Kris Humphries

Kris Humphries
PF/C, 6’9, 235lbs, 32 years old, 13 years of experience

Left out of the rotation come playoff time but a useful contributor in the regular season prior. Showed an improvement in his three-point shot, which may be his most valuable asset going forwards as his athleticism declines and his impact around the rim defensively becomes less than it already is. He has kept his defensive rebounding rates up, however, and so as a glass cleaner, trailer option and pick-and-pop/roll player, he has some use as a third stringer in the short term.

Player Plan: Expiring $4 million contract. Useful stretch third stringer but the money has better value elsewhere. Also a bit redundant with Muscala.

History has done what it loves to do best and repeated itself.

Utah headed into this summer with almost two maximum salaries worth of cap flexibility, and yet they made no effort to sign players with it. Almost as quickly as free agency began, Utah committed to burning their cap space on the Warriors’s castoffs, Andris Biedrins and Richard Jefferson, a combined $20 million cap hit with some first rounders to offset the cost. Burning $20 million of cap space on Biedrins, Jefferson and Brandon Rush is about as identical to burning $20 million of cap space on Gugliotta, Rice and Clark as you can get.

The difference is, or should be, the end result. The 2003 edition of this strategy culminated in the 2004 draft selections of Kris Humphries, Kirk Snyder and Pavel Podkolzin. Snyder went to a psychiatric hospital, Humphries lasted two seasons before being traded for Rafael Araujo, while Pavel lasted about seven minutes before being traded for a pick that later became Linas Kleiza. Stocking up all the assets meant nothing when said assets were wasted – with Kirilenko (and, to an extent, Boozer and Okur) taking up all the cap flexibility without living up to the money, and the supposed young core not working out, the 2004-05 season that followed was much worse than the one which was designed to be bad. A wasted season had to follow before Deron Williams arrived and the rebuild finally began.

This time, it’s different. It is the same situation, but it’s not. This time, Utah have gotten the young quality BEFORE hoarding the cap space.

Other than the rebounding, defense and lack of passing, Bargnani played well. So did his future replacement, Ed Davis, who was active, under control, and productive. For the Nets, Deron Williams controlled the game, while Damion James worked hard on either end and was rewarded. Lopez put forward about 25 times more effort on offense than he did on defense, and Kris Humphries continued his year-long impression of a poor man's Blake Griffin with the kind of effort, strength, shot selection and athleticism that will see him inevitably corral a full MLE deal in the offseason.

As has been the case all season, Humphries played fantastically. He went and got the ball on both ends, made shots without dominating possessions, defended fairly effectively, ran the court, and rebounded in the way that has become his custom. Vujacic also contributed his one trick to the game, looking like the worrying shooter he was for one season as a Laker. He still has his liabilities with everything that isn't jumpshooting, but he's good enough as a jumpshooter to contribute. Maybe Humphries is having a contract year. Maybe Sasha is, too. It wouldn't be a first for him. Or maybe they're just both recipients of the kind of opportunity they sorely needed before. Either way, the pair are proving useful pickups, and a good way of demonstrating how cap space doesn't have to be used on overpaying free agents. Both were acquired in salary dumps. (And in Dallas's case, it was quite the whoopsy. Humphries was traded by the Mavericks for Eduardo Najera, purely as a means of ridding the contract of Shawne Williams. Any argument that he was surplus to requirements due to the presence of Dirk Nowitzki is somewhat undermined in the knowledge that Steve Novak, Alexis Ajinca and Brian Cardinal have all logged PF minutes for Dallas this season. Still, everybody makes mistakes.)

By the way, look at the money in the power forward market so far. Players like Amare Stoudemire, Dirk Nowitzki and Chris Bosh will be getting max money, or at least close to it. Other players such as Carlos Boozer and David Lee will get paychecks upwards of 8 figures a year, and others on the market such as Drew Gooden and Amir Johnson have already been overpaid. This, therefore, begs an obvious question: why the hell didn't Kris Humphries opt out?