Anyone else have a terrible feeling that Posey is going to end up in Laker Gold?

[Eja117]

I feel the Lakers out of any team in the NBA will push hard to accquire Posey this offseason.

I have a hunch then as I have a hunch now that he is heading to LA.

I really hope i'm wrong.

Strange. I don't feel anything. Keep your focus in the here and now Obi-Wan

[BballTim]

If .... the Lakers were wise they'd consider signing a James Posey
If .... the Lakers couldn't trade Odom for a better option they should sign Posey

Never underestimate the complacency of general managers. From all accounts and quotes I've seen from Kupchak since the finals ... he wants to keep the team together and let them play. He likes the idea of Odom at the three.

For those making points about the Lakers luxury tax. That's solvable in 12 months when time if they let Odom walk and Kupchak has already he isn't sure about resigning Odom.

The most important position the Lakers need to fill is small forward and they need a defensive player who can shoot. Posey fits the bill. Their big man situation will look a lot better with a healthy and maturing Andrew Bynum, so that's a secondary need.

  Kobe's a pretty good defender. Adding Posey would be mainly to match up with us. How many teams have 2 great wing players like Paul and Ray? And it's just as important if not more that they upgrade their pg spot as sf (which they have a lot of). What happens if they face NO in the playoffs? If they can't handle Rondo at all, what's Chris Paul going to do to them?

Whoever comes out of the East will have a top small forward with good size. It's either Pierce or LeBron or Rashard/Hedo (I think Detroit have fallen off). They're the top three teams in the East. The Lakers need a top defensive small forward to win the NBA Finals.

You're signing a defensive small forward to beat the team from the East. They can win the West without it but not the title.


The Lakers can still beat New Orleans because Kobe has just as big a matchup advantage over Mo Pete as Paul does on Fisher. Fish also did a great job on Tony Parker in the Conference Finals and a great job on Deron Williams in the second round and a good job on Iverson in the first round. Also Bynum outplayed Tyson before getting hurt. Gasol and West is an intersting matchup .... which brings us back to small forward.

Actually the biggest swing factor for New Orleans-Lakers in the regular season was Peja Stojakovic. The Lakers have no forward with the defensive discipline to stick with him on three pointers and he ended up lighting them up. The Spurs stopped Peja and stopped the Hornets. Defensive small forward has huge benefits for a Hornets matchup.

Hornets are one of the few Western teams were having defensive small forward would give the Lakers a big bump in the matchup.

  With Fisher getting a year older and CP getting a year better, I don't like that matchup for LA going forward. Not saying that they couldn't use a defensive sf (even though they have about 4 SFs on their roster), but I don't think it's a given that LA gets to the finals.

[rondohondo]

It seems to me that the teams who would value Posey's services are those teams who already have a solid core of star veterans.  And among those teams, only those teams who need a swingman SF/SG.  Posey is not at the level where he should be the second-best, or third-best, player on a playoff bound team.  So which teams fit those criteria?  To my mind, the two most obvious are Boston and LA. 

Both are over the cap.  However, LA has a slight advantage if Posey is simply looking for more money.  LA's core is younger, therefore, they may be willing to sign him up to a longer contract because their contending window, theoretically, is longer.  Another thing is that Posey and the return of Bynum, theoretically, would complete the Laker puzzle.  They can let Turiaf go and not miss him.  They'd miss Vujacic, but Farmar should be adequate. 

  In terms of contending for the title, the Laker's "core" is Kobe, who I think is less than a year younger than Pierce. Their window is about as long as he's a top 5 player. In other words, not much longer than our window if longer at all.

LA's top four players are under 30.  Of Boston's top four, three are over 30 (that's if you consider Rondo to be fourth-best, and not Posey).  I would think LA would have a longer championship window.  By longer, I meant something in the order of 3 years or so.  But for the purposes of a hypothetical Posey contract, that could be significant, Tim.

I have to agree with BBall Tim here. No Kobe no window. It doesn't matter how young Odom is(he won't be there beyond next year), Gasol is(he's so soft I hear he's auditioning to be the new Mr Whipple in the Charmin commercials), or Bynum is(as of yet he hasn't proven he's going to be any better than Perk). Without Kobe that "young core" sucks.

Kobe is 29 now and has a lot of miles on those skinny little legs of his. One bad fall and he'll go from the best player on the planet to the most overrated player on the planet overnight. Have him ask Ray Allen how quick it is to go from 27PPG with good ankles to less than 20 on hurting ankles.

Well guys, we'll just have to disagree on this one.  In my opinion, the Lakers have a longer window of not more than 3 years, but certainly atleast one more season on the Celtics. 

As to the main topic, given the information posted by cordobes, it seems the Lakers are more intent on keeping their team intact.  They may not be interested in Posey, as some of us (including me) are assuming.  Bynum, if he progresses nicely, should answer a lot of their issue with "softness".

I don't know how you can say the Lakers have a bigger window of opportunity then the celtics do. While Kobe is about a year younger the Pierce in age, he is a few years older then Pierce in games played

Kobe regular season games=   866    36.5 MPG
            Playoff games=   152    39.1 MPG

Pierce regular season games= 732    37.5 MPG
              Playoff games=  63    40.4 MPG

Kobe has played 223 more NBA games the Paul Pierce. I don't care that he is still under 30 that amount of games is going to eventually catch up to him and he actually has more miles on his legs then Pierce does.

[fairweatherfan]

I'm not a well-informed salary cap follower, but I've always had a sneaking feeling that the Spurs will make the strongest run at Posey of any other team.  Maybe it's just the Robert Horry parallels, but it seems like he's the sort of guy they'd really covet, especially if one or two of their older guys retire this offseason.

[cordobes]

no way james posey goes to the lakers. That will be just plain dumb for posey to do at this point of his career.

Ainge needs to just forget about cassell, house, tony allen and concentrate on signing posey to a 4 year 20 million deal. Bid at 3 year 13 million deal , then 4 year 17 and max at 20. Posey can prob get a 4 year 22 million on the free agent market but if he signs for that somewhere else then he should just go for being dumb.

Sign posey to the deal i was talking about above because thats what it will take, then offer house a 2-3 year at 2.5 million per year,. then sign allen if you want.

Celts will near 80 million with just the posey, house, draft picks signings. I think the big three should donate a mill each

We can't offer that to Posey and House simulteaneously.

Unless we resign them with the non-Bird exception, we have these to use:
MLE = aprox. $5.8M
LLE = aprox. $1.8M

[nickagneta]

I can see Artest going to the Lakers before I see Posey going. 

TP4U I was just about to type the same thing.

I wonder if Artest doesn't opt out, or even if he did, if an Odom for Artest trade could be in the future?

[Last Train]

I can see Artest going to the Lakers before I see Posey going. 

Not going to happen. I heard Ron on a LA radio show last week. He said not in a million years would he sign with the Lakers for less money than he can get somewhere else. He was very up front in saying that at this point in his life, it is all about the money. He also said he would not be opting out.

http://stations.espn.go.com/stations/710espn/sectional?id=stevemasonpodcasts

Listen to the June 24th 2-3pm hour.

[cordobes]

I can see Artest going to the Lakers before I see Posey going. 

Not going to happen. I heard Ron on a LA radio show last week. He said not in a million years would he sign with the Lakers for less money than he can get somewhere else. He was very up front in saying that at this point in his life, it is all about the money. He also said he would not be opting out.

Of course. I'll never figure out how can people think that a player in his prime like Artest would take almost a 40% pay cut just to "try to win a ring". Absolutely insane. It never happened and it wouldn't start with Artest.

[nickagneta]

My thinking would be LA trading for Artest, maybe a sign and trade sending Odom north. No way Artest takes a 3 million dollar cut. Another player.....maybe, farfetched, but maybe. Artest, forget it, no way.

[Redz]

If Posey ends up with the Lakers he gets cheered for about 4 seconds when he returns then booed like the rest of the L.A. Chumps.

[WBrownTrophy]

Resigning Posey has to be Danny's #1 concern this summer

[Triboy16]

i don't understand how exactly the celtics can utilize this mid level exception they have. Can't say sign posey to a 20 million dollar 4 year deal and this year pay him 2.5 million and next year 5.5 million year after 6 million etc??

that means than if we had a cap of 5.8 million to work with now 3.3 million is sitll what we have open for and then we can use part of that to sign house and another free agent??

whose a contract expert here?

[crownsy]

i don't understand how exactly the celtics can utilize this mid level exception they have. Can't say sign posey to a 20 million dollar 4 year deal and this year pay him 2.5 million and next year 5.5 million year after 6 million etc??

that means than if we had a cap of 5.8 million to work with now 3.3 million is sitll what we have open for and then we can use part of that to sign house and another free agent??

whose a contract expert here?

you mean try to back load the contract so that more moeny comes his way after we in theory get under cap?

the problem with this is down the road, when we need to resign other guys, we'll already have a 8 million dollar cap hit for posey under your system to pay him 20 mill.

by my understanding of what your saying, you want to pay him

2.5
5.5
6.0
6.0

which im not sure is even legal, but

A) why would posey take 2.5 million the first year? players hate backloaded contracts traditionaly.

b) what happens in year 3 and 4 when we need to resign other guys and we have a inflated cap due to posey going up to 6 mill?

[BudweiserCeltic]

Yes you can use a portion of the MLE only to sign Posey. The problem is that you're limited to 8% raises from year to year, so do the math and see what you can come up with.

And yes, you can use the rest on another FA.

i don't understand how exactly the celtics can utilize this mid level exception they have. Can't say sign posey to a 20 million dollar 4 year deal and this year pay him 2.5 million and next year 5.5 million year after 6 million etc??

that means than if we had a cap of 5.8 million to work with now 3.3 million is sitll what we have open for and then we can use part of that to sign house and another free agent??

whose a contract expert here?

you mean try to back load the contract so that more moeny comes his way after we in theory get under cap?

the problem with this is down the road, when we need to resign other guys, we'll already have a 8 million dollar cap hit for posey under your system to pay him 20 mill.

by my understanding of what your saying, you want to pay him

2.5
5.5
6.0
6.0

which im not sure is even legal, but

A) why would posey take 2.5 million the first year? players hate backloaded contracts traditionaly.

b) what happens in year 3 and 4 when we need to resign other guys and we have a inflated cap due to posey going up to 6 mill?

I don't think they care about the cap, since they'll be over the cap anyways. The only thing that matters is what they'll pay in luxury tax, which they'll be in it anyways.  So aside from the time value of money, it should really be of little concern of when the "cap" hit comes.

[Triboy16]

dude i understand what you mean but you also have to realize that starting next year we won't have such a high total salary and the year after it goes down even lower etc. a big part is thanks for garnett who is taking a cut

Rondo is in our mercy for another three years, we got perk locked up for a while

the nice part is that scal finally comes off the books.

For example this year we have a total of 70 million committed witout any free agent signings, next year it goes down to 62, then the year after at 44 million without ray allen committment

if we sign posey the way i proposed next year its still going to be 68 million and with no picks prob stay around there. We need to think about resigning big baby and powe but i doubt either is worth more than 1.5 million max per year

this is the year we need some manuevering though to not exceed the salary number higher and also frugally spend that mid level exception to sign some vets