Re: Terrell Brandon to sign for 60 million

[Alex Wang <awang@mit.edu>]

Joe writes:
 
> Hi Andy:
> I have to agree with you on the "underrated"  and "consistent" description, 
> but the Tendex does not really support the case for making Brandon the 
> fourth highest point guard salary in the NBA (what a killer agent he must 
> have!). The confounding thing is that when Brandon turns 35-years-old, 
> he'll still be locked up for 2 more seasons at presumably more than 10 
> million dollars a year.  That's why I said "poor Kevin McHale."

It's true that if you are lucky, your star player becomes a free agent
when he is 26 or so, and you sign him to a big contract through his prime.
But most of the time he is either too young or too old and you will be 
paying for some less-than-fully productive years. If I were a GM though,
I would probably rather pay up for the older All-Star than the younger
"potential" player. Would you rather pay Brandon $60M or Mercer $60M?
I'd have to go with Brandon (although of course, you'd probably rather
have Marbury over both of them).
 
> The Timber-gerbils have two contracts taking up their entire 34 million 
> salary cap, so there's not much flexibility when the time comes to add 
> a veteran to their playoff run. I guess McHale shouldn't complain about 
> working for a generous billionaire owner, but it still makes his job 
> untenable in many ways. You have to credit McHale for recruiting Joe 
> Smith, Wally Szczerbiak, Will Avery etc. I hope it will be enough.

Actually, I believe that Garnett's contract is backloaded to the extent
that he'll be getting something like $30M in the last season of his
contract, during which he'll have turned around 27. Then they'll resign
him for an even huger contract (which is possible since he can get raises
above his old contract that exceed the current league maxima). You can
probably safely say that the Timberwolves aren't going to have any cap
room for the next 12 years or so. They aren't going to be adding any 
veterans except by the $2M exception.

> It's hard to believe McHale spent a lotto pick on Will Avery with the 
> intention that he'd be a backup for 6 more years. Avery could have used 
> an additional 30 games of point guard training at Duke, but he has more 
> true experience at the position than most NBA point guard prospects and 
> he's a lights out shooter and top defender with nearly ideal size and 
> quickness.

Yes, this is definitely an interesting situation. McHale's major needs 
going into the draft were center and shooting guard. I guess he feels that
Szczerbiak will be able to handle the shooting guard, and there weren't
any immediately helpful center prospects on the board (that were better 
than Garrett anyways), so he took the best player available. Some sort of
trade will probably happen before Brandon's new contract expires, if Avery
lives up to his potential.

Alex