Players who may get bought out during the season
September 12th, 2018
Rosters are mostly set after this summer’s free agency period, and teams are just mostly now nibbling around the edge. Aside from a couple of training-camp decisions, most players are now on the teams they will be with through at last January, as rarely do teams make mid-season changes prior to that. Come January, though, and trade season will begin. Between then and the trade deadline at the start of February, many a player will be on notice, re-assignable at the drop of a hat as teams change and tweak directions based on the changing information throughout the first half. And then after that, in the time between the trade deadline and 1st March (a key date for player eligibility; if a player is on an NBA team’s roster at the end of that day, then that is the only team they can play for in the playoffs), some veteran players every season seem to get bought out, giving back money for the freedom to choose a team better suited for their needs, often going from a lottery team to a playoff team in the process. There follows a look at some of the players who may fall victim to the latter practice. Jeremy Lin, Atlanta Hawks Lin was acquired by the Hawks into cap space, without much in the way of sweetener going the other way. Normally, players traded into cap space are either very good or highly unwanted, and with the latter, a first-round pick (or more) is usually traded with their contract as sweetener. Not so with Lin, onto whom the Brooklyn Nets stuck only a 2025 second-round pick in moving him to Atlanta. Lin is an unlikely Hawk, a now-veteran reserve point guard without upside or team control on his contract, who nevertheless replaces Dennis Schroeder […]
The fourth and probably final part of the Tim Duncan/Zach Randolph contract saga
June 24th, 2014
Further to this, this and most recently this. In the last update, I explained how Tim Duncan had had his contract modified, but Zach Randolph had not. And yet what I could not explain was why Tim Duncan had had his contract modified, but Zach Randolph had not. Was it because simply no one had noticed, or because of some other technicality I could not otherwise foresee that made the otherwise identical situations different? Couldn’t say. Can now, though. It certainly wasn’t the former. Apparently the reason why Duncan’s contract (which he has opted into, thus transitioning this whole endeavour from being an interesting aside into something with a palpable if not exactly massive affect on the NBA landscape) was modified, but Randolph’s was not, is because Randolph’s was “too old”. This does not however mean that the fact it was signed under the 2005 CBA (and not the 2011 CBA like Duncan) played a part in this differentiation. Instead, I am told it instead merely means they took that as a legitimate reason for looking the other way, through avoiding the issue altogether, rather than having a technical reason for addressing it in this way. So, yeah. Zach, if you’re out there, and you’re planning on opting in and signing an extension…..start chasing this up. There could be a million dollars in it for you. (The very full details of what is being discussed here can be found at the previous links. Especially the first one.)
Tim Duncan did indeed get a pay rise
June 14th, 2014
This post is essentially the conclusion to a post from nearly two years ago, dated July 22nd 2012. That post was itself a follow-up to this post, published three days prior. The two posts combined to document an issue, or was at the time a potential issue, of a mistake in a contract. Sitting in the crowd at the 2012 Las Vegas Summer League, I was talking to someone about the market value of power forwards today. The discussion followed a fairly predictable route, and before long we got to talking about Zach Randolph, who in April 2011 signed an extension with Memphis that was to keep him with the team through 2015. Specifically, we were wondering how much he was due to get paid. In accordance with the universally held but entirely unspoken rule whereby no-one in, around, covering or even vaguely interested in the NBA is any good with facts without a computer in their hand, I could not remember how much his extension was for. (Trade secret there. To a man, they/we have nothing.) So I pulled out my mid-90’s notebook and had a look for the specifics of Randolph’s deal. It was there and then that I noticed for the first time a problem with Randolph’s contract, an error which I, and apparently everyone else involved, had not noticed in the fifteen months prior. Randolph’s extension called for base compensation of $17,800,000 in 2013/14, and $16,500,000 in 2014/15. (The contract also contains a ream of bonuses that make it deviate from those exact figures, yet they change not the general principles to be espoused here.) The 2014/15 is a player option season. This all looks like standard enough fare. However, a piece of CBA minutiae states that the salary in a player or team option year […]
Zach Randolph may or may not be about to get a pay rise
July 19th, 2012
In April 2011, Zach Randolph received a four year, $66 million extension that will pay him through the 2015 season. Notwithstanding the very valid arguments that a man who doesn’t have any athleticism in the first place is going to decline slower than most, and that Memphis have to pay particularly big dollars in order to retain quality their quality players, it is unmistakably a big contract. The contract called for a $15.2 million salary in 2011/12, a $16.5 million salary in 2012/13, a $17.8 million salary in 2013/14, and a $16.5 million salary in 2014/15, which is also a player option year. The vast majority of contracts around the league increase in their every year, yet, aside from a couple of particular instances (contracts signed with either rookie scale exception or the minimum salary exception), this doesn’t have to be the case. Contracts can go up, down, stay flat, or some combination thereof, as freely as the signing parties so choose and if done in accordance with the acceptable parameters. (The maximum increase percentages are the same as the maximum decrease percentages.) Zach’s contract structure makes sense. The Grizzlies, clearly, are trying to reconcile their hefty salary bill in the coming few seasons with the fact that Zach’s play will decline towards the back end of the deal, facts that the staggered contract structure seeks to partially alleviate. However, in doing so, they seem to have accidentally violated a CBA rule. It is important to express at this point that Randolph’s 2014/15 contract is officially listed as a player option year, and not an early termination option. It is often expressed that the two are by and large the same – including repeatedly by this website – and they are. They are both seasons within a contract that only […]
….But It’s Zach Randolph?
September 6th, 2008
ESPN: Knicks suggest dealing Randolph to Memphis The Knicks have a trade proposal on the table with the Memphis Grizzlies that would see Darko Milicic and Marko Jaric dealt to New York in exchange for Zach Randolph. OK, I get it. I do. I really do. “Here, take Zach Randolph! Take this extremely talented player who just so happens to play at your weakest position! Nooooooo, we don’t want anything back! You just take him!” I get that. When your job is to improve your team, and you are offered a highly talented basketball player for essentially free, it’s a tough one to turn down. And Zach Randolph really is highly talented. But he’s also Zach Randolph. And therein lies the problem. For all of Zach’s talents, his play has never been efficient, consistently sensible, or highly profitable. Just by playing him, you lose an untold amount on defence, something which Randolph simply does not do. And for all his versatility and skill as an offensive player, Zach has never had the greatest sense or awareness to fit into an offence efficiently – Randolph is a career 46.5% shooter who nowadays is starting his offence from increasingly near the three-point line, and with an intense aversion to passing. Bear in mind, this is a man once berated for selfishness by former teammate, Nick Van Exel. The problem is exacerbated when looking at Memphis’s other big men. Out of Hamed Haddadi, Hakim Warrick, Darrell Arthur, Marc Gasol and Antoine Walker, who represents a good pairing for Zach? Who is the weakside shot-blocker to counteract Zach’s absence in that area? There’s a bit there, mainly coming from Gasol, but there’s not much. Additionally, if Marc Gasol is to start at centre – and it looks like he has to – then how […]
30 teams in 36 or so days: New York Knicks
September 29th, 2007
Players acquired via free agency or trade: Zach Randolph (acquired from Portland) Dan Dickau (acquired from Portland) Fred Jones (acquired from Portland) Players acquired via draft: First round: Wilson Chandler (23rd overall) Second round: Demetris Nichols (53rd overall, rights acquired from Portland, not yet signed) Players retained: Malik Rose (opted in) Players departed: Kelvin Cato (unsigned) Channing Frye (traded to Portland) Steve Francis (traded to Portland) Bobbins: If he has not done so already, Isiah Thomas needs to write an autobiography. Actually, he needs to write about three. One about his time as a player, one as a General Manager, and one for amusing miscellany. I can safely say without a shadow of a doubt that I would buy all three. Not even a moment’s hesitation needed. And I think the same applies to about half of you. Maybe give him his own TV channel, and just run endless documentaries on him. I’d watch them. There’s just too much stuff going on at all times where Isiah Thomas is concerned. Win or lose (but normally lose), these Isiah-led Knicks have been an absolute fixture at the top of the NBA’s “did you hear this?” listings. From the moment he took over, ‘forfeiting’ the ‘future’ of the franchise by trading for Stephon Marbury (the notion that Milos Vujanic constituted most of the Knicks future is still funny), Isiah has continued to dumbfound, amaze and amuse in equal measures. Whether it be by making the type of trade for which they had to invent their own category (“A Trade Only Isiah Could Make”), or for one of many stories that come out about him (such as his role in instigating the brawl against Denver, or wanting to kill Bill Simmons, which is the Tarantino film they never made […]
Why aren’t NBA players loyal?
September 6th, 2007
Why aren’t NBA players loyal to their teams, such as how the fans are, and such as how the fans think that they should be? Ask Fred Jones. Jonesy signed with Toronto for three years and $9.9 million in July 2006, as a part of the Raptors’ cap room spending that season. The third year of the contract was a player option year, for $3.5 million. Upon being traded in February of this year to Portland in exchange for Juan Dixon, Jones agreed to forego his player option year as a part of the trade, a decision that, once made, cannot be recanted. Jones explained his acceptance to do this as such: “From seeing the team, knowing some of the players and knowing the direction they’re headed, I was more than happy to be a part of it”. Bless him. How sweet. Such gallantry and chivalry will serve him well in future life. Apparently, though, they aren’t good traits in this here NBA game. For it was barely four months later that Portland traded him once again, this time to New York as a part of the multi-player Zach Randolph deal. Still currently in New York, Jones is faced with the very real possibility of being waived by the Knicks, due to their present roster spots crunch and their desire to keep both Jared Jordan and Demetris Nichols. Jones was only included in the deal for his expiring contract, as was Dan Dickau – Dickau has already been waived, which doesn’t bode well for Jones. And if Jones does wind up getting waived, training camps have begun and most teams have full rosters. Barring a stroke of luck, the earliest return Fred would be looking at would be in early 2008. The irony is that Jones’ contract would not have […]
