The kings should trade Cauley-Stein at the deadline for multiple reasons I have stated before and won’t state again here.
However, if we do keep him and he becomes a RFA, we have to be okay saying goodbye to him if he gets overpaid. I don’t think he’s as good as Randle, Harrell, and Bjelica and we all know how much they were offered this very offseason. Then you have the very very questionable motor and the fact that he could only be playing better this year because it’s a contract year.
When you consider it all, I’m offering him $3-4 mil per year. If he gets offered more, you say goodbye. Some people say you can’t bleed value, I agree. But the time to not bleed that value is at the deadline (or an offseason or two ago if you asked me). Now it’s not bleeding value, it’s potentially creating a very unattractive contract. We need to avoid that.