lipoli390 wrote:SameOldNudityDrew wrote:First, I wouldn't be surprised if they still move DLO this offseason. In his press conference yesterday, Connelly almost seemed to indicate an interest in making another significant move this offseason, at one point checking with another front office guy before saying something, and then basically saying he shouldn't say any more. I might have misread that, but if they are looking to make another significant move, it's tough to imagine that wouldn't include DLO. And if we're not going to extend him, it makes sense to move him this offseason to get something in return.
But even as an admitted DLO skeptic, I am starting to think it might make sense to extend him for three reasons, the last of which is probably the most important.
1) I used to really dislike DLO because he's overpaid and he doesn't bring toughness or defense and I always thought he was immature, but last year he really changed my mind by improving as an off-ball defender and even as a bit of a vocal leader. He really was a better player last year, even though he did not have a very good playoff series. I still think he's way overpaid, but he was better than I thought last year.
2) With Gobert here, I think he could be more valuable than in the past because he should be very good at hitting Gobert with lobs, and Gobert also helps make his defensive weaknesses more manageable. It's definitely possible he increases his value this season as Cam suggests. If we can extend him at his market value now, it's reasonable to bet his value may go up next year and that contract will be a better deal, either for us, or for us to trade.
3) Locking him into an extension now could give us an asset to trade in the future, and ironically, could even give us the cap flexibility we'd need to stay competitive if the owners are willing to go into the tax. As I understand the rules once a team is over the cap, you can't just sign a free agent when you are over the cap without using one of the exceptions, which are fairly limited. But you can still trade contracts. So let's say we extend DLO for a couple more years at 25 million. Personally, I still think that's a couple million more than what his actual market value would likely be if he were a free agent this summer, but it could look like a decent deal next summer. In that case, even if he doesn't turn out to be a good fit for us, we'd probably be able to trade him next summer or the summer after that to bring in another player making within 15% of making 25 million. As I understand it, if we just let his contract expire, we wouldn't be able to sign a free agent outside of our exceptions since we'll probably still be over the cap next offseason because of KAT and Rudy's contracts. But if we have DLO under contract, we could trade him for somebody who could help us, assuming we still wouldn't want DLO after this year. Does this make sense? In other words, extending DLO at something like 25 million for a couple extra years might be a bit of an overpay, but in part what we'd be paying for is the opportunity to assemble a roster that can (if we choose to do so) have a payroll that goes way over the cap. That ability to spend a lot of money despite being over the cap could end up being pretty valuable to keeping this team as competitive as possible. If I'm misunderstanding how this works with the cap, could somebody explain it to me? Like I'm a child. Or a golden retriever.
Drew - Your last point is what I meant by the Gobert deal changing the DLO calculus. The lack of financial flexibility and trade assets caused by the Gobert deal will make it much harder to bring in a solid point guard replacement for DLO because the Wolves would have to rely on salary cap exceptions. The biggest cap exception is the MLE, which starts at around $10.3 million this year and will probably go up a bit next summer. That's pretty limiting. And it probably means the Wolves will be more inclined to keep and perhaps slightly overpay DLO. The problem with paying DLO even slightly over market value is that it makes it even harder to trade what appears to be a player without a lot of trade value to begin with. This is just one of the ways the Gobert deal downsides will play out over the years.
Yeah, that all makes sense to me. The size of the Gobert contract in combination with KAT's and Ant's upcoming max deal basically incentivizes us to extend DLO now (assuming we don't trade him this offseason) because regardless of whether or not we want to keep him, having that contract as a tradable asset on the books would be the most obvious way we could actually do anything more than have 3 max guys (Rudy, KAT, and Ant) plus the exceptions and vet minimum contracts.
I think I see this as a bit more of a half-full glass though.
First, if Connelly does extend DLO, he will certainly have to have gotten permission from the owners because it will eventually take us into the tax. Assuming they've said yes, that means we have an ownership group that is willing to spend to win, and not all teams can say that. And the truth is that if we want to compete these days, I think we really need ownership willing to pay luxury tax and possibly even the repeater tax. So extending DLO might make it tricky to trade him (more on that in a bit), but it would be evidence to us that we have something far more valuable than a fair contract for our starting PG and 4th or 5th best player. It would be proof that our owners are willing to pay to win.
Second, I'm a bit more optimistic we could actually move DLO, especially if it is a 25 million dollar extension for just 2-3 years. The cap is going up, he did show improvement this past year, and there are reasons to think Gobert's fit with him will make him a more valuable player on both ends. I think it's pretty safe to think that would is fairly likely to be viewed as a pretty fair contract to one of the other 29 teams next season, therefore making it pretty tradable. If not, of course we could add a sweetener, though we're obviously a bit low on sweeteners at this point! Still, even if we take as a given that we don't want DLO on the team long-term, if the goal is just to be able to just reserve that salary slot for a possible trade for a player who fits better, I don't think it's a very high risk that he so completely underperforms 25 million for 2 more years that we can't at least move that contract for a better fit. It's not ideal, but if it's 25 million, it would be less than we've been overpaying him the last couple years, and the benefit of being able to get another high value player(s) who we couldn't otherwise get because of the CBA rules would be worth it. Even if we don't find a deal for him next offseason and have to roll with him in 2023-24, in a sense, you could think of it like 20 million for DLO and 5 million for just keeping the right to essentially have the right to get another player in the next couple of years that you could pay up to 25 million (plus up to 15% more) that you otherwise couldn't pay because we'll likely be over the cap. I can kind of imagine it's like paying for a cap exception. If the owners are willing to do it, that's a win-win for us as fans!
I do see the potential logic in not extending him in hopes of dealing him next summer in a sign-and-trade, because that would be another route to getting a player with a similar salary regardless of our cap situation (depending on the timing, I think). But I'm a bit wary of that because I do honestly think there's a chance he just bolts next offseason for a short-term "prove it" kind of contract, and then we've lost that salary slot and we've really screwed ourselves from a cap situation.
D-Loser, I think there's real risk in telling his agent that he has to take a low-ball extension offer now or we won't work with him on sign-and-trades. First, that's a quick way to alienate a guy who, like it or not, will be our starting PG and KAT's best friend. In a crucial year like this, I think that's a bad idea. That would arguably be worse than what the Suns just did to Ayton or what the Mavs did to Brunson. Second, it also sends a bad message to agents about the way we'll deal with their players at a time when we're going into a crucial part of building our team in which it's mostly going to happen through free agents on exceptions. Third, what if he turns down the extension, has a good year (as is reasonable to assume with Gobert), and actually does get a decent offer next year and we lose him for nothing. Whatever you think of DLO (and I've been clear I'm not a huge fan) we'll have thrown away that valuable salary slot/space above the cap for nothing as I described at the end of that last paragraph.
Again, I still think there's a chance he gets traded this offseason. And we can quibble over whether we could have found a better "3rd max" guy than Gobert that would have put us in this financial position. But this is definitely better than being in a situation where, as we've been thinking the last year or two, KAT and DLO would be two of our max guys and Ant would eventually be the 3rd. In a sense, from a salary perspective, we just swapped out DLO's max for Gobert's max, which is obviously a great deal. And now, rather than lose the value of DLO's salary space for nothing, regardless of what you think of him as a player, I think we should take steps (trade him now or extend him) to ensure that we can at least use that salary space in the future, whether on DLO or on whomever we might eventually decide to trade him for. And I think that 23-25 million figure is something he might agree to that we could certainly move if and when the time arises.
And again, if the ownership is willing to pay that, it's basically a bonus. Because if they don't pay it, we'll be over the cap soon with Ant's max, and then we won't be able to add another player worth anything close to that figure. I don't think that would be too difficult a contract to move if we do sign it, and I do think the risk of losing him next offseason would be real if we played hardball with him and refused to extend him except for Beasley money and/or said we'd refuse to do a sign-and-trade.
