Venom said:
Yeah, but as rich as everybody here thinks they are, they're not Steinbrenner. And the Palms is pretty well leveraged. It's doing big business, but I have no idea how profitable it is. It also still cannot compete with the big boys on the Strip, and Wynne just opened up his new place. Also, their whole cost cutting thing started when the Palms was being built and opened. I don't find that to be a coincidence. All that effects how the Kings are run. They're not Paul Allen, or even Dr. Buss.
The point is that they aren't willing to pay $80 million a year to keep players like Jim Jackson, Keon Clark and Damon Jones on the team, especially not when our core has the kind of problems it's had the past three seasons (injuries, lack of defense and rebounding, age, etc.) And I don't blame them, especially when you consider the luxury tax.
By the way, the cost-cutting was more directly related to the tax kicking in than it was to the opening of the Palms. And if the Maloofs did let those players walk in order to save close to $20 million in payroll and tax costs and then spend that money on their other business(es), I say smart move. We weren't going to win anything because of those players anyway. Not with Webber missing most of following season, Peja bombing out in the playoffs and Doug and Vlade breaking down.
On to Doug...
I'm going to raise the flag on this. At first blush, that's what it looked like, because that is how it was sold. But then all that stuff started coming out about how bad DC's injuries were and that he was gutting them out for the Kings and his teammates. They knew he was done and they unloaded him to clear that contract a year early. And what NBA player opts in to a player option? Everyone knew Cat was opting out, that's why Orlando traded him, and Orlando has his bestest friend in the whole wide world, Stevie Franchise. If he was opting out of that situation he was definitely opting out of the Kings. What leverage on the trade block? When did Cat become some hot commodity? He's a decent player who looks good on bad teams, like the Rockets and Magic. If we still had Webber and were in win now mode, sure, keep him. But, as everybody likes to say, that ship has sailed. Bottom line, no matter what DC meant to the team in the past, you do not keep dead contracts on your roster if you can avoid it, and the Magic provided a way.
So the Kings traded Doug only to save money? I don't believe that. Why not trade him for peanuts to a team under the cap that could use a player with Doug's talents? I believe that they wanted to see what Mobley could do, then see what they could get for him if he didn't pan out.
I'm not calling Cuttino a hot commodity, but he is a serviceable player that can help improve a lot of NBA rosters. We don't need him, but he's not the type of player that you just toss to the side, especially when losing him hurts the team more than keeping him would. If we keep him, even with the MLE for just one season, we keep a player that can do us some good on the court and maybe bring us a big piece later on. That's nothing to sneeze at.
You keep saying that you don't keep dead contracts no matter what. But you don't do is you don't let solid players walk without at least trying to retain the rights to them, especially if you're over the cap. If we let him walk, that's it. A few million off the payroll, and nothing else, except an even bigger hole at shooting guard (you doubt McCants abilities in another thread, but are ready to put Garcia in the starting lineup and expect us to compete?), and the same holes at power forward and on the bench. Not a good idea.
Another thing, the logic used to justify the Webber trade, that he was old, breaking down, and not worth the contract, somehow does not apply to DC?
Webber's contract was much bigger, was getting even bigger, and there was no guarantee that he'd even be able to play out the remaining three years. Big difference. And that's without even mentioning that we got back three players for Webb, in essence splitting his $17 million salary three ways, making that chunk of cap space even more tradeable.
Now if we had traded Chris Webber for Anfernee Hardaway straight up just to get the money off the books, that would be a different story. Still a huge contract that would be just as hard to move.
Look, I wish we did have some cancers on this team, but give me some Artest cancer, or Pierce cancer, not Cat. Here is what I do not understand about the whole Cat situation, and the offseason in general. Everyone talks about improving defense and intensity, and yet they want all our free agents back. That makes no sense. By the bye, Doug was never afraid to take big shots, he just airballed a really important one, but so did Peja. I don't care if Mobley will fit in better after training camp, he should not be on the opening day roster. We are clearly in a slight rebuilding mode, and we have two first round draft picks at his position who are longer, more athletic, better passers, and probably shoot better. If Cat can actually help this team that means we are at the same talent level as the Rockets of old and the Magic of today, which is really just sad. Like I've said, entertain all S&T ideas, but under no circumstances sign him outright. Depending on what goes down with Peja/KT/Corliss/BJax, this team could have some nice cap space as early as next year. There is no reason to screw that up in order to keep Cat in the fold.
My comments in the post that you're referring to are really more hypothetical than anything. My point was that maybe we're looking at this whole thing the wrong way, and maybe Cat is worth more to us than we realize, whether he plays for us next season or not.
A big thing that you mentioned that I notice as well is that we want to get better but want all our free agents to stay. That's very backward, especially when talking about a player that won't help us get what we need. But in Cuttino, we have one more piece that can give us some more leverage. If we let him walk, we're in no better of a situation than if keep him. We don't have cap space and can only add one or two more players through free agency either way, and we don't have a qualified starting shooting guard. I don't want to keep him because I like him; I want to keep him because he's still very useful to us, whether as a player or as a part of a trade.
Another way to look at it is that a lot can happen between now and February. There may be a scenario in which Mobley steps up and plays big for us, and here we are in late January with him putting up good numbers and another team desperate to move a discontented player. Then who has the upper hand?
See, if we let Mobley walk without trying to retain him (and it may be that we've already lost out on him), we aren't cutting our losses. We're increasing them.
