LABron James Discussion: What Next?

So the rumours are he opts in to his player option.

It’s an interesting development, I was hoping he’d opt out and sign a 2 or a 3 year deal for less per year with player options along the way.

Effectively it means we won’t be able to get enough cap space to use the MLE at 14m per and instead will contend with the 5.7m TPMLE. I think that rules out players like NAW or Steven Adams.

 

Yeah no way NAW is available at that price. Was watching the WCF and he would be a really great fit to our roster. Long, athletic, quick, good defender and spot up shooter with some skills around the basket to attack the paint, it's a shame.
I would even move AR to the 6th man role if it's what it would take to convince him


Btw, him opting in means he's an expiring next year together with almost the whole roster (bar Luka and Vando) which means we will have a ton of cap space and is our best way out of Bron's window.
It may change depending on trades though

 

if he opts in, i think that means he thinks there's a good chance this is it. which makes sense. and beyond the mle stuff, it affects team-building in that i think we take on zero salary past this year, as we'll have a ton of space in the summer if lebron retires or walks.

i probably prefer him opting in to another 1+1 PO deal, tbh. i don't like his whims hanging over the head of the front office every single summer.

anyway, he's giving up a lot of power by opting in.

 

you think so? i'm not sure the mle market is going to have a top-8 playoff rotation player in it that won't be available at tpmle. but we'll see. i think the lack of 2nd apron wiggle room could be an issue, but i also think DFS lost himself some money in the playoffs, so we could gain some space there with an opt-out and extension at slightly lower annual salary.

i guess i've never viewed the full mle as the most likely path to improvement this summer.

 

I think there's a big difference between the two MLE's. You can get a 6th man at the MLE, maybe even a modest 3&D player like NAW. For the TPMLE, you're looking at a bench piece thats either an 8th or 9th man.

 

LeBron IMO isn't focussing on any farewell tour this year, regardless of what he signs for. It will probably be like the rumor last year and if someone juicy is available, a big MAYBE he'd try to help get the full MLE open. Will wait strategically on that while free agency shapes up. But Bryce will be coming out next year and who here thinks LeBron doesn't want at least ONE year with the trifecta of them in the league together, whether Bryce lands elsewhere or not. Just my opinion but who thinks he's going to short change Bryce with not sticking around for some kind of the same family coolness that Bronny experienced this year, and Bryce has more upside simply due to size. LeBron's not going to all of a sudden not still be useful on the team and has alluded to the possibility last year I think that he might have multiple years still to play.

 

do the data really support this? i'd argue that for the most part, teams use bird right to cut just over the mle for top-7 type players (like we'll probably do with DFS). leaving the exceptions for, as you say, 8th guys and lower. and honestly, you're lucky to get an 8th guy at either exception.

a lot of teams don't even use the mle fully when they have it. you can see a lot of teams just use it to sign above minimum players to longer team-friendly deals. good idea, but it's just not a great tool for adding to your playoff rotation, imo.

last few years, i guess ddv and djj were signed using full mle, but like, keon ellis was signed using tpmle. if you look across most of these signings, the vet min pool probably generated as many hits.

kelly oubre, naji marshall--all useful players that don't unseat any of our top 5 (luka/lebron/reaves/rui/dfs), nor really qualify as a top-7 playoff rotation guy (mayyyybe djj?) and that's the BEST of the signings.

lebron would supposedly have given up his money for valanciunas at the mle (i still doubt this, but whatever)--how we feeling about that idea a year later?

tpmle may get us an 8th-9th guy. at best. my dream for it is a declining capela. but i'm not sure full mle dreams are much loftier.

our best chance at nabbing a 6th man type is being opportunistic on these large trades that are going down, imo.

edit: and this may be really unpopular, but i'm not sure that using the tpmle to do an agent we like a favor (i.e., overpaying a guy who's heading for a vet min) is a bad use of that money. lonnie walker was like that, i think. maybe we work with a different group than klutch and try to get some in-roads for back scratches.

 

NAW was the one guy I saw as a great potential full MLE option, he'd be perfect as the primary backup to Luka and Austin at both guard positions and maybe even a starter if we wanted to bring Reaves off the bench. But he probably wasn't signing for that anyway.

 

minny is about the full MLE's amount under the 2nd apron. that's with reid and randle at their current numbers (15 and 30, respectively). it feels like something will have to give, but they'd be better off s&t ing one of them for a lower return than just letting them walk into someone's exception.

again, we'll see. maybe i'll be surprised. there just hasn't been a lot of big impact players moving for the mle. really, ever? maybe when we signed artest?

 

Yup, and the Artest signing in the summer of 2009 feels like a relic of another era. You just don't see high-end role players signing with contenders for less like that anymore. Now, their teams just resign them for $20 million-ish and dangle them in front of contenders during the season.

 

You're also viewing the MLE from the prism of older CBA's and saying, well generally there hasn't been any good MLE signings. But I believe moving forward, these exceptions are going to be much more crucial in team building with how disincentivised teams are going to be to operate above the 2nd tax apron. One likely outcome of the new CBA is; I think some good players are just going to have to settle for the MLE in the future rather than signing for above it as teams just won't mess around with the repeater tax. So the middle ground of salaries will be adjusted down from around 150% of the MLE (think Rui as an example) to MLE levels.

Another point I would say is, the average wage in the NBA is below the MLE. Here are some players currently in that 15-10m mark that the MLE could encompass:

- Klay Thompson
- Grayson Allen
- PJ Washington
- Max Strus
- Isaiah Stewart
- DFS
- Mitchell Robinson
- Jordan Clarkson
- Gafford
- Grant Williams
- Schroder
- Obi Toppin
- DeAnthony Melton (probably heading for the vet min)
- Adams
- Bobby Portis
- Timelord
- DDV
- NAW
- Terrance Mann
- Thybulle
- Chris Paul
- Alex Caruso
- DJJ
- Horford

Some of these guys are old, some will go for more than the MLE, some will go for less - but thats the level of player that is currently around that salary. I think in the future thats going to be the use case of the MLE - a somewhat 5th to 7th rotation guy on the team that is a good role player. The TPMLE on the other hand will be used for the next level down, or ageing ring chasers that don't want the minimum. Both are useful for the MLE more so since, the tax payers version is going to be 40% of its bigger brothers salary size.

 

yeah, i'll need to see it. i just keep seeing teams re-up their guys at just over mle to avoid losing an asset for nothing, rendering the mle pretty useless as a team-building tool. almost always an overpay, almost always on an aging player on his way out.

the league saw this and made it usable as a trade exception, which i like, but even that has only yielded modest gains so far.

again, so much of this stuff is theory. is boston really going to pay to get off guys to avoid tax payments. we're about to find out. i'm dubious. franchises keep selling for more. no owners but ours and like, charlotte's, are counting the till as it's coming in.

and all that said. the list above doesn't inspire me much anyway. trades are the route. or using the back end of the roster to develop players more efficiently than we have been. so then we have their bird rights and can pre-empt their mle signings.

 

Wait a second, Adams, NAW, Strus, Clarkson, Portis or Gafford don’t interest you for our team?
All of those players are significantly better than all of our bench players.
There’s no need to mention The Eagle since he’s going to be in OKC for many years to come.