Minnesota Sports Forum

khans2k5 wrote:

Q12543 wrote:I guess regardless of the cap jump, $7M is still $7M. That isn't chump change. And since everyone else's spending power goes up too, it's all relative. Small details matter. I think it would be sloppy cap management to pick up his option, unless the front office is very confident in his ability to develop. All indications are Flip didn't like what he saw. If he did, Payne wouldn't be on the roster and the chatter of signing Bjelica wouldn't be happening. So if anything, Flip has validated the impatience exhibited by the fans you are so frustrated with (and my guess is that Cam leads the pack since he has been so vociferous in his animosity toward Bennett).

I do agree with the sentiment that we don't HAVE to do anything now. I'm just trying to present hypotheticals to SJM to see how he would respond.

7 million isn't chump change but you have to have a plan to use it or what's the point of freeing the space over seeing if it clicks with a good prospect? Especially when there is a high likelihood that time will be opening up at his position when KG retires. That's where the cap jump does come in. The 7 million isn't needed space as of now to do anything to make the team better. That will be there regardless if we keep Bennett or not. Money should be a nonfactor for turning down the option because Glenn has plenty of it and keeping Bennett is not restricting us in any way from improving the roster through free agency. There needs to be a higher purpose to dumping him than to just clear cap space and a roster spot because right now both are going to be there with or without Bennett.

I'm not sure what you mean that the $7M is there either way. If we decline his option, that's $7M more in firepower to use next offseason on a FA. Again, the cap is going up for everybody. That means the market will achieve equilibrium. It's simple economics. So a FA that might cost $10M a year before, might have his price bid up to $13M per year because the overall market has more money to spend.

It's not just us that has more cap room to spend!

sjm34 wrote:

Q12543 wrote:

60WinTim wrote:Ugh! Free agency hasn't even begun and the best we can come up with is debating the merits of Anthony Bennett. It's gonna be a LOOOONG summer... :-(

Someone has to stir the pot on AB now that Cam has left the board!

(besides, I'm just assisting Gymrat. He's the real problem!)

Come on Q, step up and actually take a stand! :)

I agree about being prudent with regard to the cap, but Flip doesn't seem to know which direction the team is going in. He never should have made the deal for Thad, and then compounded it with the Payne trade. It's like he isn't even looking two months into the future. Shouldn't he have known last season that Bjelica was coming over? And if he did, why make the move for Payne at all. The season was already gone at that point. He should have just rolled with Jeff Adrien.

With KG's age and Pek's history, I would have no problem rolling with seven bigs to start the season. Bjelica may be getting time at the 3 as well. Maybe we send AB down to the D league as others have suggested (not that I even know what team that is anymore).

Well, I will agree on one thing: Flip dug his own hole on the PF situation. It will be interesting to see how he gets out of this mess. I will say this - I certainly don't want him to ship some other asset away just for the sake of getting rid of AB. No more of that! Just decline his option and ride it out if we can't find a trade that nets us something in return, even if it is just pennies.

I do think ultimately Budinger might have some value out there. He finished the season strong and at $5M on the final year of his deal, a playoff-caliber team that needs some shooting and smart play off the bench might be interested.

The thing for me is Bennett was drafted higher than he should and I wasn't a big fan of him at the time anyway. He came into the league touted as a dynamic a scorer and hasn't done that yet either. So now alot of us are sorta hoping he can be a hustle player with a jumpshot. Last year he looked more like Dante Cunningham offensively than anyone looking to break out. He can't stay healthy that's the big thing for me. I don't know what exactly it is that makes people think Bennett has so much potential to hold onto. And please people he is 22 not 20 or 21. He is It's ok if we disagree though on his potential which is the whole point of the discussion really. I bet there are some young guys with more or at least equal potential as Bennett we could throw 7 million at next year and easily get them on the squad.

I feel bad actually I take a pretty strong stance against Bennett. He seems like a good guy I think he does put in the work that's not the problem. He is another example of a guy that would probably really benefit from their being a d-league team available to play on. He needs to get into so games and just play if he turns into something. I see him as maybe a rotation player like Derrick Williams is that's not worth keeping him around hoping the gets it enough to do that.

I do think there are some teams or some teams have people in their organizations that like Bennett still because there are smart posters here that still like him. :) the problem is though does a team like him enough to make any kind of move for him? The money is obviously an issue. Only so many teams have roster space and or money or a player to move for him. The you have to match up those few tes and hope they have a guy in the organization that Likes Bennett enough to make the move or convince someone to take a shot at him. The Sixers probably wouldn't even take him for free because it would take up a big chunk of their cap space they like to use to badically buy draft picks. If we cut Bennett and teams could sign him for cheap I bet then there would be interest.

If he sticks around hopefully for the Wolves he shows something one way or another so they can make a decision. As others have said it seems the decision has likely already mostly been made.

Q12543 wrote:I do think ultimately Budinger might have some value out there. He finished the season strong and at $5M on the final year of his deal, a playoff-caliber team that needs some shooting and smart play off the bench might be interested.

Yeah Q I agree I think Bud has some value to a few teams and I think he has value to Flip as well. I think Flip would like to get something back in a Bud deal or be sure that they guy he opens a roster spot for is worthwhile and the guys around the team we can't really say that yet.

Q12543 wrote:

sjm34 wrote:

Q12543 wrote:

60WinTim wrote:Ugh! Free agency hasn't even begun and the best we can come up with is debating the merits of Anthony Bennett. It's gonna be a LOOOONG summer... :-(

Someone has to stir the pot on AB now that Cam has left the board!

(besides, I'm just assisting Gymrat. He's the real problem!)

Come on Q, step up and actually take a stand! :)

I agree about being prudent with regard to the cap, but Flip doesn't seem to know which direction the team is going in. He never should have made the deal for Thad, and then compounded it with the Payne trade. It's like he isn't even looking two months into the future. Shouldn't he have known last season that Bjelica was coming over? And if he did, why make the move for Payne at all. The season was already gone at that point. He should have just rolled with Jeff Adrien.

With KG's age and Pek's history, I would have no problem rolling with seven bigs to start the season. Bjelica may be getting time at the 3 as well. Maybe we send AB down to the D league as others have suggested (not that I even know what team that is anymore).

Well, I will agree on one thing: Flip dug his own hole on the PF situation. It will be interesting to see how he gets out of this mess. I will say this - I certainly don't want him to ship some other asset away just for the sake of getting rid of AB. No more of that! Just decline his option and ride it out if we can't find a trade that nets us something in return, even if it is just pennies.

I wonder if Bjelica wasn't on Flip's radar during the season (he was coaching and maybe wasn't a huge fan before) and so didn't consider him an option. It seems Bjelica stepped up his game this year and it sounds like some good teams had interest and so maybe Flip listened to people telling him Bjelica was better than he thought. That's pure speculation but I think it has some merit. I do wish Flip wasn't doing both roles but it seems to me he at least attempts to surround himself with some competent FO people (Milt at least seems like he knows generally what he is doing) and actually listen to them. In contrast that was a real issue for Kahn.

monsterpile wrote:

I wonder if Bjelica wasn't on Flip's radar during the season (he was coaching and maybe wasn't a huge fan before) and so didn't consider him an option. It seems Bjelica stepped up his game this year and it sounds like some good teams had interest and so maybe Flip listened to people telling him Bjelica was better than he thought. That's pure speculation but I think it has some merit. I do wish Flip wasn't doing both roles but it seems to me he at least attempts to surround himself with some competent FO people (Milt at least seems like he knows generally what he is doing) and actually listen to them. In contrast that was a real issue for Kahn.

What is it that leads you to this. I haven't got a read on Milt one way or the other, or any of the other FO either. I am not even sure if Flip knows what rights he has to NB, with the comment he made last week about it not being up to the team. I do agree that Kahn should have hired a competent talent evaluator, which Glen actually took responsibility for in an interview last season saying DK was hired to handle the cap, but they never followed through on another hire.

Q12543 wrote:

khans2k5 wrote:

Q12543 wrote:I guess regardless of the cap jump, $7M is still $7M. That isn't chump change. And since everyone else's spending power goes up too, it's all relative. Small details matter. I think it would be sloppy cap management to pick up his option, unless the front office is very confident in his ability to develop. All indications are Flip didn't like what he saw. If he did, Payne wouldn't be on the roster and the chatter of signing Bjelica wouldn't be happening. So if anything, Flip has validated the impatience exhibited by the fans you are so frustrated with (and my guess is that Cam leads the pack since he has been so vociferous in his animosity toward Bennett).

I do agree with the sentiment that we don't HAVE to do anything now. I'm just trying to present hypotheticals to SJM to see how he would respond.

7 million isn't chump change but you have to have a plan to use it or what's the point of freeing the space over seeing if it clicks with a good prospect? Especially when there is a high likelihood that time will be opening up at his position when KG retires. That's where the cap jump does come in. The 7 million isn't needed space as of now to do anything to make the team better. That will be there regardless if we keep Bennett or not. Money should be a nonfactor for turning down the option because Glenn has plenty of it and keeping Bennett is not restricting us in any way from improving the roster through free agency. There needs to be a higher purpose to dumping him than to just clear cap space and a roster spot because right now both are going to be there with or without Bennett.

I'm not sure what you mean that the $7M is there either way. If we decline his option, that's $7M more in firepower to use next offseason on a FA. Again, the cap is going up for everybody. That means the market will achieve equilibrium. It's simple economics. So a FA that might cost $10M a year before, might have his price bid up to $13M per year because the overall market has more money to spend.

It's not just us that has more cap room to spend!

It's not that hard to understand. Everybody is getting 20+ million in cap space next year. Bennett's option is about 1.5 million more than this year. That means everyone has 20+ million and we have 18.5+ million (that's not even including the space Bud and KG will net us). You can sign almost anyone in the league for 18.5 million outside of max superstars so what's the difference between 18.5 million and 26 million if superstars are out of play to begin with? Our roster is still going to be mostly full with the PF spot really being the only position that needs significant help at this point. If we need to, I think we can find another PF for 18.5 million. We aren't going to be signing a bunch of guys using up all that space so there's going to be plenty to sign the one or two guys to fill out the roster. Hence his 7 million really isn't going to make a significant difference unless you are delusional enough to believe we could get a superstar to sign with us.

Take KG, Bud and Bennett off the roster, add a first round pick that we'll likely keep and that leaves two roster spots to fill out the roster that has most of it's core in place already. Ricky, Tyus, Lavine, Martin, Wiggins, Bazz, Payne, Bjelica, Towns, Pek, Dieng and the pick will all have contracts for next year and Robbie may still get a two year deal this summer. That's 13 already. We can sign two guys to fill out that roster for 18.5 million> and we shouldn't blow our load on free agency anyway because there's not a ton of open playing time on that team anyway. It's better to lose guys in free agency than overpay them and strap our cap situation in year 1 of the cap going up. Do you honestly think we would lose out on someone because we only have 18.5+ million to offer and other teams have 20+? That's the only reason to dump him because we'll have money to find a better player next year anyway. In your example, we have another 7 million on top of his 7 million to sign a better player. You're essentially arguing we should shoot for 26.5+ million in cap space instead of 18.5+ and I'm saying we can keep him and sign someone if we need to. I don't see his 7 million costing us the ability to sign a free agent which would be the only reason we need the extra cap space.

Q12543 wrote:I do think ultimately Budinger might have some value out there. He finished the season strong and at $5M on the final year of his deal, a playoff-caliber team that needs some shooting and smart play off the bench might be interested.

We can only hope. I also hope Atlanta figures out they need Payne back and offer to give us our pick pack and a future 2nd.

Man AB is a hot topic. To me it is very clear. He has until the end of October to show he shoudl have the extension. He has all of camp and we should give him a lot of minutes in the preseason. He will be in his second year with Flip and the coaching staff and we should see some jump in productivity based of maturing and consistency. If he is extended I wonder what that means for Payne.