coolhandluke121

I guess that would be 1/$50m, not 1/$60m. I think it's out of the question that you could get him for that. He plays well and you obviously pick up the options, so it's 3/$105m? That's absurdly low in years. No way. Even in this market, guys like Arrieta and Darvish got $20m per year for at least 3 years when they were already in their 30's and showing alarming signs of decline.

I don't love it either. It's kind of like the steroid era in baseball. The amount of offense is like a drug for revenue and ratings, but could have detrimental long-term effects. Personally I think they coddle the top scorers too much, and that's why you end up with guys like Harden. The 3-point arc should be moved back as well. I like the 3, but it's too much of a dominant strategy compared to other things right now. Part of the scoring is also because of more possessions, and that I'm okay with. The shot clock gets reset to 14 instead of 24 if a team regains possession after a missed shot that hit the rim. More possessions means more points. I like the increased pace even if it means inflated scoring. It's really just the predominance of 3's (at the expense of other tactics) and the excessive foul-drawing that I don't like. By the way, only 3 players have hit more 28+ foot shots than Lopez this year: Curry, Lillard, and Trae Young. That's pretty cool. It goes to show that all good 3-point shooters aren't created equal. Being able to hit those as a big man does a lot more to space the floor than a perimeter player like Snell or Brogdon or Hill who hits 40% of his wide open 3's from just behind the arc.

I don't like it because of the focus on offense and because I prefer the strategic element. They want the games to go faster but they also want more offense. I think that's obnoxious.

Thinks he has more trade value than Kuzma and Ingram? Also, conflating Brogdon's broken navicular bone with Walton's is just innaccurate. The problem with that bone is that it has very little blood supply and often doesn't heal fully which was the case with Walton, and it's an even bigger issue with big men. Brogdon hurt his in college and hasn't had issues with it since. Of course we're saying both that it's almost an emergency to trade him while saying he's more valuable than two young, dynamic 20 point scorers(I'll leave out the pass first PG, though I do think Ball can develop). Is this just one of those where you take every side of the issue and then later say you were right again? If Brogdon is SO slow and and bulky(I guess having physical, not rail thing PG=bad, but whatever) and such an immediate danger with his Bill Walton-esque feet issues that haven't played out yet and there's almost no reason to suggest he'll be similar to a guy from the 70's and 80's who had constant injuries, but lets argue he is...how do you THEN argue that he's more valuable than Kuzma/Ingram and hell, even Ball who are not free agents this year and all extremely talented young players? Both statements can't be true unless you just flat out believe Ingram and Kuzma are garbage and have not only shown nothing, but don't have much of any upside. Stop quoting me. You misrepresent everything I say and it only leads to an argument. I can simultaneously believe Brogdon is not one of the 4 best players on the team and still think he's better than Kuzma and Ingram. That's not calling anyone garbage. The Lakers are terrible without Lebron and there's a reason for that. The hype about Ingram, Ball, and Kuzma is disgusting ESPN-style pro-LA media bias. They are not garbage, but they certainly aren't good. There's absolutely no basis for rational discussion with someone who calls them "extremely talented" young players. Holy PPGZ bias batman. Incidentally, what did you think of Jabari?

I'm not sure there's anything more than a little bad luck with his injury history, but it's certainly a concern. Nothing that's career-altering though.

He can be trade by himself tomorrow, but if anyone wanted him the Bucks could have just made it a 3-team trade today. It is just an expiring. Which is fine.

I just threw up in my mouth a little. These ideas are terrible. Stop trying to appeal to the casual fans who still won't like baseball that much anyway, at the expense of the people who really love baseball to begin with. Just horrible. This is the equivalent of a pitcher who doesn't follow through properly because he's trying to guide the ball to home plate. It's a disaster. Stop trying to control everything. Let offenses and defenses continue to adapt to each other organically. That's part of the fun. The 3-batter minimum is just insulting. Teams that get cute with their bullpens have to make other allowances to compensate. Opposing teams will figure out ways to take advantage of that, including some strategies that nobody has even thought of yet. The anti-shifting stuff is also a joke. All this pro-offense stuff is baseball's equivalent of fake boobs. They can leak and cause serious health problems, and they only make you more appealing in the eyes of losers you don't want around in the long run anyway.

As much as I'm on board with the Brewers' fiscal responsibility, I'd offer him something reasonably close to the 10/$300m he turned down from the Nats. I don't think he's getting that type of offer any more, and I think he might have had doubts about Washington's ability to remain a contender.

Stanley Johnson is terrible. Just no place for him in NBA these days. I think this is just an expiring contract.

Hard to say if this ever would have been a possibility, but I'd love to add Moore. The problem is that I think a lot of contenders would love to add him and will make decent offers. Who couldn't use another good 3-and-d guy on a reasonable contract in his prime?

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but I tend to doubt it. I think they can get an expiring contract and a late pick for Moore, and a pick is flexible. You can pick your own guy, instead of trading for somebody else's mistake.

Wanted him badly when he was a free agent. The Bucks were too busy prioritizing Henson, Plumlee, Mirza, and Dellavedova. Moore got less than half of what they got and is arguably worth more than all of them combined. And someone in here said it's a false narrative that the Bucks made all kinds of terrible decisions for years.

I wouldn't sell him for a downgrade or a draft pick. I'm the same person who said I would pick up Hill's option and pay all that luxury tax to keep the team together, so that's obviously not what I meant. But I would definitely trade him for someone of comparable "win now" value if I could. I think there's a chance some team views him as more of a go-to scorer than he really is, kind of like Jabari's 2nd year, and the Bucks should jump at the chance to get a good offer. Brogdon has that Bill Walton non-union foot injury and I think that's a ticking time bomb. Watching him live in person against the Nets and seeing how slow, unathletic, bulky, and old he's already starting to look changed me from normal skepticism to full-on, emergency "trade him for fair value before it's too late" urgency mode. I also think he's got a bit of an Allen Crabbe/Tyler Johnson "darling" reputation that he won't live up to. All those guys had pretty good numbers in a very favorable situation, and look at the RFA offers they got. Brogdon could get even more. Personally I think if he gets that, then he owes 75% of it to Bledsoe, Middleton, Bud, and especially Giannis. It's kind of a like a 4th wide receiver on a lethal offense putting up numbers comparable to a normal #2 guy because defenses don't pay much attention to him and the offense is designed to spread the ball around. When he plays as the #2 or #3 guy, he just dribbles too much trying to get around his guy and the offense stagnates. Lastly, if he does get some kind of ridiculous 4-year offer sheet, you're in a bind. I want them to pay the luxury tax next year, but not for 4 straight years. That greatly affects their ability to use salary exception slots. I really don't think they'd miss him that much. His RPM provides statistical evidence that the team doesn't struggle when he goes to the bench. I view trading him (and, say, Ersan and Smith) for a comparable player as an opportunity to lock in someone at a price much cheaper than what Brogdon will probably get in free agency. *It's also worth noting that his low cap hold is worth much more to rebuilding teams than it is to the Bucks, so it's not necessarily true that he's worth less because of his impending free agency. The Bucks will probably keep cap holds on Bledsoe and Middleton, and they may even keep Hill. Therefore Brogdon's low cap hold doesn't give them any cap space anyway. But a team with fewer other guys to retain can make a huge splash in free agency before going way over the cap to match an offer for Brogdon.

I hear you. I would not decimate the team for him and I don't understand the logic of thinking all you need is two superstars. The Bucks have arguably a better version of balanced teams like the 2004 Pistons, 2011 Mavs, or 2014 Spurs, and some people want to give it up for a worse version of the teams they spanked in the finals (2004 Lakers with Shaq and Kobe, 2011 Heatles, 2014 Heatles). Just do due diligence though. If the Pelicans think Brogdon is a star on his own merits, they might value him over a trio of flawed, over-hyped Lakers youngsters. I'm not a big Brogdon fan, but even I think he's better than those 3. If the Bucks could steal AD with a package built around Brogdon and just one other starter, they should go for it.

So if the fact that players are getting underpaid (in the opinions of some) the last couple years is face value evidence of collusion among owners, does it follow that players getting overpaid for ~10 years is face value evidence of collusion among players? Still haven't seen a response or even an acknowledgment of my inquiry about the grief you yourself admitted you got from the players union over JJ's contract. Would be interested to hear an explanation of how that's not collusion - preferably an explanation that doesn't contradict what it means for owners to collude.

I'll take that bet.

I went to tonight's game. 20 minute walk from my apartment. It was pretty cool, but kind of boring. I would compare it to watching one group of guys methodically build a fence to keep another group of guys off their lawn. There was this sense of inevitability that made it something short of entertaining. I really can't wait for the playoffs. DJ Wilson is going to be a huge impact guy in this league. It reminds me of LRMAM in his early years. The probability of the other team scoring goes down so much when he's on the court that it's every bit as valuable as being a really good scorer. Oh, and he's a long 6'9" and hits threes. I can't wait until DJ's RPM is actually based on enough diverse lineup data to mean something, because I think it's going to be beastly. That could take another full season or more of regular playing time though. Brogdon is not one of the 4 best players on the team. I am absolutely convinced of that. Very slow for a sg, and can't generate anything without most of the defense paying more attention to someone else. I think they should sell high on him if there's some team out there that thinks he could actually be this type of scorer as a go-to guy. I wonder what the Pelicans think of him...

Yea, but have you seen what the Lakers are rumored to be offering? Basically their whole roster not name LeBron and 2 1st round picks. Bucks don't have the ammo to compete with that. Can't compete with what the Knicks can offer either. That's ok though. I would love to have him, but if the Bucks can get everyone back next year and tweak the bench a little I'm fine. The rest of the Lakers' roster is totally meh. If you watched them and didn't know how high Ingram and Ball were drafted, no way you'd think they have much trade value. Trading all their young guys does probably add up to a better deal than the Bucks could offer, but it's no slam dunk. Brogdon for example probably has more trade value than anyone the Lakers are offering. The problem is that the Bucks have the best record in the NBA and are loathe to trade away too many contributors, which is a good problem to have but also one the Lakers don't have. I do expect them to gut their team and wait for the off season to build a superteam around Lebron and Davis, but the Pelicans could easily turn up their nose at what they offer and might be wise to do so.

3.3 years does not apply to first-round qb's. I bet it's around 8-10, and good qb's get some of the juiciest contracts in sports. They also can have very long careers because of how much qb's are protected these days. Even running qb's have much less risk of injury than players who have a ton of contact and/or sprinting on every play. Young baseball players should make more. It's just not realistic to underpay them 8-10 years and then overcompensate them later. I get that young guys should pay some dues, but it's ridiculous in baseball. I don't think the owners are colluding, but don't take that to mean I sympathize with them at all. I sympathize with the young players. The owners have been very greedy, but I think some of the generations of veteran players were extremely greedy to agree to this stuff in the first place. Veterans have too much influence in lots of unions, and unless they self-regulate and avoid abusing their power, they just make their cash grabs and let the next generation suffer the consequences of unsustainability and union image issues.

I don't think that's off topic. It just shows why free agent salaries are so low right now. Guys can't hit up PEDs and be all-stars until they're 38 anymore, so the young guys are a much better value. Why pay $10m for someone who's not likely to be much better than, say, Perez and Spangenberg? You don't have to be a small market to see the benefits of spending less in situations where you're no worse off anyway. And it goes back to my first response in the entire thread. You gotta start paying the young guys more. You can't have guys getting underpaid for so long and then expecting to make up for it when they're free agents. Nobody can make teams overpay them to compensate for how much they were underpaid. Yeah, it's unfair... but the solution is not to go back to handing out huge contracts to guys who are already on the decline. Seems the people complaining about collusion want that, but that angle is a dead end to me unless PEDs come back.

You keep saying that all these viable alternative explanations don't preclude the possibility of collusion, as if people don't understand that. It's not that skeptics know there's no collusion. We obviously aren't in on those conversations and have no direct evidence one way or the other, so it should go without saying that we are speculating. The issue is that there are other, simpler explanations for what we're seeing in my opinion. Why risk collusion when the market can easily give you the same positive result without collusion? Why did guys like Cobb and Hosmer still get good deals? Why were there rumors of guys turning down better offers and then being left holding the bag? Why did some guys get good contracts early in free agency before everyone realized how much the market had changed? It seems far more likely that it was a case of adjusting to a rapidly changing market on the fly rather than explicit collusion. Of course this doesn't mean collusion isn't happening. It's just Occam's razor. The simplest explanation is usually the best. A lot of free agents aren't worth the money they used to get, so now they're getting paid much less. The changing landscape with pool money and luxury tax is also a factor. Could owners be using this data as an excuse to collude? Of course. I just don't see why they'd do that when they don't have to risk it though. All they have to do is stop over-paying free agents and trust most other teams to come to the same obvious conclusion independently because they have the same data. If other teams do the same, then everybody benefits, but that's not evidence of collusion. A lot of people here aren't really biased one way or the other. They're just looking for the simplest explanation. Is it possible you're biased? Kind of a rhetorical question obviously, as we all know you've got some horses in this race. So if the people who work for the players think it's collusion, and the people who think both sides are equally greedy and selfish think it's not, whose opinion is less likely to be biased in terms of judging the simplest possible explanation? Lastly, you still haven't addressed my question about player collusion. Are agents talking to each other? Are players pressured to get as much as possible to set the market for everyone else? Didn't you get some heat from the players' association for JJ's contract? How is that not collusion?? We hear about stuff like that all the time, and it's never been addressed despite the other part of the collusion clause - players should not act in concert with each other. I think one could make a pretty strong, indirect case that players have actually been colluding to inflate free agent salaries for years, and what we're seeing now is just that they don't have the leverage to do so anymore because, frankly, most of them aren't wanted or needed that much.

Well I did say players should get more of the revenue and they should be paid more when they're young. I don't think they should be paid more and more when they're declining. If they were paid less when they're under team control because they're not as effective as experienced players, that would be one thing, but we regularly see MVP candidates making like 5% of what washed-up stars make.

It certainly could be happening. I have my doubts though. A lot of these owners have been impulsive over-spenders for a long time, and it seems likely that they're just being more careful because they know they have to be to remain competitive. Huge free agent contracts are constantly coming back to bite them. There's also the question of depth and flexibility being more important than pseudo-superstars like Harper and Machado. I think they're both asking too much. My gut instinct is that players and people like Boras are taking advantage of past misdeeds by owners to manipulate the narrative now. You look at all the free agents who had trouble finding contracts last year, and very few of them actually proved they were worth more than what they got. On the contrary, quite a few were worth even less. On the whole, I think it's evidence that teams are becoming better judges of value in free agency. It's not putting profits before competition; it's just recognizing that competition and fiscal responsibility are symbiotic, rather than diametrically opposed. It would not require any collusion, or even any communication whatsoever, for teams to independently realize it's time to spend more carefully. Lastly, it's just as hard to sympathize with the players as it is with the owners. You look at some of the teams that are saddled with terrible contracts for aging stars and just feel sorry for their fans. It feels like players get to be free agents and are entitled to unsustainable salaries. That's bad for baseball. I think something has to be done to redistribute more revenue to players, but it should involve paying younger players more or letting them be free agents sooner. I also get the sense that there's a lot of overlooking the questionable things players do too. Didn't they complain about JJ's contract, for example? How is pressuring other players to sign better contracts not a form of collusion? Stuff like that must happen all the time. It seems there's a double standard, like it's okay to game the establishment but not the individual.

Lol, good thing I checked page 8 before I replied with another picture of Boris.

True, but this criticism isn't really wrong per se. They don't have great closing speed on the perimeter, and it could be an issue against the Warriors. I think a better way to phrase this criticism would be "the Bucks don't do a great job closing out on open 3-point shooters and this might be the biggest reason they won't be the 12th team in NBA history with an average scoring differential of +10 or more or win a finals match-up against the Warriors, who incidentally own 3 of the 11 previous +10 seasons." ETA: DJ Wilson will be surpass Brook and Ersan for crunch time minutes by the end of the year and this won't be as much of an issue. Vs the Warriors your closing and main lineup will have Giannis at the 5 and basically nowhere to play Brook/Ersan slow types. You're either going to have Wilson if he keeps progressing or Brown/Snell/Hill out there to have more speed and athleticism. That takes away a lot of interior defense though. No way I want Giannis guarding Cousins. They do have lots of good players and depth, and most of their lineups obviously create bigger problems for their opponents than for themselves... but if we're talking title, I think a quicker 3-and-d wing in the mold of an Ariza would be a godsend for this team.