Minnesota Sports Forum

SameOldNudityDrew wrote:

BloopOracle wrote:Jonathan Simmons to the Magic

https://twitter.com/ShamsCharania/status/885946882702409729

Weird, why would San Antonio let him walk. Signing Rudy Gay, the weird Aldridge stuff, something's off in San Antonio this summer.

They want Shabazz!!!

slimcalhoun27 wrote:

monsterpile wrote:The Bulls claimed David Nwaba which I assume means the Wolves didn't put in a waiver claim. Fire Thibs!!! lol

Pulls didn't have a very good Summer League performance from anyone. Lauri did okay but Hoiberg didn't have much praise about anyone. Dunn, not shooting well, so nwaba makes sense.

Well Dunn only played one game because of going home for a personal matter and Payne followed suit the next day.

60WinTim wrote:

SameOldNudityDrew wrote:

BloopOracle wrote:Jonathan Simmons to the Magic

https://twitter.com/ShamsCharania/status/885946882702409729

Weird, why would San Antonio let him walk. Signing Rudy Gay, the weird Aldridge stuff, something's off in San Antonio this summer.

They want Shabazz!!!

Question the Spurs moves feels like questioning the Patriots moves. Both franchises seem to know what they are doing. It's been a bit of a weird offseason for them though.

George Karl was on Eolfson's podcast and said he thinks Gay's best position now is actuallly as a small ball PF. Could that be part of why the Spurs brought him in? Did the Spurs look at the FA market and think to themselves we can get a pretty good player for less and probably less years than Simmons? Tim mentioned Bazz I'm not sure about the fit but even though Simmons didn't get a lot of money the Spurs may be able to get a cheaper player that may even fit better.

Which brings us to Bryn Forbes who has absolutely been lighting up SL. They may have started thinking a guy like that may need more minutes and with his 3 point shooting he could be a guy that helps them this year. They will probably find some other dude that is worthwhile also. They are such a good organization.

Dang! There goes Luc... Is there anyone else Houston does not have?!? It seems like they are signing someone every other day!

Chris Haynes?Verified account @ChrisBHaynes 11m11 minutes ago
Free agent Luc Mbah a Moute has reached an agreement with the Houston Rockets, league sources tell ESPN.

60WinTim wrote:Dang! There goes Luc... Is there anyone else Houston does not have?!? It seems like they are signing someone every other day!

Chris Haynes?Verified account @ChrisBHaynes 11m11 minutes ago
Free agent Luc Mbah a Moute has reached an agreement with the Houston Rockets, league sources tell ESPN.

Houston isn't playing around and they are going to be tougher to play against this season.

monsterpile wrote:

60WinTim wrote:Dang! There goes Luc... Is there anyone else Houston does not have?!? It seems like they are signing someone every other day!

Chris Haynes?Verified account @ChrisBHaynes 11m11 minutes ago
Free agent Luc Mbah a Moute has reached an agreement with the Houston Rockets, league sources tell ESPN.

Houston isn't playing around and they are going to be tougher to play against this season.

They traded away seven guys for CP3, so they've got plenty of roster spots!

Seriously though, that team looks like it'll be good next year. CP3, Harden, Ariza, Anderson, Capela. Plus they've still got Gordon, Nene (not bad last year), and now Tucker and LRMAM. Tarik Black isn't too bad either. I'd almost hesitate to add Carmelo to that mix, depending on what they'd have to give up to get him. That was such a good offensive team last year, and now they added CP3, Tucker, and LRMAM, all of whom are good defenders. Yeesh.

OKC should also be a significantly better team next year. San Antonio might get taken down a couple notches this year. I'm hoping our additions plus further growth from Wiggins and Towns can possibly put us into that conversation as well but we'll see. It's gonna be tough out west.

SameOldDrew wrote:

monsterpile wrote:

60WinTim wrote:Dang! There goes Luc... Is there anyone else Houston does not have?!? It seems like they are signing someone every other day!

Chris Haynes?Verified account @ChrisBHaynes 11m11 minutes ago
Free agent Luc Mbah a Moute has reached an agreement with the Houston Rockets, league sources tell ESPN.

Houston isn't playing around and they are going to be tougher to play against this season.

They traded away seven guys for CP3, so they've got plenty of roster spots!

Seriously though, that team looks like it'll be good next year. CP3, Harden, Ariza, Anderson, Capela. Plus they've still got Gordon, Nene (not bad last year), and now Tucker and LRMAM. Tarik Black isn't too bad either. I'd almost hesitate to add Carmelo to that mix, depending on what they'd have to give up to get him. That was such a good offensive team last year, and now they added CP3, Tucker, and LRMAM, all of whom are good defenders. Yeesh.

OKC should also be a significantly better team next year. San Antonio might get taken down a couple notches this year. I'm hoping our additions plus further growth from Wiggins and Towns can possibly put us into that conversation as well but we'll see. It's gonna be tough out west.

Actually they have a bunch of guys on their roster still and some of them have non-guaranteed which the Dunc'd on guy term "the human trade exception" lol It will be interesting where some of those guys end up either in a Melo trade or getting cut or dealt in another trade.

As for trading for Melo...I don't know if it's a good idea or not. However if they can somehow figure out a way to dump that Ryan Anderson contract which looks kinda bad that may be a good move in and of itself even though he can play. It will be interesting to see how their roster shapes up teams (and some players) aren't just giving up to the Warriors and it's great to see.

Morey is a heck of a PBO. He signs Tucker for $8.3 million per year then signs Luc at the vet minimum of about $2.5 million per year for one year. Both of those guys for $10.8 million per year. Compare that to Taj at $14 million per year and Crawford for $4.3 million, totaling $18.3 million per year. I'd take Tucker and Luc on their contracts in a heartbeat over the two we have. In fact, I would have preferred Luc at $7 million per year, leaving another $7 million to sign CJ Miles. I think Luc is as good a defender as Taj. Moreover, Luc is a better perimeter shooter and two years younger.

Note that, even with Jimmy Butler, we haven't become a FA destination and we're not getting any bargains or discounts from FAs. Even the fact that Taj once played for Thibs didn't get him here on a discount. According to Doogie, we had to offer Taj more that OKC to get him here. I really doubt anyone was going to offer Teague more than we're paying him.

It's tough to build an NBA championship contender here. You absolutely have to do it primarily through the draft, supplemented if possible, by a good trade. And then you have to find those diamonds in the rough in free agency -- G-Leaguers or Euro prospects. Further, when you find them, you have to convince them to sign here over other alternatives for the minimum salary.

lipoli390 wrote:Morey is a heck of a PBO. He signs Tucker for $8.3 million per year then signs Luc at the vet minimum of about $2.5 million per year for one year. Both of those guys for $10.8 million per year. Compare that to Taj at $14 million per year and Crawford for $4.3 million, totaling $18.3 million per year. I'd take Tucker and Luc on their contracts in a heartbeat over the two we have. In fact, I would have preferred Luc at $7 million per year, leaving another $7 million to sign CJ Miles. I think Luc is as good a defender as Taj. Moreover, Luc is a better perimeter shooter and two years younger.

Note that, even with Jimmy Butler, we haven't become a FA destination and we're not getting any bargains or discounts from FAs. Even the fact that Taj once played for Thibs didn't get him here on a discount. According to Doogie, we had to offer Taj more that OKC to get him here. I really doubt anyone was going to offer Teague more than we're paying him.

It's tough to build an NBA championship contender here. You absolutely have to do it primarily through the draft, supplemented if possible, by a good trade. And then you have to find those diamonds in the rough in free agency -- G-Leaguers or Euro prospects. Further, when you find them, you have to convince them to sign here over other alternatives for the minimum salary.

Good points Lip. I see the glass being a bit more half full though by shifting the point of comparison away from one of the other 29 teams in the league to our own history and the rest of the teams.

The Morey signings are good for the price, and I agree we're not a highly-respected franchise (yet), but I wouldn't dismiss our offseason because Morey got a couple of good deals. We might not have gotten great deals on our free agents, but when was the last time any decent free agents signed with us, for any price? Rush and Aldrich aren't that good. Prince and Andre Miller were basically retired. Kirilenko? Maybe, but he wasn't really considered to be that good. I literally cannot think of any other decent free agents who have signed here. Brandon Roy's bone-on-bone knees were already shot when he signed with us.

Can anybody think of an offseason when we improved as much through free agency? In Teague, Gibson, and Crawford, we got a starting PG, a possible starting PF, and an aging but still potent scorer off the bench. All through free agency.

We've been the laughingstock of the league for over a decade now. David Kahn (ugh, it hurts just typing that guy's name), Kurt Rambis, our post-KG history is just embarrassing. And we have to face it, regardless of how much you might love the state, to many basketball players, Minnesota looks like a boring, white, rural backwater. The fan base is tepid (how many small, quiet crowds have visiting NBA players heard at Target Center now?), and more broadly, Minnesota sports teams attract a pretty casual suburban fan base. We're not quite Utah or OKC or maybe Indiana or Sacramento in terms of undesirability of location, but it's bad, and at least Utah and OKC have more rabid fan bases for basketball. Maybe you could throw Detroit and Cleveland and Orlando into that list on par with us, but at least Detroit and Cleveland have more black people (if they'd have called us the Minneapolis Wolves we might have been somewhat better off in terms of perception), and Orlando is warm. San Antonio isn't great, but they win so much it doesn't matter. Given the challenges of the perception of Minnesota, we have less room for error when it comes to winning, and sadly, all we've done since KG left has basically been committing errors. No wonder we haven't attracted a decent free agent (that I can think of) in over a decade. We haven't made the playoffs in 12, check that, 13 years, the second longest streak in history.

This summer, we got three. They're not perfect, but they're pretty good, and it's clear that without Thibs and Butler, we would not have signed 3 pretty good players. It's arguably not as good as getting the deals Morey got, but I'd say it's a huge step forward, and at least we're not dealing with front office insanity like the Knicks or Cavs, locking up insane money on mediocre players like Portland, or starting the downward spiral like Indiana and Atlanta. And that's the other point of comparison I think we need to make to be fair to our front office. Boston and the Rockets did well, as did OKC with the Patterson deal, and I kind of like Utah's offseason (if you ignore losing their best player!), but other than that, who did a better job this summer in free agency?

So to me, I feel a bit better about the direction this team is heading in terms of its perception in the league and its ability to build in multiple ways moving forward.

We're also in different stages of development to Houston. We can't expect free agents will take a significant discount with us because they think might put us over the top and counted with us. That's the main reason free agents take discounts (I still don't understand the Patterson contract with OKC).

We're making good steps progressing towards being a much better team that may be in a position to contend in a couple of years. At this stage, it's clear that we're improving. I'm not sure it's realistic to expect much more than that.

Remember last season, when Houston were an 8 seed coming off a 41-41 season, they didn't have guys signing for bargain contracts. They were giving Ryan Anderson a 4 year $80 million contract.

In that regard, the relatively short contracts that are not too onerous can look great over the next couple of years.