wtfThey gave Kidd a three-year deal, same with Camby I'm pretty sure.
wtfKidd, Camby, and Lin all had 3 year contracts and Lin's final year was 15 million.
wtf
wtf
Even then, I'm still taking 600M over 24M (Lin) + 15-30M (luxury tax)..
Financially, it makes sense to keep Lin. He's a goldmine. But as far as basketball goes, they are still required to operate under salary cap rules; even if the owner is willing to spend on the luxury tax because he has a cash cow wearing #17, as of the new CBA, teams above the luxury tax line have less and less, steadily decreasing abilities and flexibility. They have a smaller MLE to sign players, more restrictions when it comes to trades, and so on. The Knicks will always have fans -- ownership is not short on cash or ticket sales by any means -- but the goal is always to win a championship, and matching Lin with the roster they have and the contracts they are bound to was not the right way to go; for once, the Knicks made a good basketball-related move.
I can't help but think blowing their load on Amare Stoudemire after missing out on LeBron has caused this. Carmelo was all but a lock for them. I think they'll regret that Chandler contract eventually. I'm still not sold on Carmelo as a #1 guy on a championship team, but his contract and Chandler's contract are most justifiable. I think they will regret acquiring Chandler the way they did though; if you remember, they used their amnesty clause on Chauncey Billups to make room to sign him; if they saved that right, they could have waited to use it on Stoudemire (who is not worth the contract BASKETBALL-WISE he has anymore). Just look at this. Already $64M without some of those guys being entered yet. Steve Novak got a crazy deal from them too ($15M over 4 years). Camby is $3M each year for 3 years.
Where are you getting those luxury tax numbers, by the way? They look too low to be based off the current CBA.
The Lakers have definitely improved with Steve Nash, but it's not going to matter. They still have no bench and can't guard point guards. As far as Howard goes, still not going to matter too much. So they'll go from having the 2nd best center in the league to having the best. I'm not sure that Howard is even an improvement offensively over Bynum. Dwight averaged 20.6 per game as the main option while Bynum averaged 18.7 as a secondary/tertiary option on their respective teams. Howard is easily the better rebounder, as Kevin Love is his only real competition in that category currently, but Bynum's 11 per game means he's no slouch either. They also both grabbed more than 3 offensive rebounds per game, so the disparity comes on the defensive glass. I don't feel like looking up these stats but I'm fairly confident in calling Pau Gasol a better defensive rebounder than Ryan Anderson, so it's not a stretch to say that the overall rebounding for LA would be about the same. Bynum is even a much better free throw shooter (69% vs 49%) although Dwight did attempt 234 more free throws this year and because of that actually ended up making more free throws than Bynum despite the difference in shooting touch from the stripe. But, when taking into account the free throw attempts we have to remember that teams don't have a hack-a-Bynum strategy because he can actually make them, but teams have no problem hacking Dwight all day. With Nash on the squad I'd expect Bynum/Howard to increase their field goal percentage, which isn't very different as is (Bynum shot 55.8%, Dwight 57.3%). So go ahead and send Dwight to LA, it's not gonna make much of a difference since the center position is not the area that LA needs to address. Making a strength marginally better is much less effective than improving a weakness (bench play/can't guard guards/the human vacuumKB24)
TL;DR Howard to LA makes them a little better but they'll still be ousted in round 2.
@Gabe, The Nets deal is not the same deal it was before, the signing of Humphries for a larger deal allows them to take back more of the Magic's bloated contracts with Howard. I don't see how anyone besides an oblivious Lakers fan could think that taking on one bad contract and giving them Bynum who will bolt anyway is somehow better than 3-4 first round picks, two prospects, and taking back 3 bad contracts. The Nets deal is still by far the most palatable, with the biggest road block being that the Magic will have to wait until January to move Howard. I don't think Orlando has any problem benching Howard in the mean time if he's too big of a babby to play. If they wanted to get rid of him just to get rid of him and be done with it, regardless of how shitty the offer is, they'd have done that by now.
I'm betting he becomes a Laker before a Net. Orlando won't want to start with him, they've gone through too much shit. Dwight's over it, they're over it, the entire fucking NBA is over it. He's going to get traded, and won't be traded in January to the Nets. He can't sign with the Nets either because they picked up Joe Johnson's shit contract.
Humphries wouldn't even be going to the Magic, he'd be going to a third team. But by trading his 12 mil they can take back a lot more (it's also only a 2 year contract). The only contract that the Magic would be "saddled with" would be Lopez...LA seems more likely. Brooklyn is now chockful of the same type of extravagant contracts that Orlando wants to get rid of. $12M for Kris Humphries? Brook Lopez as a max player? If Orlando trades Dwight to Brooklyn, they will be in the same position they are now; bad contracts with no way to improve.
Humphries wouldn't even be going to the Magic, he'd be going to a third team. But by trading his 12 mil they can take back a lot more (it's also only a 2 year contract). The only contract that the Magic would be "saddled with" would be Lopez...
Brook Lopez is a star when healthy and in a world where Deandre Jordan, Asik, and pretty much any other moderately skilled 7 footer has a salary in the neighborhood of 10 million +, Lopez' contract is not that bad.
And before "he'll never be healthy" jokes, all of his missed time has been a result of unrelated freak accidents or illnesses.
if 17.4/7.5 career numbers for a center who doesn't play defense == star
Roy Hibbert can play defense and anchored #3 seeded playoff team.
I would rather have Roy Hibbert. Hibbert took the Pacers to the playoffs, Lopez and Deron couldn't do that.
Lopez hasn't been healthy in two years. Not to mention the Pacers are an extremely deep team and the Nets were a pile of garbage.