You might want to cool your jets there, friend. Ajinca isn't great at anything which is why he's played for 4 teams and never averaged 7 points or 5 boards a game in any season. While I wouldn't necessarily be opposed to this deal there's no way that he's going to step in and play 30 mpg for this team. He'll be lucky to get the 13.2 mpg he's averaged for his career.
He's a toss-in, a player to be named later, a back-of-the-bench guy and not someone who is going to solve any real issues with the current squad.
You might want to COOL you jets Granath:-)) It really humors me that MANY really and truly think we are signing a FA to a max deal in the off-season!!!!! Chances are maybe 5% that we do and 95% that we do NOT!!!!
Smitty77
It's interesting that you quoted me yet I never said or implied any such thing about FAs. Did you get me confused with someone else? I don't ride the "hope for a FA" train.
I'm not worried about a max FA this offseason (though didn't you say the same thing last year?). I'm sure more guys than this will get max money but to me the list of guys who deserve it is pretty small. Since I don't expect Curry or Lowry to go anywhere, that means Durant, Griffin, Paul and Hayward are worth max money in my book. I wouldn't give the max to Millsap (age), Holiday (game), Gasol (age) or other guys like that.
Now of the guys who deserve it, I'd take out Paul because with IT we don't need him. That leaves Durant, Griffin and Hayward. The odds of any one of those guys switching teams isn't all that great and thus the odds of them coming to Boston are slim. I'm not sure I'd give the number 5% but I don't think it's higher than 15 or 20%. So playing the odds, we probably won't be taking on a max contract next off-season. In that I agree with you.
However, that doesn't mean I think it's a good idea to take on salary for a back-of-the-bench player. Cap space is like anything other finite resource and thus it shouldn't be wasted. I think we can do better and I think we will do better. It probably won't be a max guy. But I think the team will bring in guys who can contribute better than Ajinca.
