I think you focused a little too much on my second paragraph and not enough on my third. My main point was that we would have seen more value by renting the cap space and getting extra picks. You can still bring in vets. You will have some attached to bad contracts anyway. We still would have improved from last season with the growth of Alpi and the emergence of Cam/Amen for more minutes. I just think the extra picks + worser vets would have been more valuable in the long run than the higher level 3andD vets we got and no picks. You can still have vets help build those good habits we just would have lost a few more games. You could even argue renting cap space in previous years would have prevented some bad habits from forming in the first place. But, even if the vets didn't do as great a job with culture. You can always work on the culture after we get the talent. Other teams have done that. You need both to win but 1 is far harder to get than the other. But, If I were to guess what Stone projected. I think he probably projected the same growth we've seen from all the young guys + Jalen seeing similar growth. That would have been enough to get us to the play-in which would have been seen as a more tangible improvement and would have given a more clear stamp of approval from Fertitta for his job. I think the plan was always to make a big splash this past offseason since Fertitta agreed to tanking in 2021.
I can definitely see your point. The only thing I’ll note is not all role playing vets are created equal and their price tends to be correlated with their intangibles. Further, you want to see how your core looks like with good role players so that you can make a better assessment. Bad contracts are often bad for a reason so it’s important that the vets we get are good role models on and off the court. I do think that could have been done for less than $70m/season though. Who would’ve known by the end of this season Jalen would have the worst offensive season of his career and have the lowest trade value out of 6 young guys? That was unfortunate and unexpected. If that had gone differently we might be making the playins. In hindsight, renting some of the cap space for a pick or two would have allowed us to build more slowly like OKC. Definitely a viable alternative strategy.
I think they’re all overpaid but that’s a consequence of tanking; you have to overpay for good players. Fred is a really good player giving us 17/8 a block and a steal with under 2 TOs per game on 37% 3-pt shooting. He’s nowhere near a max guy but I like his play and the leadership he’s brought to the team. Brooks is a role player coming off the bench on a good team. He’s had a good year for us and is one of the best shooters in the team at 38% from 3. I want to see more discipline, his play has tailed off some. I don’t think the $ per yr is bad, but I don’t like that it’s 4 years. With Tari’s health in question going into next season I’ve come to believe that having Brooks on the roster is a good thing. I see Jeff Green as mostly a contract asset at this point. We need to aggregate Jeff Green, Landale. and Tate’s contracts into something of value. Steven Adams, Brooks and FVV are solid vets for our roster next season, but would like to add an impact player who fits our timeline.
