Bits and Bites...

if teams are forced to give away the store for peanuts, then something does not make sense to me about how they calculate the luxury tax levels.

I would be interested to know if, over the last 5 years, the luxury tax increased at the same rate as players' salaries did. Is it a straight-up perfect correlation?

I mean, you almost can't field a first string on a team with 75 million.

Still can't figure how Boston did it. KG, Ray and Paul must be close to 50 million or more just for the three of them. The other 12 players cost an average of 2 mill each?? That is another stat that I would like to see...

Yes, I agree Franchise, JO is better than Camby. But surely JO AND Camby would have been nice. Forget about Hassan!

Wondering, BTW, if you or Howland would like to comment on the zone issue couple of us were talking about several days ago? Would sure like to hear your take on it...

yep, that Hollinger article explains it very well.

so, what Raps fans are left with is why Joey and Hump and Adams were offered multi-year contracts at millions per. At the time, they were said to have "earned" it. They are not even starters!

Were these guys really worth keeping, or expendable? Yeah, water under the bridge, but combined those contracts were worth more than the mid-level exception...

BTW, I know next to nothing about b-ball finances, but I sure can't recall that these money discussions were EVER this important back in the 70s/80s when I was growing up. Anyone out there feel inclined to give me a brief history of time: what changed so drastically to cause this to happen?

gerry, look at this site:

http://hoopshype.com/salaries.htm

As I mentioned in the previous post, I too was completely stunned by Canada's performance this morning. By the half, I was so upset I wanted to start breaking down all of Canada's faults. I then took a deep breath, made myself a very strong coffee, let my daughter wear her really cute Bosh jersey (whenever basketball is on the TV, she has to where her Bosh jersey...daddy's little girl)...but I digress...next thing you know, Canada decides to actually play basketball.

For all of Leo's coaching faults in the first half, I would have loved to have been a fly on that locker room wall.

Some observations...Kendall played a phenomenal game (I love his energy), Jermaine still needs a lot of work and has to make better decisions with the ball, there is a reason Carl English isn't on an NBA roster, Joel Anthony has been impressive (overall). The one real negative for me has been the coaching. In yesterday's game and the first half of todays, it didn't seem like Leo had them understanding the international game (it is much quicker and requires a lot more zone defense). I was disappointed at their inability to counter Korea's zone until the third quarter. They clearly didn't know how to react to the intense pressure that the Koreans were applying. I also don't really understand their offensive philosophy...and then suddenly everything clicked. I am curious to see which team shows up this Friday. Do you guys know if the game is on at 6:00 am again?

I meant to say: "she has to WEAR her Bosh jersey".

Great game by Team Canada this morning. Started watching from the half and was late for work as I couldn’t tear myself away. Really exciting and entertaining! Great effort especially by Levon Kendal and Rowen Barrret!

Franchise great point regarding Mendez, Brown and now possibly Dalembert. Why are we playing in this tournament without our best talent? This really hasn’t gotten a lot of press. If it really is due to Leo’s mismanagement of personnel, that is a shame. I’ve always thought Leo was not the right pick for this position as he has zero coaching experience and also seems to have a major ego problem.

Gerry,

Basically the cap and luxury tax are in place to protect GM's and owners from themselves. You’re right the 70’s and 80’s were entirely different, however teams and the league weren’t enjoying the revenues they are now and did in the 90’s. Most importantly, in the 70’s teams weren’t giving 100 million dollar contracts to guys like Juan f’n Howard. I really think that contract was the last straw as the next round of bargaining (which included the lockout I believe) saw the introduction of the salary cap + luxury tax system. Which, in my opinion, is good for the league as it forces GMs to think strategically and rewards teams for spending wisely, while punishing those that spend foolishly (hello Knikcs!).

The raptors couldn't have gotten Camby even if they had tried as Denver didn't want salary back (nothing new there). My question is, is there an unknown rule where teams can trade players and get nothing back for them during the offseason because I thought teams had to exchange salary or does this only apply when it would put the team taking the player over the salary cap? I remember there was a similar deal last year with Phoenix sending Kurt Thomas to Seattle.
The reason I am wondering about all that is, if, once again a team has traded a decent player for nothing then doesn't that defeat the whole purpose of having the rule that salaries have to match? If my memory serves me correctly, the league stated they didn't want teams to engage in fire sales but isn't that what is going on here (team can't afford to keep their players so they dump them for nothing, isn't that the definition of a fire sale). Now I know, typically fire sales, involve teams trading away all their good players but the idea, I believe, was that the NBA didn't want teams to trade something for nothing. If you made a bad deal with a player then you were suppose to live with it. Instead teams are finding ways around the rules and the good teams are still dumping their bad contracts (usually expiring) on the weaker teams who have cap space. I am not saying that Camby's deal is bad, but obviously Denver gave Camby away and did't even get a body back. I think it is time the NBA gave up trying to police the league from bad deals and fire sales as both of these things are actually good for franchises (the Marlins won a world series a few years after having a fire sale) as they can restock their teams with draft picks and young players. I mean if a team can trade a big contract player for a 2nd round pick but another team can't trade some young players for a big contract because the salaries don't match, isn't that a little hypocritical? I understand there are rewards for staying under the cap but isn't this a little extreme?

Who is broadcasting these Olympic qualifiers? Would love to be able to watch the next one on Friday.

From Doug Smith just a few minutes ago:

-Even before a dramatic 79-77 comeback victory over Korea this morning, rallying from 18 points down in the second half, team officials had booted starting centre Samuel Dalembert from the squad.

"He's not on the team," head coach Leo Rautins said in a conference call.

The Philadelphia 76ers centre was held up as a shining example of commitment to the Canadian team after earning his citizenship last summer and Rautins was non-committal when asked for a specific reason Dalembert is no longer on the roster.

"Something like this just doesn't happen in one game or overnight, it's been brewing for a little bit," the coach said. "Everybody that's here now wants to be here and wants to part of this team."

Dalembert had played poorly in Canada's opening-game loss to Slovenia but there was no hint his tenure with the team was in danger. But even his teammates feel the squad is now better off.

"You're representing Canada here," said Rowan Barrett, who contributed one of the biggest shots of the game in today's victory. "This is not the NBA, this is not the NCAA, this is not the CIS ... this is FIBA basketball and the team dynamic is not the same."

Without Dalembert, Canada recorded a stirring victory over Korea that propelled it into a sudden-death Friday quarter-final with Croatia.

Hi guys,

I too would love more insight into the reason why Denham, Juan and Sammy aren't playing.

Thanks.

Regarding the Camby trade with no one going the other way, the key is LAC had space under the CAP to absorb his salary, without going over.That makes it a legal transaction.

Hello again,
I found a link to an article outlining the reason for Juan's absence:
http://www.thescore.ca/blogs/basketball/index.asp?name=basketball/2008/07/leo_makes_a_sur.html

Still wondering why Denham isn't there.

Obviously from the comments by Rautins and Barrett, Brown, Mendez,& Dalembert are putting themseves first instead of the Canadian TEAM
first concept that is key to success on the International stage.

Thanks for the link to the article Nick!

It seems to me that the whole point of hiring Rautins was because of his involvement in the NBA. Well, if he's burning bridges with NBA players, doesn't that make Rautins an utter failure?

Without knowing the whole story regarding Dalembert’s departure from the national basketball team, keeping the NBA players’ egos in check I would imagine would be difficult under the best of circumstances more so if the player is the sole star NBA player amongst a team of lower tier players. North American players, unlike Europeans, have an agenda and are not always fully committed to team international play.

No self-respecting player would ever leave his teammates in the lurch when they are in the fight of their lives to make the Olympics. I truly believe if Dalembert really was committed to this team he would still be on the team…Period.

There are many spanish news websites reporting that the Raptors have reached and agreement with F.C.Barcelona in order to buy the rights to Roko Ukic (he was still under contract). All sources I've heard report an amount of $650.000 for the buyout.

Article in spanish:
http://www.elmundodeportivo.es/web/gen/20080715/noticia_53500761736.html

Reaction from Barcelona fans over here is basically they're very happy they got so much money for him, since they consider him a bust. Let us hope Roko proves them wrong!

Roko's Stats:

5-7 FG, 12 points, 6 Rebs., 5 Assists.

Hooray Roko!

Anyone want to share thoughts about the following trade scenario? Who wins, why, etc...

Charlotte's Gerald Wallace and Sean May to Toronto for Bargnani, Graham and Parker(or Kapono - less likely but works under salary)

A seemingly legitimate trade inquiry there (not mine just read of it)-
both teams satisfied? check.
Salary match? check.
No fiscal implications beyond mlse reality? check.
Good chemestry and roster fit both ways? check.

I cant see how this wouldnt be a virtually perfect match. Toronto takes on 4 years of Wallace's contract and possible short term injury problems off a club struggling financially for Bargs who Charlotte hopes just needs a change of scenery (and perfect match beside Okafor). If its not ideal from either end cash and/or 2nd rounders either way should be enough to even it out. At the end of the day its a firm "Yes" from this fan because Gerald Wallace is only approaching his prime and Bargs is ultimately a 7 foot tall question mark.

http://games.espn.go.com/nba/features/traderesult?players=2987~2759~635~2776~1026&teams=30~30~30~28~28&te=&cash=

Can anyone think of a reason it wouldnt work??

That trade would be awesome, but unless Charlotte is really looking to blow up the team for three expiring contracts, I'm not sure this would happen. It's not as though the 2009 free agent market is the one everyone would be gearing towards, and also I can't imagine Charlotte would be hot destination for free agents anyway.

It would be sweet though.

C: JO
PF: Bosh
SF: Wallace
SG: Kapono
PG: Calderon.

That would be a pretty ridiculous team, and would definitely make for some awesome playoffs.

(We'd at least have to throw in a 1st round pick I'm thinking, so as not to get laughed at completely.)

So, the trio at Boston are at 60.2 between the three of them, Kendricks and Scalabrine add in another 7 mill, so they pay 10 players with that last 8 million.

Shoulda known about this, I guess, but I did not realize that Bargs gets 5.1 this year, 6.5 next, and 8.5 in 2010. If he does not show substantial improvement after this year, gotta dump him. His contract money could be used on two solid players who make more of a contribution than he does.

Humps salary is not on the site. It had been negotiated a while back. Is he under contract after this year or not?

thanks for that , BTW, Paul. The site I was referring to was hoopshype.

just to put that Bargs salary into a little comparison.

Next year, Camby makes 7.6. Bargs is at 6.5. Good use of money?

why couldn't we get camby after the JO trade? we could have given up a draft pick whenever, so no immediate salary, which seems better for Denver that 'the right to trade picks'??

Courtesy of Hoopsworld...

Nathan Jawai was at Impact Basketball today working out with new front court partner Jermaine O'Neal. The young man from Australia gave Sam Mitchell an eyeful as he went through a number of drills to demonstrate both his physical prowess under the basket and his soft shooting touch.

First was a serious of low post power moves - Jawai on one side and O'Neal on the other. Jawai is a huge physical specimen, and he showed right away that he has the footwork and the raw power to be lethal under the hoop. Next up was a series of shooting drills, one of which had him shooting one-handed from the free throw line extended. He made a high percentage of those shots, too, and definitely has the potential to be a mid-range threat. Together with his power game under the basket he could turn out to be an important player for the Raptors this season.

Edited for spacing by the HQ:

http://www.athens2008.fiba.com/pages/eng/fe/08/olymQual/men/scheResu/p/

eventid/4508/gamename/3/groupname/D/langid/1/langlc/en/roundid/6250/fe_scheStat_boxScor.html

Edited for spacing by the HQ:

On the FIBA site a commenter called "Dimitris" posted on the Game Report

http://www.athens2008.fiba.com/pages/eng/fe/08/olymQual/men/news/gameRepo/p/eventid//

fixeddate//gamename/3/gender//groupname/C/langid//langlc//newsid//playernumber//roundid/6250/

teamnumber//zone//repo.html

Apologies for the edits, the long links were screwing things up on the back end. The order of posts is out of whack now but hopefully people can still copy and paste the links.

(PS - We promise not to have this issue with the next site)

Great links by the way and a bevy of information. In fact, because of all the discussion points, I think instead of writing a huge comment in response at 9 PM, I'll do sort of a mailbag format tomorrow as we haven't done one on the site in ages...

Hump makes about $3.3 mil. for this and the next two seasons.

Franchise, you said you would prefer O'Neal instead of Camby. I would agree but let's remember that their were rumours that Denver wante to trade more than a month ago.

While I can only speculate as to whether Denver would make the following trade, I really wonder whether the Nuggets would have agreed to a trade of Rasho and the Raptors 1st round pick for Camby. It would have given Denver an expiring contract and a 1st round pick.

The Raptors could then have traded TJ for Gerald Wallace giving them Wallace and Camby addressing all of their needs - a centre who can defend and rebound and a slashing, good defender and scorer at the wing position. And the difference in Wallace's and Camby's contracts would have been about 3-4 million allowing the Raptors to sign a legitimate back-up PG. So, in this scenario, the Raptors would have had Camby, Wallace and a back-up PG instead of O'Neal.

In my opinion,that's a better team than the current one with O'Neal.

just caught a re-airing of the 4th quarter of the canada/korea game, and wow, what a come back! i had already known before that they came back to win, but even as i was anticipating it, i still didn't think there was any way the canadians were gonna win even as i was watching the re-tape!
i didn't know anything about these guys before a few weeks ago, but in the two occasions i've watched them play, i've learned to hate carl english's game... it's only from these two games that i'm judging him, but when i saw the team play NZ at ricoh coliseum, all i saw from him was major ballhoggery and bricks clunking one after the other... then i watched him again tonight against korea and that dude once again was hogging the ball and even jacked 3 shots during the same possession and missed them all! he doesn't seem to finish well either... when he goes for a layup, it looks like he's just lunging his body upward and tosses the ball in the general vicinity of the net hoping that it drops in...
so i have a really bad impression of him now... what makes it worse is when he made that comment about how lebanon and NZ "just aren't at our level"... i was so glad that line came back to bite him in the ass!

BBall,
I agree, but the Nuggets were not going to take on any more salary - period. They are over the tax and Rasho's 8 mill would be 16 to them. They have obviously decided to go with keeping Melo and AI and probably could not have found a buyer for their bad contracts (Martin). Because the raps are over the cap, they need to match salaries to make the trade. They just couldn't give them the tax relief they wanted But I agree with your lineup.

So, we have JO and he can do a lot more on the offensive end than Camby. Also, he's a lot bigger (30 pounds) than Camby. As for injuries, I'm betting that JO is actually more durable that Camby. Sure Wallace is a better scorer than we have at the 3, but he is a bit of a chucker and might not work so well in an offense in which Bosh gets to be the main guy. As for durability, Wallace is another lock for the IL. If we have both JO and Bosh going, Kapono might be a better offensive fit than Wallace for our offense.
We may have been better with the way things worked out.

Another thing to remember about Camby is that he's 35 years old. JO may be an old 30 but he is also a better player than Camby on both ends of the court in my opinion. Camby gets a lot of blocks and is a good weak side defender. So does JO and he can also defend against any team's best post player. And JO has real offensive talent.

And while I like Wallace his contract goes 2 years more than JO's. Unless he wins the MVP in the next 2 years I think JO is overpaid but he comes off the books at exactly the right time. The 2010 free agency period has the potential to be incredible. It will be like a fantasy league draft if the number of players who look like they'll be available really are. Remember, at this point a majority of teams are resigning players in the hopes of keeping them off the books for 2010. There will probably be a lot of talent beyond the big names available.