Holy. Cow.
I knew the cap was increased or whatever and we were expecting to see big numbers but sheesh!
$16mil/yr (4 yrs) for Mosgov’s 17minutes (6ppg, 4reb)
or
$18mil/yr (4 yrs) for Joakim Noah? After an injured season where he put up 4 ppg? (I know hes a good defensive player but dang)
or
$28mil/yr (5 yrs) for DeRozan? He’s good but not THAT good!
I guess that market pays…I shoulda worked on my Free Throw shooting more as a kid!
Whiteside’s deal is another noteworthy one. Going from <$1 million/year to ~$25 million/year must feel pretty good.
I knew these were coming when there was all the criticism of Reggie Jackson’s contract last summer. He’s looking like a complete steal now. Which most Pistons fans knew would happen.
I mean it’s still not a steal when they could have had him for less. In my opinion you can’t just look at any contract that looks low compared to the ones signed recently and instantly say they’re good. You have to compare them to the market at the time they signed them.
You don’t know that they could have had him for less though. It’s was a seamless transition, everyone’s happy and that’s a part of it. No need to drag on negotiations over a mill or two per year. They weren’t going to sign him for $10M a year or anything.
Who says he would have signed for less? SVG deal was made with the market in mind. These things aren’t done in a vacuum.
Anyways, He played well for us, we gave him an offer to show our respect for the job he did for us and he has paid us back in kind. If we offered less, he would have wanted a 2 year deal or something short term. Then we’d have to pay him 20+ million at minimum for the next contract. He’s a steal for the contract he is on. And will be for the remainder of it. And the one or two million less he hypothetically would have gotten elsewhere doesn’t really mean anything as the cap continues to go up. If we offered less, you risk losing him and attempt to get an equal player in the draft or free agency. The latter would have been more costly. Easily a steal.
It really doesn’t matter how much he would sign for. What makes a deal good is how much money you pay for how good he is. Being a restricted free agent, there really wasn’t a reason to go out and make the first offer like that (whereas everyone knew Drummond would get the max so that doesn’t really matter). Wait and see what the other teams offer and then just match that. The 3 most similar players I could find to Jackson are Jrue Holiday, Eric Bledsoe and Kemba Walker. They are all exactly 26 years old and had similar PER’s (theirs were actually higher than Jackson’s). Their salaries averaged together are $11.7 million. Jackson is making $16.5 Million, which is Russell Westbrook and Kyrie Irving level. Hell, Kyle Lowry is only making $12 million. I don’t see any world in which Reggie Jackson’s contract can be considered a good deal for the level of player he is and what those types of players were getting at the time.
All those guys signed contracts a year or more before Jackson did (and none have a significantly higher PER). Ask what they’d be getting if they signed exertions or new contracts at the same time Jackson did or this offseason or the next. Probably significantly more. Jackson is just as good as those guys and he’ll most likely be making less than them by the time they sign their next ones. And Jackson was already proven to work with the Pistons roster. So why risk signing anyone else. Who else do you think they should have gotten?
SVG also wants to reward Jackson for what he did for us. We also needed to grab him so we’d have a better shot of keeping Dre long term. If we let Jackson go or Jackson is unhappy with us, Dre isn’t going to like how we’re being run and look to get out when he can. Instead, he’s got a great partner in the PnR and we’ll probably keep him for the relatively long term. We’ve got him for four more seasons and have much better roster flexibility than if we’d have tried to find a FA this offseason or the next.
Either way, I originally said it’s looking like a steal now. I never said it was a steal last offseason. It is now, unequivocally. If I get a a brand new Escalade for $20,000, it’s a steal. If someone down the street was selling the same make and model for $18,000, it doesn’t mean that I didn’t get a steal. Even though we could have gotten Jackson for 1 or two million less, it doesn’t mean we still don’t have a steal now. We do. And it’s gonna look even better next season and probably until his contract runs out.
I typically agree with your takes, but I think you’re wrong here. Westbrook signed his contract in 2012. The salary cap and understanding of future salary caps was completely different. And Jackson is making $2m less per year than Irving. Irving had a great Finals series, but he still has his shortcomings. Irving and Jackson are both ~ 19 and 5 guys who have some weaknesses in their games. The Jackson contract is a pretty good contract in the present–which should be all that matters.
I’ll answer both bacon and alum here:
Them signing their contracts a year before Jackson doesn’t really do anything to my point. Jackson makes $5 million more than their average when the salary cap only increased during that time by $4 million. These guys aren’t the only players on their teams, so obviously that extra cap would be expected to be spread around. With all that taken into account, it would be reasonable for Jackson to make about $1 million more than their average for it to be on par as a contract. Unfortunately that’s not true.
Complete and total straw man. Here is what I said about the PER’s: “They are all exactly 26 years old and had similar PER’s.” That’s nice that you can reiterate my point that they are similar players, though. Thanks!
Ok? But for 4 years of Jackson’s contract those guys will have made on average $5 million less for a total of $20 million per player. I highly doubt that each of those guys is going to make a mythical $36.5 million per year in their new contracts to cover that cost.
Ugh, another straw man. When did I say they should have gotten someone else exactly? I believe the specific quote I said was, “Wait and see what the other teams offer and then just match that.” I’m not sure what that sentence means to you…
What exactly did he do for us that requires you to mention it here? He didn’t get us to the playoffs that first season (which was admittedly impossible) or did anything spectacular. I mean we traded for him, it’s not like he even chose to come here in the first place. Also, do you have any quote from Drummond saying he would be more willing to sign long term here if we had Reggie?
This last paragraph’s logic doesn’t make sense, and your analogy is faulty. If everyone is buying their Escalade for $20,000 at the time and you went out and bought one for $30,000 then your analogy would be correct, but that wouldn’t prove anything, would it? Even if Escelades went up to $35,000 the next year you’d still be out $10,000 from what you could have gotten it for.
Actually, the salary cap from 2010-2014 stayed exactly the same at $58 million. I think I said the jump from 2014-2015 would be worth about $1-2 million for a star point guard. Do you really think Westbrook is only worth $1-2 million more?
Yeah, I’m gonna have to call you out on this one. I said he was at Irving and Westbrook level, not exactly at the same salary. Even if it was $2 million (which it isn’t, it’s about $1.2 million, I’m not sure where you got $2 million from) it’s a lot closer to Irving than it is to the similar players who I compared him to. I mean the year before Irving’s new contract his PER was 21.5 and the year before Jackson’s contract his PER was 17.2. Jackson getting it up to about 19.5 this past season was a good step but I’d rather have a player outperforming his at the time good contract than one trying to work up to his at the time overpaid contract.
I’ll use my quote refuting Bacon again here: “Even if Escelades went up to $35,000 the next year you’d still be out $10,000 from what you could have gotten it for.”
Lets simplify this. If you wanted to get a player of Reggie Jackson’s caliber this offseason, what would you have to pay?
More than his 17.5. He’s on a steal of a contract. Who signed for what before him is irrelevant. No similar player signed the same offseason as him. So no one was selling their escalates for 20k.
At this moment in time, the contract looks like a steal to me.
A steal of a contract means you save the most money possible. Detroit didn’t do that. If that’s not what a good contract means to you then no rational argument will change your opinion.
I guess we just fundamentally disagree about what a steal is. I think it’s when a player of a certain quality is on smaller contract than what he’d earn on the market right now or what similar quality players would make on the market. Reggie Jackson would be signing for more than $20 million if he were a FA right now. SVG and Co made the deal with that in mind. That’s why when people were flipping out about SVG overpaying for him last offseason, I didn’t care. Because I knew with the cap going up, the contract would look just fine after a year or two. So as long as Jackson continues to play at a near all-star level and makes less than what most fringe all stars make on the open market, it’s a steal IMO.
So if Conley is a 30mil/yr player…what’s Durant going to cost? Or next year’s FAs?
Gotta imagine KD will be highest paid player in NBA. Question is by how much. $10 million more? I haven’t looked at any guesses from analysts though.
Which team do you guys think has had the best offseason thus far?
This stuff is getting out of control. Look at contracts for guys like Tyler Johnson, Cole Aldrich, Mozgov, Kent Bazemore (4 years 70 million, really?). I mean, you guys already know the names, but the problem with all this is that ultimately the owners are going to pass these costs to the consumer, and in addition, ultimately the product as a whole will suffer as rosters are filled out with nobodies and players lose motivation to improve.
Otherwise, great time to be an NBA player though; any player.
Celtics. Pull Horford, Jaylen Brown and now a realistic shot at KD
Not sure how exactly you foresee this happening… So GM’s will suddenly lose the will to win and fill their rosters with bad players? And how does this cause good players to stop improving?
Has nothing to do with will to win. There is still a cap, and if you overpay marginal players at best, you won’t be able to afford to sign good ones and in some cases keep the ones you have once their contract expires.