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NBA's Cap Crunch Exposes Flaws In GM Thinking

This is an article in Real GM. Although it is league-wide in scope, it is very Blazer centric and is a cautionary tale about spending money. Fortunately, we are not alone.

NBA's Cap Crunch Exposes Flaws In GM Thinking

The whole article is linked; here's an excerpt.

After 44 wins and a surprising playoff appearance, the Blazers went to work improving on their unexpected success right as the NBA entered the uncharted wilderness of a massive cap spike. What followed was players like Allen Crabbe, Evan Turner and Meyers Leonard netting nearly $200 million to either return or come to the Northwest and join forces with the team’s explosive backcourt. Those deals were met with skepticism at the time, and now, with the benefit of hindsight, they’ve proven catastrophic.

Additional contracts doled out to Al-Farouq Aminu and Mo Harkless along with the three above helped push the Blazers deep into luxury tax hell. That then prompted the team to basically give Crabbe away to Brooklyn (more on that in a second) for essentially nothing just to lessen their tax bill by about $40 million. Even without Crabbe in the fold, the team currently will sit snugly against the tax threshold with rotation players like Pat Connaughton, Shabazz Napier and Jusuf Nurkic eligible for restricted free agency this summer.

It’s easy now to say those are deals Portland never should have made. But the reality of the situation is that the Blazers found an unexpected level of success and needed to maintain it. Simply foregoing signing anyone and letting Lillard lead a cast of misfits into the lottery the following season could have caused irreparable damage to the team’s relationship with their franchise cornerstone. Nobody in the NBA wants to squash unexpected momentum.

Portland needed to do something to stay at around 44 wins or build toward something even better. That’s why the deals for those players were handed out, locking Portland -- 29-25 entering tonight’s games -- into a state of mediocrity that’s going to be hard to escape. The lessons of Beane’s A’s could have proved to valuable to the team that summer.

The deal for Turner is low hanging fruit, but it’s still worth dissecting. For the Blazers, Turner represented a player they could pair with either McCollum or LIllard while also perhaps initiating offense on his own. Turner is essentially an average defender who can function as a nominal point guard. His outside shooting was and still is a problem.

So what Portland was essentially looking for was a wing-sized player who could function as a primary ballhandler while accepting that the player was a non-shooter. Even without touching Turner’s annually awful on/off splits, the Blazers didn’t need to play $75 million over four years to find a player who could offer similar production. James Johnson signed a one-year deal with the Heat that same summer. Nando de Colo, formerly of the Spurs and Raptors, is currently destroying the Euroleague with powerhouse club CSKA Moscow (and he can shoot!). It’s a safe bet to say that Portland could have gambled on a couple of players like that and secured Turner’s previous production for a fraction of the cost.

Harkless falls into the same vein. A 6’8’’ combo forward with no real track record as a floor-spacer isn’t exactly a rare commodity. Although Harkless’ inclusion in the starting lineup triggered the Blazers late postseason run during the 15-16 season, the team needed to objectively look at what he offered. Portland could have perhaps scoured the end of rosters or dove into the D-League and banked on their development to find a cheaper alternative to Harkless.

If that failed, there’s always the fact that Jeff Green took a one-year deal worth $15 million to go play for the Magic that same summer. Luc Mbah a Moute, another established NBA vet, also went to the Clippers during that 2016 offseason for peanuts. The really smart move for Portland would have been securing a player like Mbah a Moute or Green while developing a younger player with the same game behind them on a multi-year, non-guaranteed deal.

Just imagine how different Portland’s future flexibility would be if Turner and Harkless weren’t on the teams cap sheet for nearly $30 million combined next season. The entire calculus for the Blazers offseason moves would be changed. As of now, the team will have to make a string of clever moves to jettison two unessential pieces without incurring similar costs.

Contracts doled out to Turner and Harkless are obviously easier targets. Things get a little different when looking at re-signing young, restricted free agents like Leonard and Crabbe. Deals involving players like that simply requiring placing a bet. The Blazers were likely hoping that those two youngsters would gel with their backcourt and form a potent, youthful core for years to come. There’s nothing wrong with swinging and missing in that context.

The problem is that deals like that become problematic in when compounded when a team like Portland whiffs on a free agent deal for a player like Turner. That’s why it’s crucial for NBA teams to thoroughly examine the type of production and they need and see if they can get all or a good chunk of it from players that are massively undervalued -- just like Beane and his Oakland A’s.