MS wrote:Honestly we are going to be terrible next season, where does FVV get us? A little more stability at the guard position? Is he enticing free agents I don’t think so.Next years draft is strong.
He’s playing for a top 3 coach, a top 3 front office and everyone on the team is a true professional. They have 9 guys that can really play, we have 1. Things look very different in a market like NY. I would wait.
You want to offer Dragic and Milshap big money for one year, fine. But, can’t tie up max level money or $25MM a year for a guy that’s not top 40 in the league.
This would be typical Knicks.
With the pandemic, guys will be looking at length of contract. If there's a labor war , and there will be, the entire salary structure today could change radically, probably at a major loss for the NBPA. Guys are going to want to lock in, even at a lower AAV. FVV will get a middle class contract, but interesting enough, it will probably include language to scale to the cap/BRI. What will make a difference will be X amount of money for uprooting your family in the middle of pandemic. If the Knicks offer 1 million per year more in AAV, is that worth dragging your family into a strange place with people dying all around?
The question for the Knicks is going to be this. They will have to get to the cap floor. What's the most efficient way to use that money. The ideal was situations like Robin Lopez and Morris. You sign them, you trade them quickly. The quality of the trade for Lopez was bad, the methodology was not.
Julius Randle was not signed to be some kind of core piece for the Knicks. They had to get to the cap floor and picked a guy who would sign, would sign and not demand max money/max years, who was young enough to still be useful and who might, very slightly, have some possible trade value. The problem is coaches want to win and they'll play the best talent they have, so while Randle gets you to the cap floor, he's blocking minutes you could use to parade a gaggle of UDFAs and G Leaguers and such to see if any pan out. The 76ers and Hinkie were able to uncover Robert Covington with this strategy.
A guy like Randle chews up minutes that could go to developmental fliers and he helps you win just a few more games that have an impact on your lottery chances later. Since there's only value in short term deals with guys like this, they play like total fucking assholes to drive up their counting stats for their next contract.
Every non franchise type free agent has to be run through the same checklist
1) Can he help immediately?
2) Is he still in the prime of his career? Will any of said contract encompass his likely decline phase?
3) Will he garner immediate trade value based on his production and contract?
4) Will he provide positive or negative value when considering opportunity costs for minutes played. ( Minutes to be distributed and playing time are very valuable. Too many teams waste minutes that don't serve either long term nor short term goals)
I know this sounds fucked up, but John Walls contract, factoring in the pandemic, is actually surface level more valuable than FVV's projected one will be.
The draft assets coming with Wall's dead contract would offer a type of cost certainty, which you can't get by hoping for a Morris FA signing every offseason.
The Knicks should NOT attempt to sign FVV. Only pretend so to drive up his contract for other teams. The Knicks, I can't believe I'm fucking saying this, should trade for John Wall's contract. NY is so talent poor right now, they need to maximize cost certainty with incoming picks. Wall's contract will scale down as the cap lowers and insurance stands a good chance of eating a good portion of what's still owed to him.
Because of market dysfunction in the NBA, a bad contract right now is worth more to a long standing bad team like Knicks more than a relatively productive guy like Fred Van Vleet. Bizarre.
