Suns News: Week 17 (2/7 - 2/13)

[specialsauce]

Racist!

Dude’s averaging 24, 15, 5 / 36 @ 22.2 PER

DA is 20, 13, 2 / 36 @ 22.5 PER

You don’t pay double for player number 2.

Racist?

[3rdside]

Running joke from the Politics board .. though there may be more to it than that:

https://www.basketballnetwork.net/when- ... man-boobs/

[Indy]

It is pretty clear Ayton helps our team more than Sabonis would, even with the 10M difference.

And that article argues for doing exactly what we already were doing in this thread.

[3rdside]

Give me a break, it's a joke.

It's quite appropriate in this instance as statistically Ayton and Sabonis are very similar - that one of them is potentially going to cost half the other but you prefer the more expensive one, it doesn't entirely add up.

It may very well be the defence aspect that Pickle was focussing on, I was just using a topical conversation to make a joke.

The part in the article is this quote:

“We’ve said, ‘If you want to compare this player to another player, you can only do it if they are a different race.’ If the player in question was African American, for instance, the talent evaluator was only allowed to argue that “he is like so-and-so” if so-and-so was white or Asian or Hispanic or Inuit or anything other than black. A funny thing happened when you forced people to cross racial lines in their minds: They ceased to see analogies.”

Which is an approximate way of saying talent evaluators might see (using a very loose analogy) "a big white stiff" for no good reason.

[Split T]

I do think it’s dumb when people only compare players to guys of the same race or guys that look similar(Booker and Klay) or guys that are left handed. There’s a focus on visual comparisons more than actual style comparisons. However, sometimes the comps do work.

If I’m comparing Sabonis to another player in today’s game it’s probably as like a poor man’s Jokic. He’s not as good of a passer or shooter, which is why he’s not an mvp candidate. If you want to avoid the same race comps, you could also probably call him a rich man’s Thad Young without the defense. Maybe Bam Adebayo, again without the defense though.

[Indy]

Give me a break, it's a joke.

It's quite appropriate in this instance as statistically Ayton and Sabonis are very similar - that one of them is potentially going to cost half the other but you prefer the more expensive one, it doesn't entirely add up.

It may very well be the defence aspect that Pickle was focussing on, I was just using a topical conversation to make a joke.

The part in the article is this quote:

“We’ve said, ‘If you want to compare this player to another player, you can only do it if they are a different race.’ If the player in question was African American, for instance, the talent evaluator was only allowed to argue that “he is like so-and-so” if so-and-so was white or Asian or Hispanic or Inuit or anything other than black. A funny thing happened when you forced people to cross racial lines in their minds: They ceased to see analogies.”

Which is an approximate way of saying talent evaluators might see (using a very loose analogy) "a big white stiff" for no good reason.

a) Sabonis is averagint 20M over the next 3 years. Ayton won't get 40.


b) Which clearly isn't happening here because pickle was comparing Ayton and Sabonis.

[Split T]

I’ll add this to the bigger discussion at large…Sarver refusing to pay the luxury tax the next two years after a finals run and what’s looking like another deep playoff run this year(without paying the tax) would be completely unacceptable. I’d be curious how often a team wins a title when they aren’t in the tax…we were a finals team last year and Sarver would have gotten a check from all the luxury tax payments of the other teams. He’ll get one this year too.

You can pay the tax in two consecutive years before you’d get hit with the repeater tax. I can understand not wanting to pay that(fees get massive), but he should 100% be willing to pay the regular tax. He can blow the team up in 2024-2025 and I won’t get too upset if he at least goes all in in 2022-2024.

Isn’t 2024-2025 when the new media deal would kick in and raise the salary cap and luxury tax substantially? Or is it 2025-2026? We may be positioned perfectly to benefit massively from the cap spike right when CP3 is retiring and we can add his replacement in FA right as the cap spikes and Booker/Ayton/Bridges/Cam are all smack in the middle of their primes.

[3rdside]

Give me a break, it's a joke.

It's quite appropriate in this instance as statistically Ayton and Sabonis are very similar - that one of them is potentially going to cost half the other but you prefer the more expensive one, it doesn't entirely add up.

It may very well be the defence aspect that Pickle was focussing on, I was just using a topical conversation to make a joke.

The part in the article is this quote:

“We’ve said, ‘If you want to compare this player to another player, you can only do it if they are a different race.’ If the player in question was African American, for instance, the talent evaluator was only allowed to argue that “he is like so-and-so” if so-and-so was white or Asian or Hispanic or Inuit or anything other than black. A funny thing happened when you forced people to cross racial lines in their minds: They ceased to see analogies.”

Which is an approximate way of saying talent evaluators might see (using a very loose analogy) "a big white stiff" for no good reason.

a) Sabonis is averagint 20M over the next 3 years. Ayton won't get 40.


b) Which clearly isn't happening here because pickle was comparing Ayton and Sabonis.

Oh brother, I seem to have hit a nerve with you.

a) Sabonis will make $18.5m next year, lets call it $18 for arguments sake - double that is $36m. DA's max contract if he'd signed it in the offseason was starting at about $34m .. is $36m really that much difference to $34m?

b) I don't really know what you mean. Ayton - the black guy - vs Sabonis the white guy .. I was using the big white stiff analogy for Sabonis.

[Flagrant Fowl]

I’ll add this to the bigger discussion at large…Sarver refusing to pay the luxury tax the next two years after a finals run and what’s looking like another deep playoff run this year(without paying the tax) would be completely unacceptable. I’d be curious how often a team wins a title when they aren’t in the tax…we were a finals team last year and Sarver would have gotten a check from all the luxury tax payments of the other teams. He’ll get one this year too.

You can pay the tax in two consecutive years before you’d get hit with the repeater tax. I can understand not wanting to pay that(fees get massive), but he should 100% be willing to pay the regular tax. He can blow the team up in 2024-2025 and I won’t get too upset if he at least goes all in in 2022-2024.

Isn’t 2024-2025 when the new media deal would kick in and raise the salary cap and luxury tax substantially? Or is it 2025-2026? We may be positioned perfectly to benefit massively from the cap spike right when CP3 is retiring and we can add his replacement in FA right as the cap spikes and Booker/Ayton/Bridges/Cam are all smack in the middle of their primes.

Yes, and yes.

A misallocation of resources is my only fear of Ayton signing a max contract at this point. There's enough evidence of him performing like a max player when he's 100% focused in big games, so I don't see him becoming lazy once he's paid as long as the support around him is solid. I'd be worried about his focus if the Suns lost Monty or Booker, for example.

[Indy]

I’ll add this to the bigger discussion at large…Sarver refusing to pay the luxury tax the next two years after a finals run and what’s looking like another deep playoff run this year(without paying the tax) would be completely unacceptable. I’d be curious how often a team wins a title when they aren’t in the tax…we were a finals team last year and Sarver would have gotten a check from all the luxury tax payments of the other teams. He’ll get one this year too.

You can pay the tax in two consecutive years before you’d get hit with the repeater tax. I can understand not wanting to pay that(fees get massive), but he should 100% be willing to pay the regular tax. He can blow the team up in 2024-2025 and I won’t get too upset if he at least goes all in in 2022-2024.

Isn’t 2024-2025 when the new media deal would kick in and raise the salary cap and luxury tax substantially? Or is it 2025-2026? We may be positioned perfectly to benefit massively from the cap spike right when CP3 is retiring and we can add his replacement in FA right as the cap spikes and Booker/Ayton/Bridges/Cam are all smack in the middle of their primes.

Yes, and yes.

A misallocation of resources is my only fear of Ayton signing a max contract at this point. There's enough evidence of him performing like a max player when he's 100% focused in big games, so I don't see him becoming lazy once he's paid as long as the support around him is solid. I'd be worried about his focus if the Suns lost Monty or Booker, for example.

Yes, I third all of this.

Good luck finding more than 1 team this century that won a championship without being in the tax.

If you have to trade Ayton later, OK. Or Mikal or whomever is least valuable to the team AFTER our window has closed. But you don't cheap out in the middle of a window like this.

[Split T]

One thing I’ll say…there’s a lot of smoke that we’d be interested in a playmaking big. JJ traded for Saric and re-signed him. We keep bringing Frank Kaminsky back. We drafted Jalen Smith with the idea that he was an athletic Dario. And now we’ve been linked to Sabonis. I can definitely envision a scenario where we say we can get the rim running/drop big for cheap as a backup(McGee and Biyombo), let’s spend the bigger bucks on a playmaking 5. I’m not sure who that is, but it’s something I’ll keep an eye on. Bam Adebayo would be the perfect blend of both…and yes I know there’s zero chance of getting him, but that’s the prototype.

[Flagrant Fowl]

Julius Randle?

[Split T]

Julius Randle?

Please no, haha

[TOO]

Dumping the ball at the end of clock hoping someone makes a bad shot, the Julius Randle Point Forward saga.

[Split T]

Payne was originally supposed to be reevaluated after 2 weeks, but that time has passed without any update. Suns are very secretive about their players health and I do wonder if this might be a bigger issue than we think. I honestly wouldn’t be surprised to find out he had surgery or something.

[Mori Chu]

That's too bad that Payne seems a ways away. We may get a more extended look at Holiday than I had anticipated.

[Flagrant Fowl]

Might as well just amputate it, he never uses his right hand anyway.

[Mori Chu]

Might as well just amputate it, he never uses his right hand anyway.

He needs it to push off.

[SunsRIt]

Might as well just amputate it, he never uses his right hand anyway.

He needs it to push off.

He could still push off with a stump?

[Indy]

Dumping the ball at the end of clock hoping someone makes a bad shot, the Julius Randle Point Forward saga.

nice to read you TOO