Ian Mahinmi

Smith at the five spot and Meeks at off-guard represent deep bench depth for the Wizards, yet there is a reason both have been pushed out. In theory, both are shooting options on a team that could use some of those, particularly in the front court, but Smith lost his shot last season, and although he was relatively healthy all year, he barely featured in favour of two power forward line-ups. Meeks meanwhile featured a lot, but scored his fewest points and recorded his worst VORP since his rookie season, eight years ago. Troy Brown and Austin Rivers have been acquired to provide wing options for a reason, and while they are not the decent shooters that Meeks (normally) is, there is not enough in it to grant Meeks an automatic spot alone. With both players on expiring contracts and the Wizards considerably over the luxury tax thresholds, both seem unlikely to finish out these contracts; if they are not salary dumped, they will surely be bought out, and it is very likely they will actually endure both.

Mahinmi by contrast is not expiring, yet he like Biyombo above is a decent candidate for a Deng stretch. It is too late to stretch his salary for this season, and considering that doing so would have kept him on the books until 2023, it would not have been a good outcome for anyone involved other than the dodging of 2018/19 tax dollars (something that can be done in other ways if required, albeit with difficulty). He does however also have a large $15,450,051 salary for next season, fully guaranteed. It is already a large salary for a player who does not do many things, yet it is further made cumbersome by the fact that the Wizards have as-near-as-is $92.5 million committed already to John Wall, Bradley Beal and Otto Porter alone. At a time that they need to be financially prudent and to free up some spending money to improve a team that already looks fairly capped out, they are paying $15.5 million to a limited reserve. So if Mahinmi is prepared to give any of that back in order to speed up the stretching of his contract that seems quite likely to happen next summer anyway (and allow him to join a different, better team while remaining salary neutral), the Wizards will probably listen.

Ian Mahinmi
C, 6’11, 262lbs, 30 years old, 9 years of experience

An empty year to begin his absolutely massive contract, in which he managed only 555 regular season minutes and missed half the playoffs due to injury. He started the season absent due to injury in one knee and ended it missing time due to pain the other one. When he did play, Mahinmi was his solid, unremarkable self, a good combination of size and athleticism but with little ball skills, little offence and no ability to pair with Gortat. Mahinmi is a defensive-minded, decently rebounding energetic back-up centre, which is fine in a vacuum. But at that price, it is not fine.

Player Plan: Three years and a dollop over $48 million remaining, with no options. Not listed because it is thought in this space that he will have any value in trade, but because it is hoped for the team’s benefit that he does, so that his contract can be moved. The player is fine, but the contract is not, and while it is not worth Mozgoving at this stage, either he or Gortat will have to come to something, for that is a lot of money on three positions, with Porter still to pay.

[...] It soon becomes apparent that the "Must Improve" captions, which used to show up after a draftee's highlight video, are not in play this year. This is a shame, because they were hilarious. Nevertheless, with their demise, Ian Mahinmi's caption of "Must Improve: Overall Skills" can now never be surpassed. (Any intonation as to whether Mahinmi has really done that is in the mind of the viewer only.)

[...] Sometimes, such as in the case of Ian Mahinmi's second season, the contract is fully unguaranteed if not waived on or before June 30th, thereafter becoming fully guaranteed. Contracts with guarantee dates such as those are basically exactly the same as team options; however, the reason they are not done with team options is because of the reasons below.

2) Salaries for option years in contracts cannot be for a lesser salary than the salary of the previous season. But no such stipulation applies to unguaranteed years. One such example of this is with the recently expired contracts of Steve Blake and Travis Outlaw. Blake's contract paid $4.25 million in its first two seasons, dropping to $4 million in the final one; Outlaw's contract was $4 million for two seasons and then $3.6 mil for the third. By making the final seasons for the duo unguaranteed, even though they had June 30th guarantee dates that made them basically team options, the Blazers were able to use the lower salary trick.

3) Players can be traded from the minute a team's season ends, up until the start of the moratorium (so for lottery teams, that's mid April until the end of June.) This is how draft night trades are allowed to happen. However, players can only be traded if they're not going to be free agents that summer, or if they have no options that would allow them to become so. If they have an option, player or team, then that option must be exercised concurrent with the trade, and thus the player will not be a free agent. Teams can bypass this by making the final year an unguaranteed season, rather than an option year. This is how Erick Dampier was traded. It is also how Ryan Gomes was traded before free agency started.

It is customary for players to sign for 120% of the scale. In all the years I have done this [not including this year; more on that later], I only known of four players that haven't; Sergio Rodriguez (signed for 100%), George Hill (signed for 120% for the first two years, then 80% for the final two), Donte Greene (signed an incentive laden contract that he hasn't yet got up to 120%) and Ian Mahinmi (all over the show). More specifically, as mentioned above, it is customary for players to sign for a guaranteed 100% of the scale, whilst earning the last 20% in incentives.