Not much because his contract is way bigger. I mean, you have to decide this year if you wanna pay him 5.8 mil next year. Then, 7.3 the year after that. Not cheap like Austin, and had an even worse rookie year.
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I know we all want Rivers to succeed and maybe that has caused some of us to overlook some of his shortcomings. But man, NO value? That's intense. I would have been so disappointed to lose Rivers for much of anything, let alone giving him away. Glad we still have him.
For salary reasons, I would be more inclined to take a flier on Rivers than Bennett. And I liked Bennett prior to the draft, and hated Rivers.
I don't think "fact" means what you think it means, lol.
Look, you basically said he's awful and the worst decision maker on the team. Something you didn't back up and can't literally prove as fact or " look it up". Now you are saying he had one of the worst rookie seasons in history, also not true unless you are just using a broad stroke and consider anyone on the bottom half as " one of the worst". Most likely you are carrying forward a ridiculous article that was written 30 games into Austin's first NBA season. There were worse rookies two years ago, last season, and I would venture to say every season.
Throw something out there to contribute. Maybe you want to question his shooting form, who knows. Make a critique. But just baseless things with nothing to back them up is the definition of hating.
Wesley Johnson.
For the double positive of trading Rivers:
Harkless (This would be amazing. I doubt we could land him though.)
Crowder
But of all available I'd go
Harkless
Middleton
Quincy Miller
Casspi
Jordan Hamilton
the fact that rivers is basically worthless in and around the league comes as no surprise to me. Watching him struggle to find his groove even in a limited role is not a good sign for his future. Plus as a #10 pick his salary is an issue
He is not an asset at this time and 29 other teams just helped make that point loud and clear
Not sure what other proof anyone could need
that said obviously it would be nice if our 10th pick gets better
Anything that will help the team progress...if he doesn't it's time to move on
Nothing personal just business
wanting rivers to be valuable is understandable
Every other team in the league could have had him for nothing
Nobody wanted him
Hence, no value
again nothing personal
As a 19 year old rookie, he was terrible. A 19 year old rookie who, in all honesty, shouldn't have been playing big minutes. He was that bad because he had to play. You cannot judge him on his rookie year. That should be thrown out of the window. He could string together a really nice career w/ a lot of productive seasons and people would still say, "he had the worst rookie year ever." Let it go.
And to the point of "Rivers has no value around the league," that's clearly true and can't be debated (cgrand). But a player's perceived value =\= his abilities. For instance, Morrow had very low league-wide value last off season. Clearly he proved that his abilities exceeded his league perception.
So yeah, I think the argument that since Rivers has little value across the league, that proves that he does and forever will suck is extremely weak.
Here is the thing with Austin. We've watched him the last several years and have seem him go from being awful at pretty much everything to showing a bunch of improvement last season. The rest of the league still sees a lousy player -- he merely went from one of the worst seasons to below average. We think his learning curve will continue; the rest believe he's still much too far away and/or will probably never reach a suitable floor. Who knows who ends up being right but it's obvious we're the only team committed to seeing it through on his current contract.
Mo HARKLESS!
Well cross him off the list
Free agent Richard Jefferson is finalizing a one-year agreement with Dallas, league source tells Yahoo Sports.
— Adrian Wojnarowski (@WojYahooNBA) July 13, 2014
If I had to guess as to why, one big part of it is that his rookie year reputation still shadows him. He hasn't had as much of a microscope on him since then, including the last half of his rookie year and his second year when he made some good strides.
However, his overall game is still raw. Free throw shooting and mid-range shooting may be a big red flag despite his improvements as a three point spot up shooter. He is also a bit of a tweener still...even on PR there's still disagreement on whether he's best as a lead guard or slashing off-ball guard.
His on-ball defensive abilities are infinitely improved and probably presently unnoticed, since defense is more difficult to quantify outside of the disruption categories (steals and blocks). For instance, I remember during one of our NBA TV or ESPN games that Zach Harper or Zach Lowe gave some good props to Austin's offensive improvements via twitter, but then said something like "his defense still has a lonnnnng way to go" and Pelicans twitter checked him with the quickness...people who don't watch him all the time probably aren't aware of that strength, or just may not value it over his remaining weaknesses.
ETA: TLDR--what Redhopeful said