Good idea or bad idea: sign Paul Millsap in the offseason

[Ilikesports17]

Millsap isn't a star he is overrated and overpaid

He scored 31 pts yesterday..

One game - so what?

For the season he averaged barely more points then Avery Bradley, and his percentages weren't much better either.

18.1 PPG and 7.7 RPG on 44% FG, 31% 3PT, 77% FT.

Nice numbers on their own, but extremely mediocre numbers as a return on a $35M investment. 

You're completely out of your mind if you  even contemplate paying $35M a year to a 32 year old, 6'7" PF putting up those kinds of numbers.

wait, those are really good numbers...

also, he made an all-defense team last year.

Id give him a 3 year deal starting at 30 mil with the biggest escalation we can give him.

He will certainly have better offers. We should offer the best situation.

[bogg]

Millsap isn't a star he is overrated and overpaid

He scored 31 pts yesterday..

One game - so what?

For the season he averaged barely more points then Avery Bradley, and his percentages weren't much better either.

18.1 PPG and 7.7 RPG on 44% FG, 31% 3PT, 77% FT.

Nice numbers on their own, but extremely mediocre numbers as a return on a $35M investment. 

You're completely out of your mind if you  even contemplate paying $35M a year to a 32 year old, 6'7" PF putting up those kinds of numbers.

If we assume that some of Millsap's rebounding drop-off this year comes from playing next to Dwight who, for all his faults, remains an elite rebounder, Millsap would be one of the better volume scorers on the roster, the best rebounder, and the fourth-best playmaker (behind Isaiah, Horford, and Smart). Guy does a lot of good things, and is a good defender to boot. It'd be better if he were 28, but such is life, and Boston won't have cap space again with this group.

[crimson_stallion]

Good lord no.

The Millsap / Horford experiment already failed in Atlanta, why on earth would you try to duplicate it here? 

Our team is way too short as it is, the last thing we want is to spend $30M to bring in a 6'7" PF - that's just ludicrous.  We're already getting slaughtered on the boards, and while Millsap is a better rebuild then Horford he is still not a stellar one.  Millsap is a nice player no doubt, but he doesn't fit our needs. 

We need a proper big with legit size who can dominate the boards, dominate the paint, and defend skilled 7 footers.

Dwight Howard's available, he's already complaining about his role in Atlanta. Other than that, Alex Len is an RFA and the Wiz would probably give Ian Mahinmi away to get out from under his contract. That's the problem - the market on huge space-eaters is really thin and none are great fits in Boston's system. You're better off trying to take the foundation of Atlanta's most recent run and making them supporting-cast guys for (hopefully) Isaiah and another all-star than you are trying to be the second coming of Grit N Grind.

There is more than just free agency in the world.  We won't even have max cap space, so free agency is a moot point for us anyway.  Only way we can likely acquire a max contact guys is via a sign and trade or by renouncing half our team.

Regardless. we need a guy who can actually help us without our weaknesses.  Those three biggest weaknesses are:

1. The ability to defend skilled bigs (Horford cannot)
2. Rebounding (not a single guy on our team averages over 7 RPG)
3. An additional go-to scorer to take pressure off Isaiah

Millsap is an upgrade on what we have at PF, but he doesn't address any of those three issues...and at 6'7" Millsap really doesn't give us any more size then Crowder does at the four, and he's not enough of an upgrade at that position to justify spending $30 million freakin' dollars.

If we want to take a chance and trade for Melo, then fine.  Melo is 6'8" / 240 pounds.  He can play the PF spot for us and give us an immediate upgrade there, while also addressing one of our biggest needs (an additional go-to scorer).  I can live with that move.

If we find a way to bring Howard here, I can live with that.  He is a big body who can shut down skilled big men, and he's one of the most dominated rebounders in NBA history, and he can have the occasional dominate occasionally on the offensive end too - I can live with that.

I can live with us making a play for Greg Monroe - he's an outstanding post scorer and a top notch rebounder who would draw constant double teams, leading to open shooters on the perimeter - I can live with that.

If we sign Hayward - I'm not a huge fan of his, but he brings a lot of offensive firepower, he's still young, and he can contribute in a number of ways - I can live with that move.

If we went after a defensive/rebounding bit like Nerlens Noel, then I can live with that - young, lots of upside, athletic, good rim protector, great defensive potential, good rebounder.  I can accept that.

But $35M for a 32 year old, 6'7" PF whos averaging 18.1 / 7.7 on 44% / 31% shooting is a terrible move.  That contact (especially when combined with Horford's) would completely cripple this team's cap flexibility for the next 2-3 years and he's not worthy of that money...and that's even before we factor in his age and the fact that he could very easily show a significant decline in the next season or two.

Blake Griffin is a very bad idea as well - as much as I appreciate his skill, his health makes him an immediate red flag to me. The Clippers have had some very good teams the past few years, and they have gone nowhere because Griffin is constantly having season ending injuries come playoff time.  Doesn't matter how good you are if you cannot play at the most important time of the year, and no way I'm offering Griffin anything close to what he'd be asking for.

I'd make no moves at all (and just put faith in Yabusele and Zizic) before I would spend $30M - $35M on Paul Millsap.  That's just a complete no-go move.

[crimson_stallion]

Millsap isn't a star he is overrated and overpaid

He scored 31 pts yesterday..

One game - so what?

For the season he averaged barely more points then Avery Bradley, and his percentages weren't much better either.

18.1 PPG and 7.7 RPG on 44% FG, 31% 3PT, 77% FT.

Nice numbers on their own, but extremely mediocre numbers as a return on a $35M investment. 

You're completely out of your mind if you  even contemplate paying $35M a year to a 32 year old, 6'7" PF putting up those kinds of numbers.

wait, those are really good numbers...

also, he made an all-defense team last year.

Id give him a 3 year deal starting at 30 mil with the biggest escalation we can give him.

He will certainly have better offers. We should offer the best situation.

In what planet are 44% FG, 31% 3PT and 77% FT really good numbers?  They are absolutely mediocre numbers by any measure - especially for a PF. 

Also what is so great about 18 and 7 for an NBA PF?  We had a chance to get Cousins (26 and 12) on an $18M deal and Danny didn't do it. 

If we could get Greg Monroe we'd have a career 16 and 10 guy who is 26 years old on a $13M deal.   

Avery Bradley this year gave us 16 and  6 on FAR better shooting numbers, for $7M a year and he's also an all-defensive first teamer. 

If you are paying $15M - $18M then I would agree that 18 and 7 are really good numbers.  For $30M - $35M a year they are woeful numbers, especially for a 32 year old guy who has no remaining upside and has nowhere to go but down.

Carmelo averaged 22 and 6 last year on 43% / 36% / 83% shooting - far better overall numbers then Millsap, and he'd be making $10M a year less over the same term (2 years).  Plus he immediately gives us an elite shot creator who could carry the team while Thomas sits - something we desperately need.

Millsap is just not a good idea for that kind of money. 

[oldtype]

If he's the only max FA we can get, then sure, why not.

The short-term contention blueprint for the offseason is to sign a max FA, and then use remaining assets to trade for a Jimmy Butler or Paul George.  In some ways, it doesn't matter who that max FA is as long as he's good enough to make us a contender if we add a fourth all-star.

So yeah, ideally it would be Gordon Hayward or Blake Griffin, but at some point it doesn't even matter if it's Paul Milsap, or heck maybe even Serge Ibaka or Derrick Favors.  Any of those players are good enough to make us serious business if we can swing a trade.

[crimson_stallion]

Millsap isn't a star he is overrated and overpaid

He scored 31 pts yesterday..

One game - so what?

For the season he averaged barely more points then Avery Bradley, and his percentages weren't much better either.

18.1 PPG and 7.7 RPG on 44% FG, 31% 3PT, 77% FT.

Nice numbers on their own, but extremely mediocre numbers as a return on a $35M investment. 

You're completely out of your mind if you  even contemplate paying $35M a year to a 32 year old, 6'7" PF putting up those kinds of numbers.

If we assume that some of Millsap's rebounding drop-off this year comes from playing next to Dwight who, for all his faults, remains an elite rebounder, Millsap would be one of the better volume scorers on the roster, the best rebounder, and the fourth-best playmaker (behind Isaiah, Horford, and Smart). Guy does a lot of good things, and is a good defender to boot. It'd be better if he were 28, but such is life, and Boston won't have cap space again with this group.

Milsap is the #1 scoring option in Atlanta and he STILL only averaged 18 PPG on 44% shooting.

Coming to Boston he'd be a clear #2 option behind Thomas, and may even be a #3 option behind Bradley.  His scoring numbers likely drop to 15 - 16 PPG at best and even if his rebounding jumps back up to the ~8.5 RPG that he averaged in his better rebounding years, that is still merely "decent" and nowhere near good enough to eliminate our rebounding woes.

His defence is also a moot point since he is incapable of defending bigger guys (6'11" upwards) and we have already seen that he's incapable of defending elite wings like Lebron / Durant. His defense brings us little (if anything) that we can't already get from Crowder.

I would actually rather draft Taytum, start Crowder at PF, and save $35 million...rather than sign Millsap and keep us stuck in mediocrity for the next 3 years. 

I know it probably sounds like I am a Millsap hater, but that's not the case at all.  I like Millsap as a player - I like him a lot.  But this team has very distinct needs that we need to fill if we are to take the next step, and Millsap does nothing to address any of those needs.  Signing him would be a case of spending money/cap space just because it's there, and that's not good business. If the right player isn't available then we are better off holding on to out cap space for another season or two until the right player DOES become available.

Or alternatively, using that cap space to swing a trade and bring a legit difference maker here.

Signing guys just because we have cap space to burn just isn't good basketball.  Just ask Detroit how they enjoyed the Ben Gordon / Charlie Villenueva era. 

[MBunge]

One thing to consider is that KO, IT, Smart and Avery all have contracts expiring within the next two years.  If we add another max or near max deal, two and possibly three of that group will have to go.  And we could be looking to add Zizic, Yabu and Nader.

Should we target guys like Ibaka, Taj Gibson and Ersan Iylasova?  If you go after them right away before the market thins out, we might be able to get a player on that level for half what Milsap might cost.

Mike

Ibaka's going to get a huge contract from the Raptors, Gibson's a fine player in his own right but isn't half as versatile as Millsap and is functionally the same age, and Illyasova doesn't even belong in this conversation. There are real reasons to have some trepidation about making the kind of offer to Millsap that it would take to get him, but "we could sign Ersan Illyasova instead" isn't one of them.

It's not just a question of talent.  Salary issues also have to be considered, both immediately and longer term.  As has been mentioned before, give a max deal to Milsap or anyone and you immediately lose Amir, Jerebko, Green and KO but resigning IT, Avery AND Smart also becomes almost impossible.  At worst you might only be able to keep one.

Look at the Warriors.  To resign both Curry and Durant is going to cost them virtually their entire bench.  Maybe Iguodala agrees to stay for peanuts because he's already made so much money but who else is going to give up not millions but 10s of millions of dollars?  They're still going to be great but I don't think people understand that the gap between GSW and the rest of the league will close considerably as soon as next year.

The question isn't "Is Iylasova better than Milsap?"  It's whether Iylasova, KO, IT, Avery and Smart are better than just Milsap and IT.

Mike

I don't know how much you expect Millsap to make on his next contract, but it's going to be less than the combined total of all of Kelly, Marcus, Avery, and Ilyasova's next deals. Kelly's going to wind up playing himself into a pretty healthy contract in his own right, and Boston probably can't pay all three of Isaiah/Avery/Marcus (or, more likely, both of Marcus/Avery) while also fielding a decent frontcourt, so it's more like whether Millsap is preferable to Olynyk and an Ilyasova-level signing, which.....he might be. Again, I get being leery of giving a four-year deal to a guy his age, but Boston doesn't really need more value buys on guys who are rotation-quality, they need high-end talent. Millsap plays a position of need and just averaged 24 and 9 (with 4 assists) against Boston's current second-round opponent. I'd at least give him a look.

yeah, Millsap's max would be 4/153, so 38 mil a year. Thats expensive, but Illyasova makes at the least 8 mil, Kelly will be making 10+ Marcus will be 15 or more and AB makes no less than 18.

I think those are all minimum estimates and its still 38-51

It's a bit more complicated than that.  If we waive Mickey, we can offer him about 32 million a year.  But if we sign Zizic, Yabu and our 2017 1st, then we're over the cap and KO, IT, Avery and Smart are still looking for new deals.  Give anothe max or near max deal to IT and we're already knocking on the luxury tax with the other three, our 2018 firsts, our other extra firsts and multiple seconds as well as any vet min or other exception signings still to come.

Zeller comes off the roster after next season but we still will have to sign some backup big.  And of course, we'd have to straight up wave KO to give Milsap a full max deal.

So, signing Milsap would mean losing Amir, Jerebko, Green and possibly KO next year.  Then we're over the cap and resigning our free agents or trading them and bringing any salary back gets us very quickly into luxury tax hell.

The point is both how quickly you get to that luxury tax and what kind of team you have when you get there.  Signing Ilyasova over Milsap would allow us to keep the core of the team largely intact while pushing salary cap concerns into next off season and luxury tax worries and into the off season after that.

Which isn't to say that signing Ilyasova would be better than Milsap.  It's just that having the ability to sign a max free agent doesn't automatically mean signing a max free agent is the best move:

Mike

[crimson_stallion]

If he's the only max FA we can get, then sure, why not.

The short-term contention blueprint for the offseason is to sign a max FA, and then use remaining assets to trade for a Jimmy Butler or Paul George.  In some ways, it doesn't matter who that max FA is as long as he's good enough to make us a contender if we add a fourth all-star.

So yeah, ideally it would be Gordon Hayward or Blake Griffin, but at some point it doesn't even matter if it's Paul Milsap, or heck maybe even Serge Ibaka or Derrick Favors.  Any of those players are good enough to make us serious business if we can swing a trade.

I don't think you're understanding the situation here. 

We do not have max cap space.  The salary cap was going to be $107M, and even at that number we would have had to let guys walk in order to clear max space.  The cap has now been amended to $101M. 

Even at current contract numbers, we have $68M in contracts next season.  That leavers $33M in cap space.

That assumes we let Amir, Jerebko, Olynyk, Young and Green all walk.  It also doesn't take in to account the fact that a number of guys on the team (like Brown and Horford) will make more next year then they did this year.    It also doesn't take in to account the fact that we have a cap hold of at least around $5M - $7M for the Brooiklyn pick, which realistically drops that available cap space to something in the $23M - $25M range.

Millsap is a 10 year vet, which means his max contact would be 35% of the salary cap.  That's $35.35 million - a good $10M above what cap space we would have available. 

That means we wouild have to pull off trades to clear about $10M in contracts before we'd be able to sign Millsap - looking at our current contracts that probably means either Bradley or Crower would have to be traded up for a pick in order to clear that cap space.

That basically leaves us giving up half our roster for a 2 year rental of a 32 year old Paul Millsap.  Do you really want that?

At least Hayward would only cost us about $30M for a max deal, so we'd only have to clear about $5M in salary - we could trade away a less critical prospect player like Brown or Smart...which I wouldn't like to do, but would consider it if we could get a player of Hayward's calibre. 

If we acquired Carmelo, for argument's sake, then we should have enough cap space to absorb his contract straight up, without the need to give up any core players.  Maybe with give the Knicks Rozier, Mickey and a future 1st for Carmelo straight up.  We add a great player, and we don't have to touch our core.

I don't think people understand how much we'd have to actually give up in order to clear enough cap space to sign a Paul Millsap to a max deal.  We'd have to give up half our team to clear that space, and that's not a sacrifice I'm willing to make in return for a guy who has 2 or 3 years (max) of good basketball left in him. 

[crimson_stallion]

One thing to consider is that KO, IT, Smart and Avery all have contracts expiring within the next two years.  If we add another max or near max deal, two and possibly three of that group will have to go.  And we could be looking to add Zizic, Yabu and Nader.

Should we target guys like Ibaka, Taj Gibson and Ersan Iylasova?  If you go after them right away before the market thins out, we might be able to get a player on that level for half what Milsap might cost.

Mike

Ibaka's going to get a huge contract from the Raptors, Gibson's a fine player in his own right but isn't half as versatile as Millsap and is functionally the same age, and Illyasova doesn't even belong in this conversation. There are real reasons to have some trepidation about making the kind of offer to Millsap that it would take to get him, but "we could sign Ersan Illyasova instead" isn't one of them.

It's not just a question of talent.  Salary issues also have to be considered, both immediately and longer term.  As has been mentioned before, give a max deal to Milsap or anyone and you immediately lose Amir, Jerebko, Green and KO but resigning IT, Avery AND Smart also becomes almost impossible.  At worst you might only be able to keep one.

Look at the Warriors.  To resign both Curry and Durant is going to cost them virtually their entire bench.  Maybe Iguodala agrees to stay for peanuts because he's already made so much money but who else is going to give up not millions but 10s of millions of dollars?  They're still going to be great but I don't think people understand that the gap between GSW and the rest of the league will close considerably as soon as next year.

The question isn't "Is Iylasova better than Milsap?"  It's whether Iylasova, KO, IT, Avery and Smart are better than just Milsap and IT.

Mike

I don't know how much you expect Millsap to make on his next contract, but it's going to be less than the combined total of all of Kelly, Marcus, Avery, and Ilyasova's next deals. Kelly's going to wind up playing himself into a pretty healthy contract in his own right, and Boston probably can't pay all three of Isaiah/Avery/Marcus (or, more likely, both of Marcus/Avery) while also fielding a decent frontcourt, so it's more like whether Millsap is preferable to Olynyk and an Ilyasova-level signing, which.....he might be. Again, I get being leery of giving a four-year deal to a guy his age, but Boston doesn't really need more value buys on guys who are rotation-quality, they need high-end talent. Millsap plays a position of need and just averaged 24 and 9 (with 4 assists) against Boston's current second-round opponent. I'd at least give him a look.

yeah, Millsap's max would be 4/153, so 38 mil a year. Thats expensive, but Illyasova makes at the least 8 mil, Kelly will be making 10+ Marcus will be 15 or more and AB makes no less than 18.

I think those are all minimum estimates and its still 38-51

It's a bit more complicated than that.  If we waive Mickey, we can offer him about 32 million a year.  But if we sign Zizic, Yabu and our 2017 1st, then we're over the cap and KO, IT, Avery and Smart are still looking for new deals.  Give anothe max or near max deal to IT and we're already knocking on the luxury tax with the other three, our 2018 firsts, our other extra firsts and multiple seconds as well as any vet min or other exception signings still to come.

Zeller comes off the roster after next season but we still will have to sign some backup big.  And of course, we'd have to straight up wave KO to give Milsap a full max deal.

So, signing Milsap would mean losing Amir, Jerebko, Green and possibly KO next year.  Then we're over the cap and resigning our free agents or trading them and bringing any salary back gets us very quickly into luxury tax hell.

The point is both how quickly you get to that luxury tax and what kind of team you have when you get there.  Signing Ilyasova over Milsap would allow us to keep the core of the team largely intact while pushing salary cap concerns into next off season and luxury tax worries and into the off season after that.

Which isn't to say that signing Ilyasova would be better than Milsap.  It's just that having the ability to sign a max free agent doesn't automatically mean signing a max free agent is the best move:

Mike

Exactly. 

I think some of the others here have this false belief that we will be able to sign our rookies, keep our key players in place, and still have $35M to just happily throw at Millsap without losing anybody. 

That's far from the reality.  We'd need to give up at least 4 or 5 players, and that probably includes Olynyk - who was a major reason we beat Washington today, and has been arguably our best or second best bench player throughout the playoffs so far. 

Millsap is a very nice player, but he's not a guy you give up half your team (and $35M a year) for.  Unless he's willing to sign for a MASSIVE pay cut (like a $10M a year pay cut) he's just not worth it.

[KG Living Legend]

If he's the only max FA we can get, then sure, why not.

The short-term contention blueprint for the offseason is to sign a max FA, and then use remaining assets to trade for a Jimmy Butler or Paul George.  In some ways, it doesn't matter who that max FA is as long as he's good enough to make us a contender if we add a fourth all-star.

So yeah, ideally it would be Gordon Hayward or Blake Griffin, but at some point it doesn't even matter if it's Paul Milsap, or heck maybe even Serge Ibaka or Derrick Favors.  Any of those players are good enough to make us serious business if we can swing a trade.

I don't think you're understanding the situation here. 

We do not have max cap space.  The salary cap was going to be $107M, and even at that number we would have had to let guys walk in order to clear max space.  The cap has now been amended to $101M. 

Even at current contract numbers, we have $68M in contracts next season.  That leavers $33M in cap space.

That assumes we let Amir, Jerebko, Olynyk, Young and Green all walk.  It also doesn't take in to account the fact that a number of guys on the team (like Brown and Horford) will make more next year then they did this year.    It also doesn't take in to account the fact that we have a cap hold of at least around $5M - $7M for the Brooiklyn pick, which realistically drops that available cap space to something in the $23M - $25M range.

Millsap is a 10 year vet, which means his max contact would be 35% of the salary cap.  That's $35.35 million - a good $10M above what cap space we would have available. 

That means we wouild have to pull off trades to clear about $10M in contracts before we'd be able to sign Millsap - looking at our current contracts that probably means either Bradley or Crower would have to be traded up for a pick in order to clear that cap space.

That basically leaves us giving up half our roster for a 2 year rental of a 32 year old Paul Millsap.  Do you really want that?

At least Hayward would only cost us about $30M for a max deal, so we'd only have to clear about $5M in salary - we could trade away a less critical prospect player like Brown or Smart...which I wouldn't like to do, but would consider it if we could get a player of Hayward's calibre. 

If we acquired Carmelo, for argument's sake, then we should have enough cap space to absorb his contract straight up, without the need to give up any core players.  Maybe with give the Knicks Rozier, Mickey and a future 1st for Carmelo straight up.  We add a great player, and we don't have to touch our core.

I don't think people understand how much we'd have to actually give up in order to clear enough cap space to sign a Paul Millsap to a max deal.  We'd have to give up half our team to clear that space, and that's not a sacrifice I'm willing to make in return for a guy who has 2 or 3 years (max) of good basketball left in him.

 True, but if Milsap is serious about winning, Do you think he'd consider a deal for 4 years at around 110 million. Horford type money.

 We are the new Patriots. You want Jamie Collins money, go get it in Cleveland.

[crimson_stallion]

If he's the only max FA we can get, then sure, why not.

The short-term contention blueprint for the offseason is to sign a max FA, and then use remaining assets to trade for a Jimmy Butler or Paul George.  In some ways, it doesn't matter who that max FA is as long as he's good enough to make us a contender if we add a fourth all-star.

So yeah, ideally it would be Gordon Hayward or Blake Griffin, but at some point it doesn't even matter if it's Paul Milsap, or heck maybe even Serge Ibaka or Derrick Favors.  Any of those players are good enough to make us serious business if we can swing a trade.

I don't think you're understanding the situation here. 

We do not have max cap space.  The salary cap was going to be $107M, and even at that number we would have had to let guys walk in order to clear max space.  The cap has now been amended to $101M. 

Even at current contract numbers, we have $68M in contracts next season.  That leavers $33M in cap space.

That assumes we let Amir, Jerebko, Olynyk, Young and Green all walk.  It also doesn't take in to account the fact that a number of guys on the team (like Brown and Horford) will make more next year then they did this year.    It also doesn't take in to account the fact that we have a cap hold of at least around $5M - $7M for the Brooiklyn pick, which realistically drops that available cap space to something in the $23M - $25M range.

Millsap is a 10 year vet, which means his max contact would be 35% of the salary cap.  That's $35.35 million - a good $10M above what cap space we would have available. 

That means we wouild have to pull off trades to clear about $10M in contracts before we'd be able to sign Millsap - looking at our current contracts that probably means either Bradley or Crower would have to be traded up for a pick in order to clear that cap space.

That basically leaves us giving up half our roster for a 2 year rental of a 32 year old Paul Millsap.  Do you really want that?

At least Hayward would only cost us about $30M for a max deal, so we'd only have to clear about $5M in salary - we could trade away a less critical prospect player like Brown or Smart...which I wouldn't like to do, but would consider it if we could get a player of Hayward's calibre. 

If we acquired Carmelo, for argument's sake, then we should have enough cap space to absorb his contract straight up, without the need to give up any core players.  Maybe with give the Knicks Rozier, Mickey and a future 1st for Carmelo straight up.  We add a great player, and we don't have to touch our core.

I don't think people understand how much we'd have to actually give up in order to clear enough cap space to sign a Paul Millsap to a max deal.  We'd have to give up half our team to clear that space, and that's not a sacrifice I'm willing to make in return for a guy who has 2 or 3 years (max) of good basketball left in him.

 True, but if Milsap is serious about winning, Do you think he'd consider a deal for 4 years at around 110 million. Horford type money.

 We are the new Patriots. You want Jamie Collins money, go get it in Cleveland.

You would give Millsap a contract that is still paying him $28M a year when he's 35/36 year old?

I think I'd rather give him $35M a year for two years then $28M a year for four...but personally I wouldn't give him either. 

Max I would offer him is $75M over three years.  That's about $25M a year, and he'd be 35  years old in the last year of that deal (so there's a chance he'd still be able to produce at 6th man level, at least).  Doubt he'd accept that though, and I'm sure the Hawks would probably offer him a lot more. 

Any longer than 3 years or any more than $25M a year I think is just too much money for the player he is, and even at $75M /3 years I'd still be hesitant. 

[bopna]

He says he'll opt out which is the right thing to do...

Whether or not Atlanta pays him will be the key question...what if he wants the full max and search for teams that can give him that regardless if its a playoff team or not....what if he goes to the Nets....YIKES.

[oldtype]

If he's the only max FA we can get, then sure, why not.

The short-term contention blueprint for the offseason is to sign a max FA, and then use remaining assets to trade for a Jimmy Butler or Paul George.  In some ways, it doesn't matter who that max FA is as long as he's good enough to make us a contender if we add a fourth all-star.

So yeah, ideally it would be Gordon Hayward or Blake Griffin, but at some point it doesn't even matter if it's Paul Milsap, or heck maybe even Serge Ibaka or Derrick Favors.  Any of those players are good enough to make us serious business if we can swing a trade.

I don't think you're understanding the situation here. 

We do not have max cap space.  The salary cap was going to be $107M, and even at that number we would have had to let guys walk in order to clear max space.  The cap has now been amended to $101M. 

Even at current contract numbers, we have $68M in contracts next season.  That leavers $33M in cap space.

That assumes we let Amir, Jerebko, Olynyk, Young and Green all walk.  It also doesn't take in to account the fact that a number of guys on the team (like Brown and Horford) will make more next year then they did this year.    It also doesn't take in to account the fact that we have a cap hold of at least around $5M - $7M for the Brooiklyn pick, which realistically drops that available cap space to something in the $23M - $25M range.

Millsap is a 10 year vet, which means his max contact would be 35% of the salary cap.  That's $35.35 million - a good $10M above what cap space we would have available. 

That means we wouild have to pull off trades to clear about $10M in contracts before we'd be able to sign Millsap - looking at our current contracts that probably means either Bradley or Crower would have to be traded up for a pick in order to clear that cap space.

That basically leaves us giving up half our roster for a 2 year rental of a 32 year old Paul Millsap.  Do you really want that?

At least Hayward would only cost us about $30M for a max deal, so we'd only have to clear about $5M in salary - we could trade away a less critical prospect player like Brown or Smart...which I wouldn't like to do, but would consider it if we could get a player of Hayward's calibre. 

If we acquired Carmelo, for argument's sake, then we should have enough cap space to absorb his contract straight up, without the need to give up any core players.  Maybe with give the Knicks Rozier, Mickey and a future 1st for Carmelo straight up.  We add a great player, and we don't have to touch our core.

I don't think people understand how much we'd have to actually give up in order to clear enough cap space to sign a Paul Millsap to a max deal.  We'd have to give up half our team to clear that space, and that's not a sacrifice I'm willing to make in return for a guy who has 2 or 3 years (max) of good basketball left in him.

Any sort of double-max coup would necessarily involve trading away Bradley and probably a few bits and pieces here and there (Rozier, at the very least) but I'm totally willing to accept that as cost of doing business.