Keon Ellis

Smart move. Kings still have Bird rights. If Keon comes in and is still an 8-10 ppg 3 and D guy the only huge regret is overpaying. We see it time and time again. If he explodes the money and years are in Sac.
 
It's not just the risk of losing him, but the risk of having to pay him more later. Sure, those in the analytics world are already wise to Keon's value, but he's not top-of-mind for front offices around the NBA yet. The Kings were playing with found money. It's really rare to find undrafted free agents who can become rotation-level players in this league, and rarer still to find undrafted free agents with legitimate starter-quality talent and legitimate impact on both sides of the ball. If Keon's trend lines continue climbing in impact statistical models, more front offices are going to notice by next off-season, and what may have been a bargain contract for the Kings today becomes a more expensive contract for the Kings tomorrow.

Possibly one thing to play into this call is everyone is probably broke next offseason too. I know the Wizards will have money, but will anyone else?

To be clear, I would have not done this route at all. I dont care about signing Dennis schroder, just give me Keon locked up.
 
Someone posted a graphic with all the teams with cap space (basically Brooklyn as the other team had $4m) and teams that have full MLE and it was maybe 10 of those. I have a hard time believing next year will be much different. We can match/exceed any MLE offer next year. That has to be the calculus here.

This is literally the smart thing to do. Monte's one fault was jumping the gun at times. He all too quickly signed guys like Lyles without even seeing what the market was. Monk was likely the same.
 
It's not just the risk of losing him, but the risk of having to pay him more later. Sure, those in the analytics world are already wise to Keon's value, but he's not top-of-mind for front offices around the NBA yet. The Kings were playing with found money. It's really rare to find undrafted free agents who can become rotation-level players in this league, and rarer still to find undrafted free agents with legitimate starter-quality talent and legitimate impact on both sides of the ball. If Keon's trend lines continue climbing in impact statistical models, more front offices are going to notice by next off-season, and what may have been a bargain contract for the Kings today becomes a more expensive contract for the Kings tomorrow.
But that’s working under the assumption that the Kings have no intention of offering an extension before then and that Keon’s agents haven’t already shook on it whilst also working on the Keegan deal and the presumable Schroeder deal (Herb Jones is also a Bartlestein client who would fit right into our Huerter TPE). I’m not saying that’s what happened but the NBA is a hyper connected network of agents and front offices making deals regarding official deals all while the league hasn’t even entered its legal tampering period yet.
 
This is literally the smart thing to do. Monte's one fault was jumping the gun at times. He all too quickly signed guys like Lyles without even seeing what the market was. Monk was likely the same.
“look guys, Trey is back at 8 million dollars a season!” Sounded much better before we all realized the man was probably only going to get the vet minimum on the open market were his agent not Rich Paul
 
Sorry but Kings fans also continuously overrate role guys and then rake them over the coals when they end up....role guys on more money than they might be worth. lol.

Ellis' advanced statistical profile suggests he's already a $20 million/year kind of player, on par with a guy like Alex Caruso. His TS% blows Caruso's out of the water, too. Kings fans seem to roundly love Keon Ellis, but I'm not even sure Kings fans appreciate where Ellis is today as a player.
 
“look guys, Trey is back at 8 million dollars a season!” Sounded much better before we all realized the man was probably only going to get the vet minimum on the open market were his agent not Rich Paul

The other thing with Monte was the Domas restructure. Why? There was no need for that. The Kings are up against the luxury tax in all likelihood too. Keon on 2 million is a steal, Keon on MLE type money when you didn't have to complicates a ton of other things.
 
Don’t get me wrong I love Keon but if you have the option to wait and extend him later to keep yourself financially flexible for free agency and possible trades. That’s is exactly what you do.
Well it’s not what we did with Sabonis and probably should have. Some are being a bit inconsistent. In some ways it’s the right move but it will suck to lose Keon if we do. One of the few positives from the Monte era!
 
This is literally the smart thing to do. Monte's one fault was jumping the gun at times. He all too quickly signed guys like Lyles without even seeing what the market was. Monk was likely the same.
I'm wrestling with it, but the reality is tying up that much cap space early (effectively before FA even begins) is just setting ourselves up to be tied down with our options this year. I know there's a lot of people that want us to bottom out as quickly as possible but if we are going to stink for 3-4 more years why even have Keon?
 
Ellis' advanced statistical profile suggests he's already a $20 million/year kind of player, on par with a guy like Alex Caruso. His TS% blows Caruso's out of the water, too. Kings fans seem to roundly love Keon Ellis, but I'm not even sure Kings fans appreciate where Ellis is today as a player.
There's only one team that can offer that much aside from us, and unfortunately for us its a team that Ellis has a connection to (Jordi) and just might see the value in giving him a poison pill deal that we have to match and cripples us. Maybe they have that money next year but maybe we're just bidding against Washington.

And all of that ignores the possibility we've already set up a lucrative extension to be signed after we complete FA and trade season.
 
Ellis' advanced statistical profile suggests he's already a $20 million/year kind of player, on par with a guy like Alex Caruso. His TS% blows Caruso's out of the water, too. Kings fans seem to roundly love Keon Ellis, but I'm not even sure Kings fans appreciate where Ellis is today as a player.

The Magic probably said the same thing about KCP. His actual style of defense isn't like Caruso though. Caruso is a classic stopper because he plays with his body, not his hands. This is why I really hope we get to see more Carter and Keon together because Carter is a lot like Caruso whereas Keon is more of a pest/off ball nightmare. Handsy defenders can sometimes have entire playoff series of whistles that keeps them from contributing much if they're tasked with full time POA duties. Offensively he's nothing like Caruso either because Caruso can run some point. The player Keon resembles is KCP if anything. Valuable yes, but a different type of value and we saw what can happen with those types if they aren't the answer. Keon is a 3 and D SG so if the Kings see him as the answer at that position then he'll get his KCP type money.
 
There's only one team that can offer that much aside from us, and unfortunately for us its a team that Ellis has a connection to (Jordi) and just might see the value in giving him a poison pill deal that we have to match and cripples us. Maybe they have that money next year but maybe we're just bidding against Washington.

And all of that ignores the possibility we've already set up a lucrative extension to be signed after we complete FA and trade season.
The Nets have their own shooting guard FA they are worried about this summer in Cam Thomas. If they re-sign him to a big $25-$30 mil/yr contract, I think that would take them out of the running for a high unbeatable contract offer to Keon next summer.
 
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Considering he has been vastly underpaid for the past two seasons, $20 million for one year seems barely adequate. But that's how the NBA works these days.
 
So, picking up Keon’ option for this season is good or bad?

It means we lose team control of him. He's well within his rights now to play out this season and sign where he wants and we lost our only tool to prevent that.

Now, if we weren't incredibly cynical Kings fans, maybe we could believe that there's a handshake deal set up between Perry and Keon that's going to pay him MORE than the MLE once eligible for the extension. And in return, we get more financial flexibility this summer.

All we can do is wait and see. If Keon doesn't sign the extension in FEB, this is an all-time sucker bad move. Vlade level bad. If he does, then Perry's got a good handle on control of the team and building out a timeline for this thing to be done right.
 
It means we lose team control of him. He's well within his rights now to play out this season and sign where he wants and we lost our only tool to prevent that.

Now, if we weren't incredibly cynical Kings fans, maybe we could believe that there's a handshake deal set up between Perry and Keon that's going to pay him MORE than the MLE once eligible for the extension. And in return, we get more financial flexibility this summer.

All we can do is wait and see. If Keon doesn't sign the extension in FEB, this is an all-time sucker bad move. Vlade level bad. If he does, then Perry's got a good handle on control of the team and building out a timeline for this thing to be done right.
I understood that we lost full control over his deal by the signing.
Now it's supposedly up to a handshake under the table for more financial flexibility.. I don't like the sound of that, there could be anything happen between now and February next year. Nothing is certain; the only certainty was that they could just stay idle, right?
 
Not buying any of these narratives.

Didn't want to pay tax - well dump other guys, or wait till next year for a pg. this is a "gap year" right? JV has to be tradable? That should free up plenty of money for Keon.

This was the smart move, now we can make other moves - well we just saw what guys like monk are worth. Demar/Lavine have no value

Log Jam in the back court - so we don't prioritize the guy that we just saw every contenders wants 3 of them?

The best choice is to retain Keon, let the young guys develop, hope we can move off the bad contracts next year and build a real team. I really hope they can retain him. You didn't need to pay him a fortune. 4/52-60 million would have been a great number. Losing the one guy who can shoot and play defense is certainly not ideal
 
any cap expert out there that can educate us on the impact of decline the option and re-sign vs current situation? This feels like a cap move to me of not declining the option.
 
4/52-60 million would have been a great number. Losing the one guy who can shoot and play defense is certainly not ideal
If that's what the market was it would be a no-brainer, thing is that's MLE money and we can have him one more year on the cheap and still top that while making the team better in the process. If he's worth more than that, again we can match or beat any offer.

It is all going to come down to whether or not he wants to be a King now, or if he would take less money to play elsewhere. We had the right to overpay him and force him to stay, or underpay him and gamble a bit on the team getting better before we pay him fair value. It's a shrewd move, and a calculated gamble. I can't say I love it or hate it.
 
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