monsterpile wrote:lipoli390 wrote:Q12543 wrote:I would argue that Taj was our 3rd most impactful player last year after Butler and KAT. I think he added at least a couple wins for us over and beyond the prior year, with Butler adding the rest. I was not a fan of paying that much for Taj at the time, but he absolutely earned every penny of that contract last year.
That being said, he and Teague are 2/5ths of our starting lineup this pre-season and deserve their fair share of the blame for our pathetic start. Hopefully they can do better when the regular season starts.
My point, Q, was that paying Taj $14 million and Teague $19 million was a mistake if the alternative to those contracts was a restructured deal with Butler to lock him in for a period of years. As I read Monster's point, it seemed as if Butler wanted and maybe even expected such a deal. I see no reason not to give him that deal other than luxury tax concerns, which could have been mitigated by forgoing those two big contracts. I thought the Teague contract was a bad one in isolation. The Gibson contract only looks bad if it prevented us from locking in Butler over the long term and avoiding the circus we're seeing today.
I was on YouTube watching something else and the lengthy clip where Butler talked about this came up so I watched it again. Maybe Butler is lying or not telling the whole truth or somewhat delusional but it does seem like he feels like he should have been taken care of when it comes to his contract. Someone on realgm brought up that his last deal ended up being lower than maybe I could have been. Let's be honest however you see Butler he was on a bargain contract for the 2 years when he was acquired. 20 million for a top 20 player even if he misses 20 games a year is still good. Crazy good? Maybe not but good. It seems Butler wanted a renegotiation when he was acquired. I didn't really realize that was an option or that it would make sense to do so. Even if we weren't at this ridiculously bad spot doing that renegotiation makes some sense even if last year and this year you have to pay him 10 million more because then you could have him locked in for what 4 years total? You don't have to worry about giving him a terrible contract after this season. You probably pay a bit less for 2019 and 2020. Yes it would have cost signing one good player like Teague or Taj (maybe both) but whatever money they would have had left over would have attracted someone left that would have been very excited to be a starting PG for a team that only had x amount of dollars left. If this is really part of Butler's problem...I kinda get it. He should probably be more patient but I get a bit where he is coming from. Think about This. Forget what Wiggins and Towns is making...Jeff Teague made about 1 million less than Butler last year and what they are slated to make this year. Jimmy likes Teague and probably has zero problem with Jeff but yeah ok.
Again if Thins thought this was more of Butler's problem I can see how he thought he was gonna smooth it out because...they win this year and they can pay Jimmy a boat load of money and it's fine. I'm reading into things here but it does seem like a few miscalculations here. I'm not sure anyone saw Jimmy going quite this far though but maybe he is because it's the only way he sees Thibs giving him up. Whoever suggested we need to get outside and do something is right I'm out. lol
I just got back from outside. :) Wanted to say that also just watched the entire Butler interview. I had the same take-away as you, Monster. And like you, I had no ideal renegotiating his contract was an option last summer when we acquired him. But listening really carefully to that interview, it seemed pretty clear to me that Butler's beef really is primarily with the front office. Of course, that helps explain why he was yelling at Layden and Thibodeau in that no infamous practice a couple days ago. It's all coming together. Wow, I thought Thibodeau and Layden simply screwed up with Butler thing earlier this summer. Looks like they screwed things up royally a year ago.
The point of trading for Butler was to have him around for the long term while still in his prime. Last summer, when he was excited to be here and we had plenty of cap room was the time to lock him in for an additional 3-5 years. Instead, we used $19 million to sign Teague when that money could have gone towards locking in Butler. Meanwhile, the Pacers signed a better three-point shooting PG named Collison for $10 million per year. And imagine if the Wolves hadn't given Wiggins the extension. No other NBA team would have offered him a max deal this summer, so we could have simply matched a more reasonable deal if we wanted to keep him or let him go and put the additional cap space to good use.
This is why you don't hand over the top executive position in the basketball department to someone who's never even worked in a professional sports front office, much less an NBA one, and who's never been an executive of anything. That's why we shouldn't replace Thibodeau as PBO with a Chauncey Billups type. I can see him or someone similar replacing Scott Layden in his role, but not running our basketball operations department.
