Wonder what offers Smart had to have had available that Ainge decided to pay Smart $13 mill per AAV? Hope Danny didn't bid against himself but if he thinks thats a fair contract then so be it.
He paid fair value to lock up Smart long term instead of losing him as an unrestricted FA next summer. Smart had no other reasonable offers this summer, but in next summer's market he would likely get significantly more than what we just gave him.
Smart is totally worth it, a unique player who is the backbone of our team.
See, I mostly disagree. With this current contract, we are talking about giving him the equivalent of a $46M/3yr contract next off-season (if he had taken the QO this summer). Unless Smart makes epic improvements in any form of shooting the ball, I would be surprised to see him get a greater than $15M/yr contract in UFA.
As I said earlier, the Cs are clearly banking on major improvement from Smart - which I suppose is possible - but it isn't like he has the growth trajectory of a Brown/Tatum like player.
While you’ve got the numbers correct, I think your assessment of what Smart could get is off. The last time we entered a summer with tons of teams having cap room to burn, we saw all sorts of role players like or inferior to Smart get contracts in the $16-20 million per year range for 3-4 years (Evan Turner, Ryan Anderson, Ian Mahinmi, Timofey Mozgov, Luol Deng, Allen Crabbe, and so on). The cap will be nearly 20% higher next year compared to two summers ago. I personally think Smart’s low-end, barring injury or complete regression, was $15 million per year, and $20 million AAV wouldn’t have surprised me. The combination of restricted free agency and limited teams with cap room really suppressed his value this summer, and the Celtics got a bargain.
Hopefully the forums will be around so we can revisit this topic next July when the role players get paid.