At midnight this morning, Free Agency officially began. The NBA announced on Tuesday that the salary cap for the 2008-09 season will be $58.68 million, the luxury tax threshold will be $71.15 million, and the value of the mid-level exception will be $5.585 million. Over-the-cap teams can only offer the mid-level exception to free agents. The Hornets are currently sitting at about $59 million with 10 players on their roster. Re-signing Pargo, Wells, Anderson, or Bowen wouldn’t count against the salary cap, but the team can only offer other free agents the MLE, and will be sure that the combination of salaries offered stays under the luxury tax threshold. I believe only Memphis and Philadelpia were originally under the salary cap, but Golden State and Los Angleles (Clippers) joined them after their free agents opted out.
Elsewhere, Philadelphia cleared up even more of their considerable cap space by trading Rodney Carney and Calvin Booth to Minnesota. More shocking, Elton Brand appears to have given the 76ers a verbal committment on a 5-year $80 million contract. Back on the West Coast, Golden State is rumored to have won the Maggette sweepstakes in the 5-year $50 million range, showing us what Maggette was really after. On the flipside, GS looks to have lost Mikael Pietrus to Orlando in the 4-year $20 mil range. Multiple reports believe the Hornets have targeted James Posey.
But mostly, it’s all still rumor. That said, the time for speculation is largely over. The pens are out and the papers ready to sign. Hopefully, with a few of the bigger names getting cleared out, and with the cap numbers known, we’ll finally start to see some action from the Hornets.
Maggette taken by the warriors. Pietrus by the magic. Who the **** are we going to take, barry? Horry? Wth, we traded away our draft pick for nothing when we could now have had cdr? Damn, i’m pretty mad at all this.
We traded our draft pick because we couldn’t have gotten anybody valuable with the 27th, not that would come in and help right away, besides our main concern should be to keep wells and pargo and possibly andersen, then we have awhile to look for another big man and a potential guard/forward doesn’t have to be someone who lead their team in scoring lot of players out there who can add to the team
While the city probably wants immediate gratification through free agent signing, if you think about it, our team didn’t REALLY need anybody to replicate another successful season (minus coaching changes). Good players on bad teams seem to be signing on to mediocre teams, and the elite teams (i.e. Western Conference playoff teams) haven’t really improved much either, in my opinion.
In retrospect, doesn’t adding Darrell Arthur (who could play JuJu freshman minutes) provide us with some option in the future at a reasonable price? Since the media’s professed their love for Arthur’s potential, I’ve been a bit iffy over the organizations movements. Come on now.
Yeah, I really thought they would have moved by now. If for no other reason than all the good people will be gone. Yeah, they’re talking to Posey and Hayes, blah, blah. Both are 3s, then we really need 4s or 5s. We can already re-sign Pargo, Wells, and Bowen without impacting the cap. Same for Anderson, but the only thing I’ve heard about him is that he’s worked out for the Celtics.
Now I’ve heard the financial arguments that we should let Pargo go so we can play James. I mean, why pay the guy $6 mil to ride the end of our bench and then give JP a big payday on top of that? As much as I like Pargo, I have to agree with that.
And yes, they did look pretty damn good last year, as is. Which means to improve, we need a more consistent big man or instant offense off the bench. Could it be, if they’re interested in the latter, that Ricky Davis would be an option? The question is how would he like being a bench player? Who knows.
Frustrated with the total lack of madness. It’s going to drive me to drink. Pretty much no news today either except a bunch of the signings we already knew about were made official.
Hey, who wants to have an internet party to watch summer league on webcast tomorrow?
Why’s the beer gone?
Sigh.