good enough to compete at the highest level.

In other words, I think our chances of competing for a championship are better by taking the risk of clearing that contract and finding a better player for the third max than by keeping Wiggins on the third max.

Thoughts?

[Monster]

Because Wiggins signed his extension he basically can't be traded this season. I hope Wiggins discussions can stay respectful but why not let this season play out and go from there?

Really? Is that a policy? I didn't know that. How was the Blake deal different? Was he a UFA last summer so it's different?

http://www.cbafaq.com/salarycap.htm#Q91

"91. What is the Poison Pill Provision?

"Poison Pill" isn't a defined term in the CBA, but there are a couple situations that are commonly referred to as a poison pill -- meaning a contract clause that creates a potential difficulty because the cap accounting can vary from the norm.

The first is when a team extends a first round draft pick's rookie scale contract (see question number 58) and then trades the player between the date the extension is signed and the date it takes effect. When this happens, the player's trade value for the receiving team is the average of the salaries in the last year of the rookie scale contract and each year of the extension. The sending team uses the player's actual salary when calculating their total outgoing salary, and uses the current-year maximum salary in place of the (unknown) maximum salary for a future season, if necessary.

For example, if a player on the last year of his rookie scale contract earns $5 million in 2018-19, and his contract is extended for four seasons starting at $10 million, with 5% raises, then his salary in each season will be:

Season Salary
2018-19 $5,000,000
2019-20 $10,000,000
2020-21 $10,500,000
2021-22 $11,000,000
2022-23 $11,500,000
If this player is traded during the 2018-19 season, then his outgoing salary from the sending team's perspective is his actual salary -- $5 million. But the player's incoming salary from the receiving team's perspective is $9.6 million -- the average of all five seasons. Such a player would be very difficult to trade -- a legal trade can only be accomplished if both teams add additional salary to the transaction, or if they include a third team that is able to absorb excess salary.

The Gilbert Arenas provision (see question number 43) also has been described as containing a poison pill. This is in reference to the third season of contracts signed according to this provision, which can contain substantially higher salaries than the first two seasons. Houston used this provision to its advantage when signing Jeremy Lin and Omer Asik in 2012. However, the impact of this poison pill was reduced in the 2017 CBA, when matching teams were given the ability to choose whether the actual or average salary counted toward their team salary."

I'm just going to ignore the last two pages and go back to this.

So if I understand correctly (and I probably don't), trading Wiggins now would be like sending 7 million dollars out for us, so we'd have to take back comparable salary. But the team getting Wiggins would have to somehow send out the equivalent of the average of Wiggins' contract, which would be something like 28-29 million? And since we are at the cap, we couldn't take on that extra salary because it would violate the rule about salaries needing to be close? So that's why we'd need to find a third team with the cap space or trade exceptions to just take on salary from the team getting Wiggins, and therefore somebody would need to give that team an asset to do that?

Woof. I didn't know that.

Wait, would it still be possible if one of the teams (the one getting Wiggins) was well below the cap? I don't totally understand when salaries need to match, but could that give us flexibility?

Still, that does sound like it would make it really hard to move him now, and any smart team would know that and push for a better deal for themselves. Damnit.

Why is that a rule? That is a weird one.

Yep that's the way I understand it also. Nobody really has that kind of cap space right now. I'd guess it's a similar rule to not being able to trade a guy right after signing him to a FA contract even though that's only like 60 days. This is basically protecting the player from signing their deal and then getting traded. Players that sign 1 year deals with teams they have played with for 3 years get an automatic no-trade clause. These rookie extensions are able to be signed early and are worked out exclusively between player and their current team. It does kinda make sense to not have them traded after that type of deal is signed.

Regardless of all this it seems like based on any media reports I have read the Wolves have zero interest in dealing wiggins this season so any of these discussions are hypothetical and academic. Most people think Thibs is a big fan of Wiggins and clearly isn't gonna just basically dump him for nothing. Heck he got a first round pick for Rubio he doesn't seem to be desperate to deal anyone with value.

As for the discussion most people have their positions already on Wiggins, what his value is as a player whether or not he is worth his max deal etc etc and have written it over and over and over. The only thing that's going to change anyone's mind is Wiggins play. It's that simple. The last month or so of him giving effort and better defense while being uneven on offense hasn't changed the minds of people and that's absolutely fair. Let's watch more games (including some playoff games) and see where we are at at the end of the season. Maybe something will become more clear or maybe we will be at the same spot as we are now.

[Q12543 [enjin:6621299]]

I have said multiple times we will be able to trade Wiggins with his contract to Toronto moving forward. This is barring injury of course. There is no doubt in my mind with my knowledge of the Toronto ownership group (Maple Leaf Sports and not Masai) that they would jump on any Wiggins deal they could provided he continues his slow ascent to being a relative star in the NBA. My only worry about Wiggins contract in relation to our team is that we have a colossal idiot as the owner of our team who will eventually put pressure on Thibs to be thrifty as the primary objective. Wiggins has year by year made improvements in his game. When he stops doing that I will join the call for trading him.

I'd argue the improvements have been around the margins. At some point if someone is really improving, it translates to more win shares, a better PER, a better VORP, better TS% etc. Not the case with him. Go look at Tyus Jones' trajectory. Now THAT Is improvement.

His defensive win shares have gone up. He's really making strides on the defensive end. We all saw his shooting slump last month. No surprises there. In the interest of being thoughtful and considerate I never said his improvement was anything beyond the margins. Improvements nonetheless. Yes Tyus has exceeded expectations, from 3rd pg to solid backup. Different thread though?

His defensive win shares have gone up as has his D-RPM. I think the eye test validates this as well. I still think he could be waaaaaay better given his athletic profile, but at least he's going in the right direction.

The example of Tyus was the type of improvement trajectory I was hoping to see from Wiggins when we first drafted him. May be he's a late bloomer and it will all pay off in 2-3 more years. DeRozan is the one guy I can think of that was just sort of "meh" for four seasons and then he made a big leap in his 5th season.