The prime motive of this summer has been to show the team’s commitment to Chris Bosh. Management has spent considerable cash signing free agents to assemble a winning team. The core players, Jose Calderon, Andre Bargnani and Turkoglu have committed to the team for many years to come. However, Chris Bosh has some heavy decisions to make. If he decides to walk away, the franchise will be a setback and rebuilding again will be the only option. The bottom line is this: if they win, he will re-sign. Will the cornerstone of the franchise stay in the T-dot or simply walk away? Only time will tell.
Brothersteve’s Green & Red Raptor Blog
On Sunday September 13, MLSE invited their season ticket holders to an outdoor Block Party and BBQ at Polson’s Pier on the Toronto waterfront. As with all MLSE events, this was not something the season seat holders would want to miss.
The day began at the brand new Gate 5 in front of the ACC where fans were invited to board the luxury chartered buses that would take them to the event. Once on board, the hosts handed out t-shirts celebrating 15 years of Raptors basketball to lucky riders.
Polson’s Pier is only a short drive from the ACC and once there, MLSE handed out coupons for free food and beverages and wrist bands for free access to all of the Pier’s numerous activities.
Jerome Williams has been a Raptor fan-favorite for quite some time. From his tireless work as a key member of the 2001 playoff team that took an Allen Iverson-led 76ers to seven games in the Eastern Conference Semi-Final, to his equally tireless work off the court for children, Williams has been a class act in his adopted home. After his retirement from the NBA in 2005, the Junk Yard Dog has begun a new life centered on charity work and a love of helping others. Raptors HQ’s Ray Bala recently caught up with JYD to find out exactly what he has been up to since he retired and what he thought about his time in Toronto.
51 Raps
” If he decides to walk away, the franchise will be a setback and rebuilding again will be the only option
- I find this interesting… there is no doubt the franchise would be setback (its hard to not be setback after losing a player like Bosh), but would rebuilding be the only option. Considering the (potential) talent the Raps have and the money that would be available if Bosh leaves (assuming we could bring in a good FA), or the option of a sign and trade Im not sure the Raps would need to truly rebuild.
Correction: this “money that would be available” that you speak of is a bit mythical. The Raptors are way over the cap. If they lose Bosh without a trade or S&T, they won’t be getting much, if anything, back out of FA.
if bosh doesn’t sign stoudemire does.
Um, how do you propose that?
we are better off without Bosh if we have to pay him max money so I really do not care if he takes a hike.
Heres the thing…I like Chris Bosh and would love for him to stay if he wants to be here. However, the team that’s in place around him now should easily be good enough to get into the playoffs with a 4-5 seed. Obviously things happen with injuries, etc. but if he can’t lead a team with this kind of talent into the playoffs and get a solid seed is he really the guy to build around? For example if you put Dewayne Wade on this team in his place what would our record be? I bet we would be talked about in the same light as Orlando and Cleveland. Again, not criticizing Bosh for not being Wade as he is a truly special talent but lets be careful to pay Chris Bosh the same money if we don’t win 45 games this year because if we don’t I doubt Chris could be the feature player on a championship contender with any suporting cast.
Long story short, forget what he wants. If we don’t move into that second tier with Atlanta I wouldn’t offer him a max deal as clearly that will just assure us of watching first round exits in the playoffs for the next 4 years. I think there are a lot of guys that we could sign and trade for potentially to get to the next level so as much as the media wants to project the doom and gloom I think we have a solid young supporting cast a lot of stars would like to play with. Joe Johnson or Amare for instance. Not saying they are better than Bosh but just that he isn’t the “only show in town” and if he wants out we are not done yet!
You can’t theorize what the team would be like with Wade then insist you aren’t comparing him with Bosh. That’s exactly what you’re doing, and everyone here agrees that Bosh isn’t a top 4 player like Wade.
Here’s the thing about Wade’s upcoming max contract though: It’s capped at the max! So the amount that LeBron & Wade get doesn’t correspond to their actual market value. If there was no cap on individual players’ salaries, they’d definitely get more than Bosh. But that doesn’t mean that Bosh still wouldn’t be worth $17M/season (or whatever the max will be). LeBron could demand 50% of a team’s cap and probably get it.
By saying that Bosh isn’t worth the same as Wade, you’re saying only 4/5 players are worth the max. While that may be what some people think, that’s not how the NBA works. Bosh is definitely a top 10-15 player, and the top players in the league will get max contracts.
Bosh clearly isn’t a top 10-15 player because he wasn’t on the all NBA first, second or third teams this past year or the year before that.
just sayin’ …..
Well, who would you rank above him at the present time (not necessarily at each player’s prime)? I would say:
1. Lebron
2. Kobe
3. Wade
4. Chris Paul
5. Dwight Howard
6. Brandon Roy
7. Al Jefferson
Who else (again at this point in their careers)? Maybe there are a few guys at his level, but not better overall (e.g., Nowitzki, Amaré, Durant, Tony Parker, Granger, Gasol). And you have some guys who have been better, but are getting old and worn out (e.g. Duncan, Garnett).
Nowitski (former LEAGUE mvp) and Amare (arguably the best athlete in the league) are clearly better than Bosh so they’re 8 and 9 on that list. Duncan is still better than Bosh. No need to explain this one. Check the pedigree, the rings, the defense, MVPs. How can you put a guy who was finals MVP and a three time champion in the same class as Bosh? Parker is better (11). I’d put DWill on that list too(that’s 12). Since Melo and Gasol were all NBA FORWARDS last year (i.e. the position that Bosh plays …) and Bosh wasn’t, that means they are/were better than him the last time anybody sat down and seriously tried to figure this sort of thing out. 13 and 14.
So if PRESSED Bosh sneaks into the top 15. Bottom line is if we max this guy out we’re screwed for years to come.
Except that if you asked any GM who is starting a team TODAY, they would take Bosh over Duncan (who is at least the best PF in the last decade or two… at least). But he was not healthy last year, and there is no guarantee that, with his age, he will ever be 100% again.
Bosh is young and still improving. Duncan has maybe 1 good, and a couple of decent years left.
As for Amaré, his defence is far worse than Bosh’s, but he is more of an unstoppable force offensively (when he wants to be, and more so when not playing against big, athletic centers).
Nowitzki is a FORMER mvp, yes. He is by no means washed-up, but his defence is suspect, and he is probably either a great fit or a horrible fit for any given team (horrible for the Raps with Bargnani around).
At the end of the day, these rankings are not only arguable, but for the most part they are a VERY tight pack. Just look at players’ PER here:
http://insider.espn.go.com/nba/hollinger/statistics?&action=login&appRedirect=http://insider.espn.go.com/nba/hollinger/statistics
There are really 3 guys who are way ahead of the pack: Lebron, Wade, and CP. Dwight Howard has a bit of a lead, but the rest is a VERY tight pack down to 20th place. Bosh is at 15th there, but is ahead of Deron Williams and Stoudamire.
The point is, a lot of this is subjective, but other than the top 4-5 players in the league, there is a very tight pack of great players, and Bosh is among those.
Kind of a moot point considering all the players you named already are making either the same or more money than Bosh.
At the moment, Bosh has one of the top 25 salaries in the NBA. A max contract will start at no more than a 5% raise over his 2009-2010 salary. So how is paying a top 25 player a top 25 salary such a big deal?
Not paying him $16.5 mil next year doesn’t mean we’ll be able to spend that $16.5 mil on other players. Considering we could (MLSE willing, of course) sign another player to an MLE contract next year if we retain Bosh, freeing up Bosh’s cap space will lose us almost the entire value of his contract in salaries.
You’re right, but he was the top vote getter this year that wasn’t on the 3rd team. And the last 2 years the forwards have included Pierce, Garnett, and Duncan. Nobody would sign those guys to a bigger long-term contract than Bosh.
I’m not talking absolute value but free agent value. If everyone in the NBA were to be free agents next year, Bosh would certainly be rated in the top 10-15.
“If there was no cap on individual players’ salaries, they’d definitely get more than Bosh. But that doesn’t mean that Bosh still wouldn’t be worth $17M/season (or whatever the max will be). LeBron could demand 50% of a team’s cap and probably get it …”
It actually means exactly that Bosh isn’t worth 17mil/yr. Here’s why:
When the max is capped it is to control superstar salaries from running into the realm of 50% of a teams payroll and things like that (that you mentioned). Any cap that ends up in place becomes the new maximum that these superstars should make (to keep salaries from spiraling out of control and to keep teams viable and competitive). Everyone elses salaries HAVE TO be adjusted down accordingly otherwise you get guys that clearly aren’t max players (i.e. Bosh, Kirilenko, Redd) demanding (and getting) max money. This is bad for teams and bad for the league.
I see the point you are trying to make, but you are forgetting two important points that makes your 2nd last sentence incorrect:
1) Unless a player is getting old or isn’t a very good player, most players will receive raises each year.
2) Because of the a) salary cap, and b) ability to go over the cap to retain your own players, teams that are over the cap will usually take advantage of such ability.
There is much less downward adjustment than you would have us believe.
Except that’s not the way bidding works. Lets say that you’re a GM and you’ve got max money to spend. If you want to get the best guy available (who is probably not LeBron or Kobe) you have to pay more than the other GM’s. So do you care that the guy you’re hiring isn’t as good as someone else who is making a max contract? Maybe it makes you sad, but it doesn’t mean you’ll offer less than the max based on some kind of moral principle. If you do, some other GM is going to steal him by offering the max. Too bad, so sad, you’re fired.
That’s the thing about competitive markets. They don’t optimise fairness, and they don’t optimise ‘what’s good for the league’. They optimize prices based on supply and demand. And since the demand for Bosh-type players exceeds the demand, the price goes up until it hits the (artifically imposed by the CBA) ceiling.
Agreed. Salaries don’t descend from the max for tier 1 like that. Maybe they should, maybe we want them to, maybe that theory sounds solid, but it doesn’t work that way. You even gave examples non-max players receiving max contracts but you still try to claim it doesn’t happen (or won’t happen in the future somehow). Taking some moral stand against this action would doom any team.
It’s fine if people don’t think Bosh is worthy of a max contract. But it completely misses the point to say “he’s not as good as (LeBron/Wade/CP3/Kobe) so he doesn’t deserve the max”. These elite guys getting paid the max isn’t representative of their fair market value.
There is no question that some team out there will pay Bosh max money.
I actually never made the claim that it doesn’t happen. By listing the players who actually have max contracts that aren’t max players, I wanted to demonstrate that it does happen …
And listen guys i get that this isn’t how things are. The point of the last post was to say how things should be if we want the league and teams to be viable, otherwise big market teams will always have an unfair advantage over small market teams. If that happens then the spirit of competition is taken completely out of the games. And at the end of the day, this is all about competition and wanting to see close, well played, skillful games against closely matched opponents. right?
As a former player, I can vouch for the fact that all players prefer these types of games to blowouts and as a diehard fan I can safely say that I prefer watching these types of games to blowouts.
Bosh is not going to just walk away from 30 mil. If he leaves he is going to do so via sign and trade. He is going to be looking to maximise his contract and better his options of teams. We dont want to see Bosh stay in the east and light us up ala Carter. So if I am Brian when this happends the first call I’m making is to the LA Lakers for Pau Gasol. Bosh wants to win a championship and Gasol would be a perfect fit in Toronto. Lakers do it because Bosh is every bit as good as Gasol and he is 4 years younger.
I’d rather S&T him to NY for David Lee, he’s a real PF. If Bosh can’t lead this team to new heights, why trade him for a similar player (Gasol) who is even softer and less talented? And it won’t really matter if he stays in the East, NY won’t be a threat, especially if they trick another high-profile FA to go there (LeBron) and blow their salary cap on 2 max contract guys. Plus, Lee wouldn’t be in the conversation for max-money, so we’d have more cash to throw at Sonny Weems.
Sign and trade deals are (unfortunately) not quite that lucrative….
Hehe, remember that S&T we did with McGrady? Whatever did we get back? =P
Actually, I would be much more inclined to take Lamarcus Aldridge and Nicolas Batum (plus a draft pick) from Portland. Aldridge is a younger (poor-man’s) version of Bosh, Batum is full of potential at SF (great backup for Hedo and his eventual replacement).
Toss in a first round pick and I would be fairly happy. That is, assuming that Bosh either wants out, or proves incapable of caring this talented cast to considerable success this year.
I think Portland might hesitate at a deal like Aldridge, Batum and a 1st round pick for Bosh, unfortunately.
Possibly, but that is what makes this a workable deal. Think about it: let us say that a player gets a (made up) rating of 10. Now let’s say that two players each have a rating of 5 each. Having a rating 10 guy is better than having two rating 5 guys, even if the simple math would suggest that they are the same.
So yes, Bosh is not too much better than Aldridge, but he is a great All-Star and not even in his prime. Portland also has Roy (who is on the path to becoming somewhere around Kobe-Lebron good, or very close to it). Now you have two amazing players, AND a great supporting cast that is mostly very young as well.
The money may be more of a concern, but it seems from my quick research that Aldridge’s contract is expiring this year as well, and so is Batum’s. I don’t know about extensions for either, but since they would be getting raises, the money might work.
It’s definitely one of the better deals I’ve seen suggested (at least from the Raptors’ standpoint), and I do agree that it’s something that might potentially happen if Portland thinks Bosh is what they’re missing.
I’m confused. If Bosh is ‘every bit as good as Gasol’ and is 4 years younger, why is that a good trade for the Raps?
If Bosh wants out the raps need to try and replace him whith the best possible talent. It’s very unlikley the raps will get equal value for him. They would be lucky to get Gasol back in return as the other alternative might be Bosh walking away.
Really, you would rather have Lee over Gasol? Lee wouldn’t be in a conversation for max-money because HE”S NOT AN ALLSTAR! He couldnt even get a single offer this offseason, shows how much of a diffrence maker he is. Ok I figured it out when I read the rest of your post, like you said who would want both Bosh and lebron on there team, bahahhahaha wow thats a good one! to answer that, I am pretty sure every GM in the League would.
Gasol is a good choice but if Bynum has a good season then Raptors should try getting him for Bosh and move AB to PF and have Bynum as your center and Hedo as your small forward and you can make some noise for years to come. Gasol is good and all but he is soft and he is getting up there in terms of age and … Not to forget that these international players have alot of milage on them sicne they start from early age and are mostly involved with National team in summer.
Why would LA trade away there center for a power forward when they have Gasol? makes no sence.
who is their center ??!! Gasol or bynum ?? They both play both position.
No they dont both play both positions, they only started Gasol at center because Bynum was out for the last 30 games of the season. Bynum started all 51 games he played at center, when has he ever started at the 4??? And why would he he is 7-0 285. Gasol is a natural PF.
sign and trade for Joey Jo Jo*
Is he a free agent next summer too?
*Johnson, Joe
I dont understand the love affair everyone has with Joe Johnson. He’s a nice player and all, but really.
I liken him to Richard Jefferson. JJ is the type of player that can put a great team over the top, but put him on a shitty team (as the Hawks were quite recently) and he has to do too much.
That is the one thing that worries me, the potential talent that is supposed to come back if we move Bosh.
It takes one hell of a team to pay Bosh the Max and give us their talent, not saying this can’t happen, just saying that the price we expect means that there will be few trade partners.
Contract for contract, we are not in a position to say we will take back that max but only with gems and young studs. That is an impossibility as young players do not make close to the amounts to offset a Bosh move.
…sadly, those that think it may just be better to flip Bosh, are not looking at the entire picture. Can we get a gem in the deal, for sure, but we are just as certain to get some dead weight.
The grass isn’t always greener, was VC worthless? No… but the climate of the day was not to our benefit, and Carter was the player with more notoriety, draw and dominance.
GM’s know our situation, unless you guys expect a bidding war for Bosh’s services, I would think twice about the mystery box.
While Carter was a bigger star, Bosh will be more coveted due to his skills, effort, attitude, and ethic.
We got hosed in the Carter deal because no one wanted a whiny, injury-prone diva.
We got hosed because Rob lacked interpersonal skills sufficent enough to break down another GM’s posture.
Just becasue the phone does not ring, does not mean there is no deal. You have to go out and make it. That is up to you and your gift of the gab!
In that sense, I think we are in better hands with Bryan.
100% agree.
And Marc, comparing a Bosh trade with the Carter trade is a bit silly. Carter was traded in the middle of a multi-year deal. Bosh will be testing free agency next year. Unless the team receiving Bosh can get a promise somehow that he will re-sign with them, the Raptors won’t likely receive much. Actually, if Bosh would sign with that team for sure, that’s even more incentive to not give up much for him.
Bosh is yearning to return to his country and hopefully get traded to Dallas so he can live at home with his mom and family. Nuthin’ like good down home cookin’ … believe it.
Would Cuban give up Dirk for Bosh ..??? I say yes …..!!!!
I want Dirk and a draft pick. First round preferably.
Lets Have Dirk, AB and Hedo and Calderon in our starting line up :) Who is going to rebound ? Defend ??!!! and where the toghness going to come from !!!! Dirk and AB CAN NOT be in the same line up, they are just too soft as a pair :) :)
bosh’s twittering words “Attention: Everyone from Dallas plz stop asking me to come play for the Mavs. It’s getting annoying. I’ve heard it too many times today”
Ofcourse he will !!!
It’s all cool.
Bosh has been a productive player, is he worth the max contract for our team. That is to be determined, Bosh is certainly above par, is he enough above par to impose his will? The jury is still out.
Being the market that we are, I think we are better with Bosh than without. I would be wearry of the hand shakes that are about to come.
…the good news is that it is in Bosh’s intrest to show these stories have value.
We are in the position to overpay anyway… let Bosh Peacock the best he can, lets seduce some suitors. We can only gain from his value.
I would hate to give the max because we were the last team willing to do so.
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To say that because wade and lebron get capped so Bosh might still be worth the max doesn’t make any sense in response to my comment because I said teams will pay him in the right situation. But if sales guys are capped at 1 mil and my company gets a salesman with 200 mil in sales and you get the second best at 100 mil and we both have the same budget can you compete with me? NOOOO! If you can get 2 salesman at 60 mil on the books for 500 K each you are better off. Think about it!
Except, in the NBA, the salesmen that clear 60 mil cost 800k, not 500k. So when you get the 500k salesmen, they clear 45 million each and you end up missing the playoffs.
That’s a moot comparison. Malefax is being nice with his response.
Very simply, if you’re hesitating on paying $1 mil for the salesman with $100 mil in sales, just because you want to get the two salesmen with $60 mil in sales for half a mil each, I’m going to come in and hire *all three* for $1 mil each. Going to hire the salesmen who clear $45 mil as well and you can try to hand out your $500k salaries to whomever will take em.
That’s the reality of it. You can balk at overpaying a top 20-25 talent a top 15 salary*** and enjoy having a roster without a single top 40-50 player.
*** Note: The problem with this picture isn’t overpaying Bosh. You see, when you (or anyone) rank Bosh as being only a top 20-25 talent, you’re inevitably putting players like Deron Williams and Chris Paul ahead of him, players who haven’t been in the league as long and have a lower ceiling on their max contract, or players who are still on their rookie deal. So really it’s that Chris Paul, Deron Williams, etc. are underpaid and makes it seem like you’re overpaying for Bosh.
come on hedo,stay healthy man!