Minnesota Sports Forum

Nobody is going to stop us from keeping our big 3 if we want. There's too much thinking about how a move is going to affect us in 2-3+ years. You can always make other moves when the time comes to do what you have to do to keep who you want to keep. Our big 3 hasn't won enough yet to just hand them all max deals and say this is it moving forward. Plus they are mini-maxes anyways. 20% x 3 leaves 40% for the rest of the team.

khans2k5 wrote:Nobody is going to stop us from keeping our big 3 if we want. There's too much thinking about how a move is going to affect us in 2-3+ years. You can always make other moves when the time comes to do what you have to do to keep who you want to keep. Our big 3 hasn't won enough yet to just hand them all max deals and say this is it moving forward. Plus they are mini-maxes anyways. 20% x 3 leaves 40% for the rest of the team.

Bingo.

It also should be noted that we need to be picking up guys before the rookie extensions kick in because we won't have cap space after, only exceptions. There's several million dollars over the cap before the tax to take advantage of if you bring in guys now and then pay our big 3 to take us over the cap.

khans2k5 wrote:It also should be noted that we need to be picking up guys before the rookie extensions kick in because we won't have cap space after, only exceptions. There's several million dollars over the cap before the tax to take advantage of if you bring in guys now and then pay our big 3 to take us over the cap.

Yep, we are trying to set up for keeping this team for 10+ years together but we don't even know if they 1st can win consestitally in the NBA, 2nd there is only 5 players in the NBA total of being with a team 5 years or more.

It is not like the wovles are giving out bad contracts, if need be Rubio, Lavine (max), Wiggins (max) Gorgui (good deal), Towns (Max) can always be moved. I don't know if Rudy Gay is the answer but to deny a good player in the offseason because we are worried about the keeping the young guys for 10+ years in flawed logic in my opinion

I think Wiggins is doing an admirable job of looking like Rudy Gay out there. Do we really need the authentic one?

Duke13 wrote:I get he's an expiring. I'd be willing to gamble. Let say you trade him for Rubio and he doesn't resign you then have that money to spend elsewhere. I don't know, Sacromento has been rumored to have interest in Rubio so it makes sense as far as that's concerned. Not saying it will happen or there aren't better options for Gay but I see it making some sense for both teams.

I'd be kinda shocked if the Kings didn't jump all over that deal.

monsterpile wrote:

Duke13 wrote:I get he's an expiring. I'd be willing to gamble. Let say you trade him for Rubio and he doesn't resign you then have that money to spend elsewhere. I don't know, Sacromento has been rumored to have interest in Rubio so it makes sense as far as that's concerned. Not saying it will happen or there aren't better options for Gay but I see it making some sense for both teams.

I'd be kinda shocked if the Kings didn't jump all over that deal.

Honestly I'd want more back. Everyone knows the Kings have been trying to dump Gay for a while now and Ricky fills their biggest hole. I'd want one of their bigs back as well (either Koufas or WCS).

khans2k5 wrote:Nobody is going to stop us from keeping our big 3 if we want. There's too much thinking about how a move is going to affect us in 2-3+ years. You can always make other moves when the time comes to do what you have to do to keep who you want to keep. Our big 3 hasn't won enough yet to just hand them all max deals and say this is it moving forward. Plus they are mini-maxes anyways. 20% x 3 leaves 40% for the rest of the team.

This is simply not true, khans. Somebody can stop us from keeping all three, and that is the minority owners. Glen has done a good job the past couple years of bringing in new minority owners because the value of his franchise investment was getting to be too big a percentage of his net worth. But like any savvy minority investor, these guys didn't come in without some contractual protective assurances. None of them have anywhere near Glen's net worth, and while he might be willing to shell out the money to pay the ridiculous luxury tax, some of the minority investors would not be...and Glen needs to be careful not to let the payroll in that bad position. And it's easy to do the math...while the Wolves might be able to keep the Big 3 and avoid the lux tax with the current roster(or at least not get too far into it), there is no mathematical way they can avoid it if they add one more high-priced player. You can say there is too much thinking here about what is going to happen 2-3 years down the road, but that is what Leyden spends much of his time thinking about. How they manage their payroll is one of the critical success factors to this becoming a successful franchise for many years. Thibs and Leyden did an excellent job with this in their first summer, and I fully expect that they will continue to be cautious in the free agent market as they keep their powder dry for the Big 3...and I applaud them for that.

Edit: As an aside, I don't know exactly what Scott Leyden is responsible for, but I can tell you that ownership is very happy with his performance so far.

I think it's definitely possible the kings would include either Koufus or WCS in a Rubio deal.

LST is right. And I'm not sure Glen would be willing to pay the luxury tax even without pressure from his minority owners. But fact is, he does have minority owners to deal with. And the math is simple. Signing Wiggins, LaVine and KAT to max contracts won't allow us to sign another high-priced player without getting into luxury tax zone -- unless nearly every other player has a near minimum contract.

As for Rudy Gay, I think Wild got it right when he wrote that we already have our Rudy Gay -- namely Andrew Wiggins. We need to shore up our bench and that's not a role Gay would accept at any price and, in any event, his price will be too steep.

I've been as frustrated as anyone by the Wolves performance so far this season. But as I've said before, the organization needs to be patient. First and foremost, we need to see how things play out over the course of a full season under Thibs. It's clear the team is already improving with slightly more than half the season remaining. Thibs said he had two reasons for coming here. One was an organization comitted to winning. The other reason was what he called the best young roster in the League. More recently Thibs said he loves our core three. So let's see how things develop. This is the roster Thibs wanted and now he has it. We've seen recent improvement. A major deal now would be a mistake.

Let's see where we're at next June. We' have trade options with our upcoming lottery pick, which can be packaged with other assets - perhaps Ricky. A big money free agent signing like Rudy Gay next summer is highly improbably and probably ill-advised. But I could see a couple solid free agent signings to fill specific needs and strengthen our bench.