Why???
I wouldnt do Green and Wallace for Gordon. I would rather pay Gordon 15 mil than those two 19 mil.
And even if I stretch Wallace next summer, I am paying Green and Wallace close to 13 mil next year and got 3.5 in dead money for each of the next two summers. Would rather just stretch Gordon next year if that is my only option, or again, pray he opts out.
It really depends on a few things we don't know, but hopefully Demps has a handle on.
1) Is the stretch provision on the table, if so this is probably the best option.
2) Will Gordon opt out
If Demps knows the answers to 1 and 2 are no and he's going to have to spend an asset to move a contract before 2015 FA, whether it's Gordon or Wallace you're still trying to move an asset you know has negative value, so wouldn't the $10 million bad contract be easier to sell than the $15 million bad contract?
I agree - Demps needs to sit down with Gordon and his agent this summer and see where their head is at. This problem doesn't need to necessarily be solved immediately, but there is 14 months on the clock. Needs to be resolved by late June of 2015 at the latest.
I don't see him opting out, too much money on the table.
Without going into a thousand different scenarios, I think it is basically as simple as this - He plays at least 70 games next year and ends the season healthy, he opts out. If either of those things dont happen, he doesn't.
If he plays for 2 minutes then stays on the bench for the remainder of the game it's still considered as "playing a game", right?
I think moving him to a bench role has the potential to change the equation quite a bit. If he becomes more efficient and productive while staying healthy because of fewer minutes, his value might increase. His Per 36 scoring dipped to 17.3 this season after being 20+ the previous 3 seasons. Make him a focal point of the bench unit and get that Per 36 scoring average back up above 20 while staying relatively healthy 2 years in a row, and he separates from the pack of SG FAs rather than getting lumped in with the many other 16-18 Per 36 guys on the market in 2015. If that happens there might be a deal out there worth exploring.
I'm not sure if this is just a stupid twitter fight, or it lends more evidence to "Gordon would get frustrated with a bench role and opt out", but he just did a little back and forth with a fan that called him a ballhog on twitter and he seems to feel he deserves more shots than he got this year.
@sarinibanini @PelicansNBA @Mosschop49 from what I hear from basketball experts is that I don't shoot nearly enough....
— Eric Gordon (@TheofficialEG10) April 25, 2014
Like him or hate him, our fans have been horrible to him. It's one thing if he was getting into fights with teammates and antagonizing fans, but he isn't doing that. The immaturity of fans sometimes; it makes me sick.