Zach LaVine is at $20mm. Shitty Nic Batum is at $24mm. Evan Fournier is at $17mm. Allen Crabbe is at $18mm. Wesley Matthews is at $17.5mm. Kent Bazemore is at $17.5mm. JR Smith is at $14mm. Dion Waiters is at $13mm. Michael Kidd Gilchrist is making $13mm.

Remember this list when someone tells you NBA GMs know what they’re doing. I can’t process just how bad those deals are. Dion Waiters shouldn’t even be in the NBA. Wes Matthews got that contract four months after tearing his Achilles! Fournier has a career 2.8 VORP (half of that total in 2015) against $40M paid, $51M remaining on the books. Crabbe has never posted a positive BPM. Bazemore also has a career VORP of 2.8, with $37M paid and $37M remaining on his contract.

Woof. The only reasonable explanation is that these GMs think that if they don’t sign these veterans, they’ll have to play 4-on-5 for the rest of the season. To the best of my knowledge, you don’t need to pay individual players $10-20M AAV to be a perennial lottery team, but what do I know? I’m just a guy in his mom’s basement, letting my pizza rolls cool while I gargle Mt. Dew.

I agree.

Frank has more value as the PG than off the ball, especially if they are going to ignore him and not even give him a chance to make some plays. If Burke was playing as well as last year, I’d say it was worth sacrificing a little play making value on offense from Frank to get Burke’s overall better offense from that position. But Burke hasn’t been good so far. So it may be time to put Frank at PG and Dotson on the court instead of Lance to generate more offense. The question is who can you put at PF unless you want to go really small. Hezonja is not any good and I’m not sure Vonleh with Kanter is optimal either.

I highly, highly doubt Hinkie would’ve made the Fultz trade. Giving up an incredible asset in the Kings’ 2019 first in order to move up two spots to draft a guy who had no business being a consensus #1 overall pick even before the weird stuff started is pretty much the antithesis to Hinkieism.

It’s always easier to say what someone would have done when he wasn’t in that position and after we’ve seen a player look bad for over a year.

Having said that, the Sixers are fine. Simmons and Embiid are studs, Saric and Covington are great pieces, McConnell is solid, Bolden, Korkmaz, Smith, and Shamet all have some intrigue, Fultz could always work it out, and to top it all off they still have plenty of cap space and a 2021 unprotected Miami first!

They should be a decent position. They are probably close to 6-7 years into their rebuild. The problem is at best they are 3rd best team in the weaker east and may only be the 4th best team if the Bucks are actually this good (maybe even 5th if some of the younger Pacers move forward).

Give me 6-10 years of tanking and I’ll come up with a few very good players too. I’m not sure I’d call that success though unless I was a very serious major contender.

I decided to look it up and a surprising amount of them are making stupid money.

Zach LaVine is at $20mm. Shitty Nic Batum is at $24mm. Evan Fournier is at $17mm. Allen Crabbe is at $18mm. Wesley Matthews is at $17.5mm. Kent Bazemore is at $17.5mm. JR Smith is at $14mm. Dion Waiters is at $13mm. Michael Kidd Gilchrist is making $13mm.

Not coincidentally, everyone except Dion Waiters plays for a team that features prominently on Tankathon.

I don’t know if he can keep it up, but Zach LaVine is having a ridiculous season so far, with a .695 TS after 4 games.

That T-Wolves trade is looking less dumb every day.

Unfortunately with lottery reform even finishing with the worst record in the league is no guarantee of a top four pick, now that the top four selections are all decided by the lottery. The worst record has a 47.9% chance of not being picked, meaning they’d get the #5 selection and aren’t guaranteed to have any of those four prospects available. The second and third worst records have the same odds of picking outside the top four (47.9%).

The fourth worst record is still very similar, with a 51.8% chance of the pick being outside the top four. The fifth worst record has a 57.8% chance of being outside the top four picks. That’s where things start to really get worse though, as there’s a 36% chance the pick is #7-9. The sixth worse record has a 62.8% chance of the pick being outside the top four.

Conclusion: We want to finish within the worst four records, but within that group there is not much difference. And unfortunately even finishing with the worst record still leaves us essentially a 50/50 shot of the pick being #5.

Z-man’s maniacal hatred of Frank disqualifies him and poster Frank’s spirit has not been up-to-snuff so far.

I’ll try to take the demotion in stride. At least the mantle is being passed to another Z…(PS Z, are you still lurking out there somewhere?)

As to “maniacal hatred” of Frank, not true at all. Just pessimistic that he will ever be more than a strong (if not elite) defender with a spotty (if not mediocre) offensive game. I just object to the continuing stream of wishful thinking (some of which is rooted in misguided pre-draft hype) about his prospects as a PG. It’s so painfully obvious to me that he has virtually none. You might as well say that Dotson or Trier are future PGs.

JK47 says as much and no one accuses him of hating Frank. DRed is pretty much in the same camp. So it’s not about being a hater, it’s just keeping it real.

It just makes so much sense to give him more minutes at the 1:
> Burke’s not a future starter because of his defense
> Baker’s not a future starter
> Mudiay’s not a future starter
> Frank might be a future starter at the 1
> We’d be developing his skills no matter where he ends up when he’s playing the 1
> The team’s not going anywhere so what do we care if Burke’s marginally better at this time
> Frank playing the 1 frees up minutes for Dot, Knox and Trier at the 2 and 3

There is one counterargument and only one, but it’s not a bad one:
> If it takes Frank a long time to develop a PG’s mindset, or he just never develops it, it impedes the growth of the other young players.

But it’s not like any of the other options are real playmakers. Mudiay looks like one because he dribbles a lot and can throw a good outlet pass, but Frank’s the only guy on the roster who has the potential to actually become a good point guard. The potential upside of playing him there is so much higher than the downside, I have to hope Fizdale recognizes it.

Looks like I’m new head of Team Optimism

I think it’s plausible that we can trade Tim Hardaway to the Kings, package a few second rounders to dump Courtney Lee, and next year’s starting lineup will be Frank, Leonard, Durant, Porzingis, and either Zion Williamson or RJ Barrett.

So at best you are my Senior VP.