August 27, 2018

[...] Legitimately good players were available for low prices. Some stand-out examples include Lopez (who took only a bi-annual exception for one year from Milwaukee, quite the pay cut from his $22,642,350 last season), O'Quinn (who did not deliberately opt out of a $4,256,250 one year player option just to sign a one year $4,449,000 but found he had little choice), Alex Len (who signed a mere two year, $8.5 million contract with the team closest to his own name despite how good he was at times last year) and Nurkic (a restricted free agent post player like Capela, who, like Capela, seemingly drew no significant-enough offers from other teams). And some got even less attention than that - after being waived by the Pacers, Al Jefferson went to China, while Lucas Nogueira has not signed at all. Which might explain why he has changed agency.[...]

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June 29, 2017

Al Jefferson
PF/C, 6’10, 289lbs, 32 years old, 13 years of experience

Did what he always does in much fewer minutes than usual. Improved his offensive rebounding rate notably to stave off what had been a decade-long decline in that part of his game, and blocked by far the fewest shots of his career, but was otherwise entirely to order. Scored, from both the inside and the mid-range, although the mid-ranger was much poorer than usual. Cleared the glass. Didn’t defend much. As advertised. But that was in part the problem. Jefferson did what he always does in a league that no longer values what he does that highly. Indeed, Jefferson was not even in the rotation come playoff time. Unless the jump shot comes back and has four extra feet of range on it after this summer, he won’t have much of a role going forward, and given his salary, he will have even less trade value.

Player Plan: Two years and a shade under $20 million remaining, only the first years of which is guaranteed. If there’s any value to be gotten for him, even pure salary relief, it is worth taking; after all, this is seemingly no longer a rotation player.

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September 30, 2013

Al Jefferson – Charlotte Bobcats

The harsh but undeniable reality is that the Bobcats, regardless of the presence of Michael Jordan, have to pay over the odds on the free agent market to compensate for their franchise’s position. They’ve done that with Al Jefferson, paying him three years and $40.5 million, including a player option in the third year.

That player option makes Jefferson extremely difficult to trade until the summer of 2015. And while they haven’t necessarily signed him to trade him, a team with such little foundation as Charlotte must position themselves to permit that as soon as possible. They haven’t. Instead, they’ve paid Jefferson to be the cornerstone of the team for at least the first two years of the deal, which he simply isn’t. Jefferson, a poor defender, is also an inefficient volume scorer who contributes on only one end and leads on neither.

It looks like a strong commitment to the present, just as Jefferson looks like he is a centerpiece to his team. But appearances can be deceptive.

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September 20, 2013

Rebuilding generally means losing.

This is a given, and is an unsavory reality of the draft-based model to which the NBA is handcuffed. Assuming you also get lucky and draft well, there's no better way to make big leaps forward than by taking giant ones backward.

Those two qualifiers, however, are huge. It's better to be lucky than good, but to succeed through the draft, you have to be both.

The Charlotte Bobcats know this better than anyone. They've been bad throughout their existence, only briefly approaching the hallowed land of mediocrity, and at one point they reached a historical level of ineptitude. They've never tried all that hard to be competitive, and, even when they did, they were so unsuccessful at it they remained in a perpetual state of rebuilding. Indeed, it's not even a rebuild, as there's nothing to reconstruct. It's simply a build from scratch. Still.

Perhaps, though, they've now stopped the tanking. This summer has seen their biggest ever free agent move - by an incomparable amount - with the signing of Al Jefferson for three years and $40.5 million. Jefferson isn't the answer to the Bobcats' problems - he has never been an all-star, likely never will be, stopped improving some years ago, and isn't nearly efficient enough to be the offensive focal point he will now have to be. Nevertheless, he is a player of true quality at a position where the Bobcats sorely lacked.

Tanking, the stockpiling of youth, and minimal payroll expenditure, are all laudable traits on rebuilding teams in certain circumstances. Indeed, I lauded it only yesterday in the case of the Utah Jazz. But it only works for a certain time before it must give way to something substantial. You can't tread water forever - if you're still treading water after years of throwing the kids out there, the kids you've got aren't going to cut it. So perhaps Charlotte thought it was time to buy some quality.

At some point, a franchise can become viewed as toxic, and it's a tough decline to halt. The post-dynasty Bulls couldn't sign a free agent of any caliber until Donyell Marshall joined, and the Clippers were only able to stop the rot when they got luckier in the draft than the Bobcats ever have and landed Blake Griffin. Those franchises had the benefit of strong markets that Charlotte doesn't.

Nevertheless, quality attracts quality, and only those who have no say in it or have few other choices would voluntarily choose the moribund, direction-less franchise whose fortunes rest upon a few lottery balls every season. You don't want to be that. The Bobcats right now are very toxic. There's little incentive for anyone to play for them, or for anyone to watch them. It needs to stop. And it's good if they know that.

However, having the right idea alone isn't a sufficient remedy.

No matter how badly you need talent, you still need value for that talent. You need talent you can do something with in the future, not just that which helps you in the now. Unless you can sign genuinely elite stars who can reverse your fortunes single-handedly, you need players with caliber signed to digestible prices over short periods, so as to best maximize options for the future. It is, after all, still about the future. In signing Jefferson to the deal that they did, Charlotte have not done this.

Deals are judged by the comparable ones of others, and the obvious and necessary comparison here is with Paul Millsap, Jefferson's running mate as recently as five months ago. Millsap signed with Atlanta for two thirds of what Jefferson did ($9.5 million annual compared to $13.5 million for Al), and for two thirds of the time (two years instead of three). Logically, this would suggest Millsap is two third of the player. But he's not. Without wanting or needing to fully compare the two, we can all hopefully concede that they are about the same, give or take. But the price is very different.

Millsap is signed to an amount comparable to his talent, for shorter time. He provides Atlanta with the talent boost that will keep them out of the cellar - if you want bums on seats, you need that - and his contract makes him extremely tradeable. Millsap is a valued commodity around the league as a quality, versatile, two-way role player, and by getting him at the right price, Atlanta put themselves in a position to take advantage of that. And until they do, he'll help them significantly as a player.

Charlotte, however have paid the 'Bobcats tax' and will suffer for it. Jefferson is, at best, at the very top end of the acceptable overpay range, and probably slightly beyond it. Yet it is that third year that makes it extremely difficult to trade him before the summer of 2015. Rebuilding teams need as much flexibility as possible - with his undervalued, very competitively priced skills and short contract, Millsap could be traded for a quality return as soon as February. Jefferson can't. He costs too much and he's under contract for too long to be highly prized. Indeed, he may not be tradeable at all. This is not all bad, as it will mean a quality player will stay with them for three years.

At some point, a rebuilding project needs to involve actual building. At some point, you need to start acquiring quality - you can't forgo all talent acquisition just to stay bad just to hopefully get lucky in a good draft class. Charlotte have reached that point. Atlanta have somewhat, too. But in these respective signings, the Hawks and Bobcats have put themselves in far different positions. One team landed a quality player on a great price who will help the team in both the immediate future and (via trade), likely the long term. Meanwhile, Charlotte spend $21.5 million more to achieve less.

It was the right idea, but not the right execution.

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