Minnesota Sports Forum

Camden wrote:For me, it would depend on how much his next contract would be. Three-years, $45M is as high as I would offer, but I'd obviously feel more comfortable with a lesser figure. I think he would be an absolute force off the bench at SF and some PF. We'd also have him as insurance should something unfortunate happen to LaVine or Wiggins, which is nice.

The bigger problem is I don't know if Gay is ready to make that kind of change in his career. Still 30-years old and productive.

TeamRicky wrote:

Camden wrote:For me, it would depend on how much his next contract would be. Three-years, $45M is as high as I would offer, but I'd obviously feel more comfortable with a lesser figure. I think he would be an absolute force off the bench at SF and some PF. We'd also have him as insurance should something unfortunate happen to LaVine or Wiggins, which is nice.

The bigger problem is I don't know if Gay is ready to make that kind of change in his career. Still 30-years old and productive.

Zero chance of that happening. He's getting paid north of $20 million a year and he won't be a backup. A team like Brooklyn in need of a star would probably throw him the max and all the playing time he wants.

longstrangetrip wrote:

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.

CoolBreeze44 wrote:

TeamRicky wrote:

Camden wrote:For me, it would depend on how much his next contract would be. Three-years, $45M is as high as I would offer, but I'd obviously feel more comfortable with a lesser figure. I think he would be an absolute force off the bench at SF and some PF. We'd also have him as insurance should something unfortunate happen to LaVine or Wiggins, which is nice.

The bigger problem is I don't know if Gay is ready to make that kind of change in his career. Still 30-years old and productive.

Zero chance of that happening. He's getting paid north of $20 million a year and he won't be a backup. A team like Brooklyn in need of a star would probably throw him the max and all the playing time he wants.

Throwing a guy like Gay the max is how you become what Brooklyn is. Somebody will give him a bunch though.

khans2k5 wrote:

longstrangetrip wrote:

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.

You guys do realize we could offload players like Dieng extremely easily if we had that much of an issue with the cap right? You realize these players don't get full max deals like Lebron and Durant and Curry because of their experience and lack of accolades right? Layden and Thibs are the worst team managers in the league if they can't keep this team under the luxury tax while keeping the big 3 on mini maxes. You're worried about hypotheticals that just don't work with the math. 60% of the cap for the big 3 and everyone else is trade-able. What you are worried about is 6 years out when they would qualify for the full max and you just can't think that far when building a team. It's not realistic to keep a whole team of players together for that long.

CoolBreeze44 wrote:

TeamRicky wrote:

Camden wrote:For me, it would depend on how much his next contract would be. Three-years, $45M is as high as I would offer, but I'd obviously feel more comfortable with a lesser figure. I think he would be an absolute force off the bench at SF and some PF. We'd also have him as insurance should something unfortunate happen to LaVine or Wiggins, which is nice.

The bigger problem is I don't know if Gay is ready to make that kind of change in his career. Still 30-years old and productive.

Zero chance of that happening. He's getting paid north of $20 million a year and he won't be a backup. A team like Brooklyn in need of a star would probably throw him the max and all the playing time he wants.

Throwing a guy like Gay the max is how you become what Brooklyn is. Somebody will give him a bunch though.

longstrangetrip wrote:

khans2k5 wrote:

longstrangetrip wrote:

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.

You guys do realize we could offload players like Dieng extremely easily if we had that much of an issue with the cap right? You realize these players don't get full max deals like Lebron and Durant and Curry because of their experience and lack of accolades right? Layden and Thibs are the worst team managers in the league if they can't keep this team under the luxury tax while keeping the big 3 on mini maxes. You're worried about hypotheticals that just don't work with the math. 60% of the cap for the big 3 and everyone else is trade-able. What you are worried about is 6 years out when they would qualify for the full max and you just can't think that far when building a team. It's not realistic to keep a whole team of players together for that long.

I'm confused about your conclusion that our Big 3 will use up only 60% of our salary cap. Max contracts for 0-6 year players are 25% of the cap, so if they get max contracts, they will use up 75% of our salary cap...with still 12 more players to pay. Maybe you're saying that no team will offer max contracts to our Big 3 so we can then sign them cheap, but I think that's a pipe dream. They are 21-year-old guys already averaging over 20 PPG, and they are still getting better! Take a look at some of the guys getting max contracts...our guys are already better than some guys getting max contracts now.