I guess it depends on how the FO feels about the previous regime developmental guys (James, Guy), but having a bunch of 2nd rounders lose value if you have a bunch in consecutive years because you just run out of developmental spots to keep them. Kings obviously want to hold on to Woodard/Ramsey, the team (although not the McNair regime) has invested 2 years into Guy/James. Metu and James both showed really good signs last year and IMO are worth continuing to develop as 4th/5th bigs. So even if you cut bait with "not your guys", we still have 4 spots tied up to pretty good developmental spots. Not much room to add many more developmental guys with a 1st rounder coming and trying to field a competitive team.
Letting Holmes walk.
- Thread starter upinsmoke
- Start date
If we were a good team, we would need to look into retaining him. We are not a good team, so we need to keep the core in place and find new pieces to surround it with. I'm assuming we dont consider Holmes to be a part of the core, so he must go fourth. I dont think he is valuable in a sign&trade as to sign him would be to pay him close to the top of his market value. I liked him, but we didn't win and our defense mostly sucked.
I don't see how we don't offer him the full Early Bird no matter what the plan is. It's not a lot of money and we'll be over the cap whether we sign him or chase a replacement. So the question is whether someone thinks he is worth more than 10-12 million per over the life of the contract (I think the projection was 44-46 million after annual raises on a 4 year starting at 10.x).
I still don’t want to lose talent for nothing, and it makes it harder to swallow when you remember we also lost Bogie for nothing less than a year ago…but tying all our cap space up in a mediocre treadmill team is not smart either so I assume moves are coming to clear cap space soon if we are serious about retaining him. If not, he should not be expected to take less than his market value to come back to a losing team either
It does suck but that mistake was made during Vlades last deadline when he didn't think ahead, and had they kept Bogdan it still wouldn't have worked (look at him prior to Nate getting the job) and they'd be that much farther back on a rebuild in a potential worst case. I think letting Bogdan go with the way things have turned out is one of the smarter things Monte has done. Someone blew it on a sign and trade but if you are going down a path, don't let something you can't control cause you to doubt it. And that same thing goes for Holmes. If they were looking for value then not moving at the deadline was a mistake that has already passed. Not letting "talent go for nothing" ends up getting you into a worse position if that talent isn't THE difference maker, your teams success isn't guaranteed, or their role conflicts with other potential difference makers or valuable assets on the roster.
Draft night is going to be interesting. Depending on what they do with Bagley will say a whole lot in terms of where they plan to head. Honestly, I'd rather the Kings pull a Vlade and massively overpay on a short deal if they can create cap. Adding 4 year contracts to a team that might need to look at creating a softer cap by the mid-point of next season is sketchy. My prediction is Monte wouldn't survive that. Somewhere in the middle Vivek and the owners will start getting ansy and knowing his history Dumars will probably step full on into the role of GM at that point.
Yeah, I still go back and forth on whether they should have kept Bodgan, and whether it's worth it to try to open up space to keep Holmes, for that matter. In either situation, though, Monte did not inherit ideal positioning from his predecessor. Even with Holmes, any team that would have traded for him at the 2021 deadline would also be limited in what they could pay him now, so I'm not sure his value would have been that much more than a rental (aside from teams with cap space this summer, but why would they trade for him if they could just sign him outright?). I remember reading relatively recently that the Hornets, who may have enough space to just sign Holmes, offered something like restricted-free-agent-to-be Malik Monk for Holmes at the deadline. At first I thought the Kings should have taken that deal, but since they got Terrence Davis for cheap, would they have wanted Monk, too?
Really? Never heard that. If so then that would have been something but the Kings were trying to have their cake and eat it too. That false hope of making a run at the 10th spot inevitably put them in a rough position. And to make matters worse (maybe) they held onto the coach that has yet to prove his value when the games matter most in 2 straight years. First in the bubble and then in those huge games at the end of this season like the Spurs game. Critical mistakes coaching wise that were plain as day and if the excuse of injuries meant anything then you have consider his abysmal win percentage at the start of the season when that wasn't a factor. Dude cleaned up on the back end in two straight years to almost indentical pre and post deadline records, period. Now this goes on Monte 100% win or fail. Honeymoons over.
Are you talking Bagley? Because we can't "overpay" a shorter deal with Holmes, or even do the descending salary magic we have done with other signings because we're constrained by the rules of the early-Bird. I don't even think we realistically can clear cap space to sign him without using early-Bird or an exception because most certainly we'd want something equal in value if we ship any of the 3 B's.
I feel like we offer Holmes the deal and if he takes it he takes it and if someone offers him more he goes. I would not mind if it was only a 2 year deal instead of 4, or maybe there's a player option after 2 years. I dunno. I don't think his salary moves the needle either way. It will not put us into luxury tax and nor will it prevent future signings. Only concerns are it blocking Bagley's development. I feel like if we could ship Bagley to OKC for their two picks, or better yet work out a deal that gets us the two Warriors picks we should go all in on trying to get 3 picks in this draft and resetting the timeline to Fox as the vet and everyone else around Hali's age. MAYBE we get one more crack at a lotto pick next season and then take flight with a new coach.
In that case we could ship Holmes in the next two years if he is a reasonable asset, but he keeps his current job for now.
I feel like we offer Holmes the deal and if he takes it he takes it and if someone offers him more he goes. I would not mind if it was only a 2 year deal instead of 4, or maybe there's a player option after 2 years. I dunno. I don't think his salary moves the needle either way. It will not put us into luxury tax and nor will it prevent future signings. Only concerns are it blocking Bagley's development. I feel like if we could ship Bagley to OKC for their two picks, or better yet work out a deal that gets us the two Warriors picks we should go all in on trying to get 3 picks in this draft and resetting the timeline to Fox as the vet and everyone else around Hali's age. MAYBE we get one more crack at a lotto pick next season and then take flight with a new coach.
In that case we could ship Holmes in the next two years if he is a reasonable asset, but he keeps his current job for now.
I think that's about what a 4-year deal with full raises came to, when I looked at it. Perhaps even a tiny bit more. I'm not the best judge of market value, but that feels in the ballpark for Holmes. Could we nudge-nudge-wink-wink a 2/$20M total deal with a player option to get full Bird and then jump up to $20M per year? Yes, but is that even wise? Is Holmes impactful enough to be worth almost 20% of the salary cap? Is anybody else (Knicks/Hornets/???) with cap space willing to go there?
Boozer's deal was a totally different scenario because the team held the option at below market value and he talked them into declining so he could re-sign a long term deal only to sign with another club. And for those who don't recall Joe Smith, he joined the T-Wolves on a series of 1 year deals after refusing an 80 million dollar extension by the Warriors as he had been promised a 100 million contract in return - incidentally, the only reason this blew up was because Smith's agents had a falling out over the course of the 3 years this plan took to execute and one of them narc'd. (A funny footnote/warning to this story is that Smith ultimately signed a 6 year deal in Minnesota after a year in Detroit and was traded 3 times over the length of that contract).
In this scenario Holmes would be re-signing with his current team but hoping a shorter length contract would pay off in a year or two. Since there is no player movement happening here it's not going to draw much attention. For the Kings they get to retain their player, for Holmes he gets a decent raise today (~6 mil first year vs. ~10.5 on the first year) with a crack at an even larger deal in 1-2 years. The only way it would be illegal or raise eyes would be if they pre-agreed to terms and say he missed the full season due to injury, opted out, and we still gave him a huge deal. I imagine that's also why the option is there in the first place, insurance against that event happening and Holmes being forced to sign his next contract at a loss?
An alternative here could be to give him the 4 year but an option after year 1 or year 2?
In this scenario Holmes would be re-signing with his current team but hoping a shorter length contract would pay off in a year or two. Since there is no player movement happening here it's not going to draw much attention. For the Kings they get to retain their player, for Holmes he gets a decent raise today (~6 mil first year vs. ~10.5 on the first year) with a crack at an even larger deal in 1-2 years. The only way it would be illegal or raise eyes would be if they pre-agreed to terms and say he missed the full season due to injury, opted out, and we still gave him a huge deal. I imagine that's also why the option is there in the first place, insurance against that event happening and Holmes being forced to sign his next contract at a loss?
An alternative here could be to give him the 4 year but an option after year 1 or year 2?
How can you not? If this team is still stagnant the team would be setting itself back huge by giving out a deal like that to a role player. And look at this franchises track record! There have been nothing but PR messes since Vivek took over. Agents and players clearly understand and look at things like reputation. Not thinking or looking ahead at the worst case is exactly why this franchise is at where it's at.