Rui Hachimura Discussion: Huge Buckets

Well its kind of a chicken or the egg situation because LeBron's decision will probably be impacted by what moves are available to us in the summer. If we just bring the band back together, I'm not sure he takes a pay cut to just play with the same team. At that point, maybe he does go to the Warriors to play with Steph or back to Cleveland. We need to sell him on a plan to make at least some modest improvements (i.e., we need to tamper before the moratorium like everyone else does).

 

Rui is the greatest post season shooter of all time. He isn't just great, he is a 52% shooter - and 71% on open looks. That's historically elite and it's not just this post season, we're talking 5 post seasons. Defensively, he tries alot harder in the post season too and is a +11 this year On/Off, even though we're losing 3-0 to OKC.

I'm signing Rui to 10% of the cap as our 7th man - which is about MLE money. I'm also bringing back Smart for something similar via non bird raises to 6.5m and Kennard on same non bird rights to room level money with Hayes at 4.5m. That's basically setting your whole bench alongside Adou for 38m and leaves you 160m to make the starting 5 work (10m or so goes to the deep bench guys).

I think thats an effective use of money and I'm happy for our bench to have two of the best shooters in the league (although low volume admittedly), a defensive standout in Smart, a young 3&D potential player in Adou and a decently athletic big in Hayes.

What we really need to do is figure out how to improve our starting 5.

 

i just feel like this is a MUCH bigger deal than you're suggesting, and may require moving on from current players we like.