Nick Young

Last year, Nick Young won an NBA title and earned $5,192.000 for his troubles. He never played all that huge of a role for the Warriors, appearing in 100 games overall but playing in only 10 minutes per game in the playoffs, and although he hit his open threes well (the main if not only thing he was brought in for), he did typically little else but that. This is a shooter's league and Young is a shooter, but as a shooter with a sideshow and little to no interest in doing anything else, Young limits himself and his desirability.

Nick Young
SG/SF - 6’7, 210lbs - 33 years old - 11 years of experience

Ostensibly, Nick Young was brought to Golden State to hit three-point jump shots. And considering he hit them at 37.7% as a total mark on the regular season, it is essentially mission accomplished, at least on the face of it. That number is down slightly on the 40% he had hit last year, but it was still pretty good.

However, in previous seasons, Young had been a successful shooter on account of the volume of shots that he took. Young’s whole deal is being able to hit a lot of three-pointers, often of the difficult variety. He does not have an all-around game beyond this facet; Young rarely drives, does not create for others, and does not play good perimeter defence. The only way he justifies being a big minute NBA player is to take a lot of jump shots.

To do so in Golden State meant knowing how to operate within their intricate past, cut and move system. Young did not. Instead, as ever, he just mostly stood there, on the wings and in the corners, waiting for a chance to shoot. You make your own luck in this world; Nick Young didn't.

As a result, his numbers were down across the board; he attempted fewer shots, hit them less well, attempted fewer foul shots and passed for fewer assists despite being in a pass-friendly system. His offensive margins are so small that he could not afford to lose fractions, and his defence, as ever, was below par.

All told, then, this was not really mission accomplished for Young. Others could have done what he did, and for less.

Player Plan: Expiring $5,192,000 remaining. If there is room or need to bring him back, make it for the minimum, yet it probably makes more sense to just give this spot to Jacob Evans.

Nick Young
SG/SF, 6’7, 210lbs, 32 years old, 10 years of experience

Young is getting more and more one dimensional each season, as evidenced by a .665% three-point rate this past season. Yet with the long twos basically all now three-pointers, and going in at a 40.4% rate despite the degree of difficulty of some of them, that's OK. Even played some defence, recording 3.2 defensive win shares, up significantly from 0.1 the previous year. It could of course all just have been a contract year push. Now aged 32, any big contract should be a short one, especially if he's being paid for that level of defence.

Player Plan: Expiring $5,443,918 contract. Take whatever sign-and-trade value there is out there, which is probably nothing but worth asking after. If there isn’t any to be found, a one year contract for a reasonable pay rise would be fine, but he probably wants the security of multiple years that he ought not to get here.

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So saturated can this market be, however, that anyone can benefit. And even non-competitive teams have done so this summer. The Wizards may have facilitated their playoff push with the overly maligned Al Harrington, who if he can have a clean run of health, surely won’t have lost his ability to score. The Mavericks might have done it twice – in addition to the redeemable Blair, they also returned Devin Harris, whose star may have long burned out but who nevertheless will be one of the better backup point guards in the league. And the Lakers might have done it more than twice – Nick Young, Jordan Farmar, and even Shawne Williams have higher talent levels than their price tags indicate.

In the past four NBA seasons, there have been 208 occasions on which a player has scored 40 or more points - regular season and playoffs combined. Fifty-seven players have combined for those 208 outbursts, including such unlikely names such as Luis Scola, C.J. Watson and C.J. Miles.

Most of the players are stars, or were stars at the time. Many still are. But some of those players have fallen from this intermittent grace so badly that they now only earn the minimum salary.

Despite their proven potency, Nick Young, Al Harrington, Anthony Morrow, Aaron Brooks and Michael Beasley are now earning as little as a player can - in the case of Beasley, not one dollar of this minimum is even guaranteed. This was agreed to less than three calendar years from his 42-point game, quite the backwards progression.