NBA Off-season thread

First post on the thread, I'll try to make it a good one.
Just saw a report on ESPN News that the 2010-11 salary cap is going to be in the low $50 million range. That ought to throw a monkey wrench in some teams' plans.

 

Hmmm. Very good point, had forgotten about that. No Odom, and I put Spurs on top.

 

Gross. I think I just threw up in my mouth.

 

According to the wire stories I've seen tonight, Stern sent out an e-mail/memo to all teams that, yeah the cap may drop considerably after this season, so act accordingly. However, that has the union up in arms, because -- get this now -- that kind of talk may discourage some of the big money deals. REALLY?!?!?!? I bet Stern had no idea that could happen with that kind of warning [/bluefont]. Pretty sure that was the intent of the whole thing, preaching financial responsibility and all with a falling cap, instead of handing a, let's see here now, an 8 ppg player a six year, $50-mil deal. Absolute stupidity.

 

When it comes to contracts, "intelligence" and "NBA" have not exactly gone hand in hand.

 

or any other sport for that matter. Baseball comes to mind.

 

All of a sudden, all of the teams thinking they were making enough cap space to sign max contracts next year might be wrong. Although, I believe the max contract amount is related to the salary cap as a percentage, so that could affect the players also.

 

The world is not impressed.

 

Basically, what it's could prevent is a team signing two max players to deals, I would think, unless they wanted to pay out the nose in luxury taxes. And even if you sign one to a deal, if he's not your own free agent, you're likely going to have to put so many average to below-average players around him that it might not be worth his while to sign elsewhere.

 

I guess the deal is more like $42M plus incentives that could equal $50M. He was paid like $5.8M last year, so for him to get around $7M actually isn't that bad. It's a 20 percent pay increase for a dude that is fearless on defense and has good chemistry with LeBron.

 

The guy is a league-average PF, though, and I can't see him getting any better. The Cavs are rewarding him for his past performance, not taking into account his future production. Varajeo is the type of guy you replace every couple of years with a solid second round pick you've developed - Glen Davis, Leon Powe, Paul Millsap, that sort of player - as opposed to locking up for multiple years at relatively big money. While there is a chance the Cavs don't regret this contract, since Varajeo seems like a hard worker on the boards and what not, I think it's more likely that they regret it and try to move him after two or three years, like other contracts given to "middle class" NBA players.

 

I definitely see your point, but I also think it's a good move because their other two rotation bigs are old as dirt. Locking up a young guy who you know is going to give you solid minutes is paramount for a team in that situation. Like I said, their cap number on him only goes up 1.2 mil. It's not that big of a deal.