Now that things are starting to gel a little...

[Glenn]

With fear my other note would disappear, let me add that I used to understand that the advantages the Bird rights used to give was a larger increase in salary from year to year and one extra year on the contract. It's a substantial amount more money for the player - as if they can't get by with $12 mil per year.

 

[Mr. S£im Citrus]

You're insane. He's a top 15 overall defensive player in the league. He's a top 8 or 10 defensive big man in the league, easy. One of the best goalies. He'll have 5 more productive years. We'll see what the new CBA brings, but in the current market he's worth at LEAST 8.

Being able to tighten up the defense and prevent path to the basket layups down the stretch is what wins games. You cannot win if you can't do that. That's why guys like him are at such a premium. He doesn't post big numbers, but his effect on the outcomes of close games is huge.

He's no better than Kendrick Perkins and Perkins makes 4 million this year.

Perkins is also still, technically, on his rookie contract, having signed a multi-year extension in 2006, coming off a season where he averaged a whopping 5pts and 6reb, and split time at center with Mark F. Blount. At the time, he was probably happy to take it.

Perkins will be a free agent this offseason and, if he signs for less than $8M, I owe you lunch.

 

[mac]

Although I like Landry I don't think he really has a place on the team as we move forward. We're a good offensive rebounding team, but really 3/4 of that comes from the fact that we miss a lot of shots. All we need is for JT to actually finish his damn layups and we won't have a need for Landry. Somehow though, JT seems to like regressing a lot, not in terms of production but like his jumpshot becomes worse, his free throws become worse etc.

 

[upinsmoke]

Although I like Landry I don't think he really has a place on the team as we move forward. We're a good offensive rebounding team, but really 3/4 of that comes from the fact that we miss a lot of shots. All we need is for JT to actually finish his damn layups and we won't have a need for Landry. Somehow though, JT seems to like regressing a lot, not in terms of production but like his jumpshot becomes worse, his free throws become worse etc.

JT has to go he can't finish under the basket or in the clutch. Its the truth in order to move on I feel its important to part ways with JT in one way or another he needs to go. Landry will be HUGE for us one day in the playoffs i assure you.

 

[Tetsujin]

JT has to go he can't finish under the basket or in the clutch. Its the truth in order to move on I feel its important to part ways with JT in one way or another he needs to go. Landry will be HUGE for us one day in the playoffs i assure you.

JT however, is more versatile than Landry is and ever will be.

 

[The Hammer]

He's no better than Kendrick Perkins and Perkins makes 4 million this year.

He's better than Perkins. Defensively. Significantly better.

 

[RookieOfTheDay]

He's better than Perkins. Defensively. Significantly better.

Perkins is probably a top 5 defensive center so i don't see how Dalembert could be "significantly" better.

 

[ParniValjak]

He's no better than Kendrick Perkins and Perkins makes 4 million this year.

And he is severely under-paid! When Perkins signed his contract he was not a quarter of the player he is now! If Perkins is on the market now he would easily get 5 year $60 million contract. Take a look around the league just to see what sort of price range these defensive centers go for. Outside of the stars, they are the most paid players....EASILY!

 

[mac]

And he is severely under-paid! When Perkins signed his contract he was not a quarter of the player he is now! If Perkins is on the market now he would easily get 5 year $60 million contract. Take a look around the league just to see what sort of price range these defensive centers go for. Outside of the stars, they are the most paid players....EASILY!

I still think Perkins is over rated.

 

[rainmaker]

And he is severely under-paid! When Perkins signed his contract he was not a quarter of the player he is now! If Perkins is on the market now he would easily get 5 year $60 million contract. Take a look around the league just to see what sort of price range these defensive centers go for. Outside of the stars, they are the most paid players....EASILY!

I'm pretty sure Camby signed a 2 yr $23M extension with portland last year, and he's 36. Dally at this point is better than Camby is right now(if healthy). Not suggesting to offer Dally anything in that ballpark, and definitely don't do anything before the new CBA is in place, but you're right about veteran defensive bigs comanding gooda lot of money.

 

[ParniValjak]

I'm pretty sure Camby signed a 2 yr $23M extension with portland last year, and he's 36. Dally at this point is better than Camby is right now(if healthy). Not suggesting to offer Dally anything in that ballpark, and definitely don't do anything before the new CBA is in place, but you're right about veteran defensive bigs comanding gooda lot of money.

Exactly my point!

Re-signing Dalembert would be my #1 off-season priority and in current environment I would comfortably offer him $10 million per year.

With the new CBA that could very well be less but he would still command a lot of money. If we could sign him up for 3 year $30 million deal, I think we would do it in a second.

 

[The Hammer]

Perkins is probably a top 5 defensive center so i don't see how Dalembert could be "significantly" better.

Shotblocking?

 

[RookieOfTheDay]

Shotblocking?

Perkins averages 2.3 blocks per 36 minutes. Dalembert 2.7, not a tremendous difference.

 

[steelevt]

man i was hoping we could sign sammy for somewhere along the lines of what gortat signed for. a center that could start for some teams but played behind a younger better center in howards. with sammy being in that situation i was hoping for around 6-7 million.

 

[cuad]

Only thing I want to change about this roster would be the lineups and the addition of Kemba Walker / Kyrie Irving via draft.

I think the Kings have two must-do moves this summer: to resign Dalembert and to draft Kemba Walker / Kyrie Irving. Next would be to try to bring Landry back. I want to bring Darnell Jackson back too. I don't care if Head or Pooh don't come back or if Taylor gets cut. BUT I'd rather keep them than bring in new scrubs.

 

[RookieOfTheDay]

Only thing I want to change about this roster would be the lineups and the addition of Kemba Walker / Kyrie Irving via draft.

I think the Kings have two must-do moves this summer: to resign Dalembert and to draft Kemba Walker / Kyrie Irving. Next would be to try to bring Landry back. I want to bring Darnell Jackson back too. I don't care if Head or Pooh don't come back or if Taylor gets cut. BUT I'd rather keep them than bring in new scrubs.

hey, don't be calling Pooh a scrub now. He's been a part of this recent improved play.

 

[Spok22]

^ agreed. I wouldnt mind him as a backup pg.

 

[Bricklayer]

Only thing I want to change about this roster would be the lineups and the addition of Kemba Walker / Kyrie Irving via draft.

I think the Kings have two must-do moves this summer: to resign Dalembert and to draft Kemba Walker / Kyrie Irving. Next would be to try to bring Landry back. I want to bring Darnell Jackson back too. I don't care if Head or Pooh don't come back or if Taylor gets cut. BUT I'd rather keep them than bring in new scrubs.

Clearly that's not all going to happen. Not even the elite teams bring back all their marginal guys. There will be changes coming, and people just have to accept them. My guess is probably 6-7 of the current names stay the same. Maybe 6-8 if you count Whiteside. And that's normal. Now next year -- we're going to be trying to build it to win, adding in several major new pieces in all liklihood. Next year's team is the one that we will have intentionally constructed and that will have a chance to largely stick together for a while.

 

[Capt. Factorial]

I want to know what a cap hold is. I used to know the CBA inside and out but seem to have forgotten it. Can't we simply sign Dalembert to a reasonable contract and do away with this "cap hold?"
...
So a cap hold is theoretical if we simply want them and sign them. Right? It doesn't seem to be a major problem.

Yeah, the cap hold is theoretical, but it has to be dealt with. Your understanding looks pretty much right. If we intend to use our Bird Rights to resign Dalembert, then we must keep the cap hold (which is "virtual" money against our salary cap) until we sign him. At that point, the cap hold goes away, and his new salary counts against our salary cap instead. The cap hold for Dalembert would be equal to the largest salary we could offer him.

On the other hand, if we do not intend to use Bird Rights (that is, the ability to go over the salary cap to resign him) on Dalembert, we can renounce the cap hold and still be able to negotiate a contract with him. The cap hold is gone, just can't go over the salary cap to sign him.

If they are serious about getting a great team here, take advantage of the Bird rights as it puts us in a better negotiating position than any other team.

That's only true if we intend to offer Sammy $19M+ next year, and we clearly won't do that. If we don't make any trades, counting our 2011 first round pick (don't know where that will be, so that salary is variable) we'll have somewhere between $30-33M in salary going into the summer for 9 players (Beno, Cisco, Evans, Cousins, Thompson, Casspi, Greene, Hassan, pick), which will definitely give us some cap flexibility. I don't know why we'd want to tie up that flexibility in a huge cap hold to Dalembert, so I'm guessing we'll renounce that first thing, and just negotiate with him from a position of cap strength rather than trying to brute force him way too much money.

Of course, this is all dependent on the current CBA, which the new CBA (knock wood) may not resemble at all, so the rules may turn out quite different.

 

[roasthawg]

I like the route we've gone of "going big"... we kind of wear teams down when we're playing well. I'd like to retain as many of our big guys as we can and add a shooter to the mix. Emulate the Celtics if at all possible as that's the best case for this group of guys.

 

[Glenn]

That's only true if we intend to offer Sammy $19M+ next year, and we clearly won't do that. If we don't make any trades, counting our 2011 first round pick (don't know where that will be, so that salary is variable) we'll have somewhere between $30-33M in salary going into the summer for 9 players (Beno, Cisco, Evans, Cousins, Thompson, Casspi, Greene, Hassan, pick), which will definitely give us some cap flexibility. I don't know why we'd want to tie up that flexibility in a huge cap hold to Dalembert, so I'm guessing we'll renounce that first thing, and just negotiate with him from a position of cap strength rather than trying to brute force him way too much money.

Don't the Bird rights allow for bigger year to year increases in salary and an extra year? I am not saying we want him that extra year but we DO have a competive advantage over other teams and after all, we do live in Sacramento. We need advantages and until this team becomes very competitive, we probably will need to swallow hard and give more than a guy is worth, especially guys who are proven major contributors. I think we are on the same wave length.

 

[Kingster]

If you looked at Dally's body of work for the season up to now, you wouldn't pay him much. If you looked in the last two or three weeks, you'd pay him quite a bit. Who is the real Dally? That's what we have the rest of the season for - to see if he consistently do the job.

 

[Capt. Factorial]

Don't the Bird rights allow for bigger year to year increases in salary and an extra year? I am not saying we want him that extra year but we DO have a competive advantage over other teams and after all, we do live in Sacramento. We need advantages and until this team becomes very competitive, we probably will need to swallow hard and give more than a guy is worth, especially guys who are proven major contributors. I think we are on the same wave length.

Yeah, Bird Rights do allow for a raise of 10.5% of the first-year salary instead of 8%. But if you don't intend to go over (or at least close to) the maximum salary somebody else can offer, I think that's largely academic. For instance, if we were to offer a three-year contract starting at $8M with max raises, another team would have to offer 3 years starting at $8.185M to match the total contract value. That's not a big difference.

The extra year does make a difference...but that's only if you're thinking to sign Dalembert to a six-year contract that goes through his age-35 season. Just...no. Don't do that. There's way too much potential for a big man to get injured, lose a step at that age, etc. I personally would offer Dalembert 3 years tops.

As always, this is under the assumption of the current CBA, but seeing that 1) we wouldn't want to offer 6 years, 2) we wouldn't want to offer so much money to exceed our cap, and 3) we wouldn't want to offer so much to make that maximum raise issue relevant, I would see us renouncing Bird Rights immediately, even if we fully intended to resign him. The only thing that the Bird Rights would seem to do would be to tie up our cap space with a cap hold so that we would essentially be forced to make a deal with Sammy before making any other deals. I don't see the competitive advantage to Bird Rights in this particular case.

 

[bajaden]

He's no better than Kendrick Perkins and Perkins makes 4 million this year.

True, but he's also on the final year of his contract and will probably want more money. If healthy!

 

[bajaden]

Although I like Landry I don't think he really has a place on the team as we move forward. We're a good offensive rebounding team, but really 3/4 of that comes from the fact that we miss a lot of shots. All we need is for JT to actually finish his damn layups and we won't have a need for Landry. Somehow though, JT seems to like regressing a lot, not in terms of production but like his jumpshot becomes worse, his free throws become worse etc.

I think we should take note that JT is shooting almost the exact same field goal percentage as Landry. I think JT could hit 40 layups in a row and someone would still be bitching about his missing shots around the basket. Is he perfect? No! But he has improved.

 

[bajaden]

I still think Perkins is over rated.

Yeah, he lost the championships for the Celtics last year. By getting injured. If he hadn't gotten injured, the Celtics would be world champs now. Thats how overrated he is. My Buddy Robin is a huge Laker fan and was watching the Championships with me. The minute Perkins went down, I turned to him and said, the Lakers just won the championships. They can't beat the Lakers without him.

 

[bajaden]

Only thing I want to change about this roster would be the lineups and the addition of Kemba Walker / Kyrie Irving via draft.

I think the Kings have two must-do moves this summer: to resign Dalembert and to draft Kemba Walker / Kyrie Irving. Next would be to try to bring Landry back. I want to bring Darnell Jackson back too. I don't care if Head or Pooh don't come back or if Taylor gets cut. BUT I'd rather keep them than bring in new scrubs.

Here's the problem with your scenario. If we do everything you suggested, we've upgraded nothing. Yeah, we added either Irving or Walker, and I'm not as big a Walker fan as some are, but we've done nothing in the way of adding a significant veteran that would impact the team. Somehow I don't think they rid themselves of all the salary they could and took on expiring salaries, just to resign those same players and stay pat otherwise.

 

[bajaden]

Yeah, Bird Rights do allow for a raise of 10.5% of the first-year salary instead of 8%. But if you don't intend to go over (or at least close to) the maximum salary somebody else can offer, I think that's largely academic. For instance, if we were to offer a three-year contract starting at $8M with max raises, another team would have to offer 3 years starting at $8.185M to match the total contract value. That's not a big difference.

The extra year does make a difference...but that's only if you're thinking to sign Dalembert to a six-year contract that goes through his age-35 season. Just...no. Don't do that. There's way too much potential for a big man to get injured, lose a step at that age, etc. I personally would offer Dalembert 3 years tops.

As always, this is under the assumption of the current CBA, but seeing that 1) we wouldn't want to offer 6 years, 2) we wouldn't want to offer so much money to exceed our cap, and 3) we wouldn't want to offer so much to make that maximum raise issue relevant, I would see us renouncing Bird Rights immediately, even if we fully intended to resign him. The only thing that the Bird Rights would seem to do would be to tie up our cap space with a cap hold so that we would essentially be forced to make a deal with Sammy before making any other deals. I don't see the competitive advantage to Bird Rights in this particular case.

I agree with you totally. There's no need to keep the Bird rights. We have more cap space than anyone, so therefore we can probably outbid everyone. It would come down to first, does Dalembert want to return knowing the situation, and second, would he sign for a resonable salary. I mean I would love to have him back, but I'm not about to throw the bank at him. Camby just signed a new contract recently and he's being paid around 8.5 mil this year. Under the new agreement, I'm sure that number would be less. In my opinion Dalembert isn't any better than Camby performance wise. Only age would be a factor between the two of them.

Plus if the owners get the hard cap they want, and don't grandfather in all existing contracts, which is what they say they're going to do. Then there will suddenly be a lot of players on the market via trade by teams over the cap. In other words, it will be a buyers market, and the price of players will go down. Guys like Dalembert may well end up signing for 4 to 5 mil a year, because there won't be enough teams out there doing the buyinig.

 

[Bricklayer]

If you looked at Dally's body of work for the season up to now, you wouldn't pay him much. If you looked in the last two or three weeks, you'd pay him quite a bit. Who is the real Dally? That's what we have the rest of the season for - to see if he consistently do the job.

We, and the rest of the league, have 9 years of Daly's body of work to go by. Was why all the silliness abou him earlier was getting on my nerves -- everybody knows what this guy is and can do. He's nto a world beater, but he's one of those Top 10 or 15 interior shotblocker/rebounders, and has been for a long time. He's in the Top 50 al time in shotblocking (or it might have been #54 entering the season?), and si routinely in the Top 20 in the league in per minute rebounding. This should not be news to anyboby. The offense is just a bonus, but he's a xareer 54% shooter, and not a terrbile FT shooter for a big man. And he's been doing it all decade.

 

[Section 101]

As always, this is under the assumption of the current CBA,

Which makes this whole discussion pointless. Either there are major changes or no season next year.