Losing players for nothing

[RodyTur10]

What was the appropriate move with Sullinger and Turner, in your mind?  Turner was a key player on a playoff team, a team and Stevens' favorite, and he was not going to get traded at the deadline for an expiring deal of any value when his deal was only ~$6M (and no one was trading a 1st rounder for him).  Sully was a decent player for a while here but ate his way off the roster and out of the league, and had no trade value.

Not sure what else they could have done but let them walk.

I was fine with how Turner's time here ended. It was hard to predict how the situation around Sullinger would evolve, so I'll take that as an unfortunate outcome.

But the number of players that walk out the door with nothing to show for adds up. In this crazy market it was always tough to keep Olynyk around for a good price, but then we should've anticipated well before his contract would end up. Teams are interested in players with certain skills like Olynyk.

Same goes for Bradley, Crowder and Smart. In the right situation these are valuable players on great contracts. Certainly there are teams who would welcome them on their team. But we just wait and wait till all our bargaining power disappears. I find it unacceptable if any one of these three players leaves the Celtics without a useful asset in return to build on.

[RockinRyA]

We didn't lose them for nothing. We upgraded them, first with Horford, now with Hayward.

Because we signed better players in free agency we didn't lose them for nothing? I see cap space as incredibly valuable, but you can't say that you get an asset back in terms of salary if you release a player. That's nonsense.

And my goodness, in what world do we lose Jae, AB and Smart for nothing?

I hope not this world. It's a worst case scenario, but management will have tough decisions to make for who they pay next year, which they already should be planning i.m.o.

And I've been reading posts where people seem fine with letting Crowder go to Utah with nothing in return, because we don't need him anymore anyway. An argument I object strongly. It's what he's worth on the market which counts.

Lastly, Sully played as effectively as a bloated whale carcass.

Still he showed promise and in the early months of the 2015/2016 season lots of people would've liked Sullinger to come back for a reasonable contract. He was a good rebounding starting center on a play off team. He could've fetched something.

It just bothers me that we don't make trades that help us forward, but just let al these players go like they are worthless pieces. We seem to be moving behind the times. Like every time an important decision comes up, we are not prepared and have to improvise at that moment.

@ BudweiserCeltic: TP, that's exactly how I meant it.

@ everybody: I am a complainer, but I don't want to bring a negative vibe to this community. So I might slow it down a little bit. But I'm worried about the direction the team is taking and what the costs are.

If we needed and wanted Sully we could have had him. But we didnt and nobody did because he sucked last year.

So you would rather have Sullinger and not have Horford? You would rather have Crowder over Hayward? Because if you want salaries to fit you would have to trade them for less than they are making  and  that is harder so often you have to trade them to a lower value or waive them.

The Cavs waived Luol Deng who was still a very good player in 2014 so they can sign Lebron James. Do you think they regret that?

It doesnt matter how many players you lose for free if you improved your team anyway.  Its certainly better to get Horford while losing Sullinger than trading Harden for Kevin Martin et al. Get what Im saying?

[RockinRyA]

What was the appropriate move with Sullinger and Turner, in your mind?  Turner was a key player on a playoff team, a team and Stevens' favorite, and he was not going to get traded at the deadline for an expiring deal of any value when his deal was only ~$6M (and no one was trading a 1st rounder for him).  Sully was a decent player for a while here but ate his way off the roster and out of the league, and had no trade value.

Not sure what else they could have done but let them walk.

I was fine with how Turner's time here ended. It was hard to predict how the situation around Sullinger would evolve, so I'll take that as an unfortunate outcome.

But the number of players that walk out the door with nothing to show for adds up. In this crazy market it was always tough to keep Olynyk around for a good price, but then we should've anticipated well before his contract would end up. Teams are interested in players with certain skills like Olynyk.

Same goes for Bradley, Crowder and Smart. In the right situation these are valuable players on great contracts. Certainly there are teams who would welcome them on their team. But we just wait and wait till all our bargaining power disappears. I find it unacceptable if any one of these three players leaves the Celtics without a useful asset in return to build on.

You trade these players before you know hayward is coming, you might regret it if hayward didnt come. Olynyk had little value last year. In an ideal world where everyone agrees to any trade you propose you would want future picks+a lesser contract player. But still I dunno how you can clear more cap space if a star becomes available coz you dont want to lose players for nothing so now you have to find takers for that lesser contract player that will give you picks.

Expiring contracts are a huge commodity in the league, losing players for nothing is an important part in acquiring good players.

[Diggles]

Looks like your paying intrest on a loan you have not gotten.  Bradley, Smart, Crowder and IT still are on the roster. 

Being a GM is hard work.  Involves more than we think.  Trading people is a jerk move at times.  Letting them walk when you can't afford them showes others they can trust Danny.    No concerned.   We have lots of picks. 

[Cman]

I don't know how it would work, but I like the idea of a compensatory pick system like in the NFL.

[GreenCoffeeBean]

You can't get something for nothing all of the time. Other teams know it's that player's final year and wait. You can't always pull sign and trades out of thin air. This is why Free Agency was invented. Players are eventually FREE to choose where they go.

[Roy H.]

So, what's the proposal here?

Every year do we either trade our pending free agents in the middle of a playoff race, or keep them in free agency no matter what the cost?

[Endless Paradise]

... if there's any team that can afford to hold onto its impending free agents as they assess how far they go in the playoffs, it's Boston. They have more than enough assets to soften the blow.

[JBcat]

I don't know how it would work, but I like the idea of a compensatory pick system like in the NFL.

I've mentioned it before but I like the MLB way with type A and type B free agents works. Type A a team would get a sandwich pick, and another pick, and type B just a sandwich pick.  I think they base it on salary the player gets, not sure.  The NBA could do something similar.  It could help small market teams that aren't a free agent destination.

[More Banners]

I think the point of using so many picks is the luxury of deciding who to keep and who to live without. Sometimes those are tough decisions. I liked both Sully and Kelly, but understand the need to let them go at some point. All things considered, i guess they didn't see Superstar in his future. Oh well. We have more picks to try out. Welcome, Zizic and Yabusele.

[More Banners]

What was the appropriate move with Sullinger and Turner, in your mind?  Turner was a key player on a playoff team, a team and Stevens' favorite, and he was not going to get traded at the deadline for an expiring deal of any value when his deal was only ~$6M (and no one was trading a 1st rounder for him).  Sully was a decent player for a while here but ate his way off the roster and out of the league, and had no trade value.

Not sure what else they could have done but let them walk.

I was fine with how Turner's time here ended. It was hard to predict how the situation around Sullinger would evolve, so I'll take that as an unfortunate outcome.

But the number of players that walk out the door with nothing to show for adds up. In this crazy market it was always tough to keep Olynyk around for a good price, but then we should've anticipated well before his contract would end up. Teams are interested in players with certain skills like Olynyk.

Same goes for Bradley, Crowder and Smart. In the right situation these are valuable players on great contracts. Certainly there are teams who would welcome them on their team. But we just wait and wait till all our bargaining power disappears. I find it unacceptable if any one of these three players leaves the Celtics without a useful asset in return to build on.

You trade these players before you know hayward is coming, you might regret it if hayward didnt come. Olynyk had little value last year. In an ideal world where everyone agrees to any trade you propose you would want future picks+a lesser contract player. But still I dunno how you can clear more cap space if a star becomes available coz you dont want to lose players for nothing so now you have to find takers for that lesser contract player that will give you picks.

Expiring contracts are a huge commodity in the league, losing players for nothing is an important part in acquiring good players.

Two things due to shorter contracts, only 4 years:  teams don't stay in cap hell long (because bad deals expire), and there are a bounty of expiring contracts around (shorter turnaround between deals), so expiring contracts are not especially valuable.

The exception is restricted free agents because they can pay up to retain and can usually just negotiate a good deal. So Olynyk was plenty valuable this past season, as he had been a RFA, in terms of trade bait.

[BitterJim]

If you trade all your impending free agents at the trade deadline, you'll 1. get poor value in return (yippee, a second rounder or two) and 2. lose them for your playoff run, which they may play an important role in (Kelly in Game 7, anyone?). You're not gonna have a whole lot of luck bringing in free agents if every season you look promising to start the year, dump players at the trade deadline, and then struggle in the playoffs (since you're missing some key parts of your team)

Nobody likes losing our guys for nothing, but it's a reality of this league. And as long as the people you're losing aren't stars, the team will be okay.

[Fan from VT]

With a salary cap, it's kind of all the same.

There are 2 ways to go, really:
1. Always stay over the cap. By this method, you use trades to turn over the roster, either by packaging contract "filler" with prospects/picks to bring back players or by trying to swap out vet "push a contender over the edge" pieces for some prospects/picks, or, since you are trying to stay over the cap anyway, you trade expirings to teams trying to get under the cap and in return you take their longer-signed players.

2. Try to get under the cap to land a big Free Agent. The only way to do this is to let some players go "for nothing."

In the end, it amounts to the same thing, which is net movement of players out and in.

So yes, we could have kept or dealt Turner, Sully, KO, etc. But, except in very rare cases, we would have had to take back equivalent contracts, and no one is giving away good picks, etc, for those guys.

So it is a bit of a misnomer to say that "KO, Turner, and Sully left for nothing" because the act of them leaving and not needing to pay them or anyone else the equivalent money allowed us to sign Hayward. So, the question becomes, if we had stayed over the cap, would you have traded KO, Turner, and Sully for Hayward?

[LilRip]

Cap space is a finite resource and it's ultimately the allocation of this that determines whether or not we "lose a player for nothing". And because cap space is almost always used, we almost never lose a player for nothing.

Take a guy like Zeller. He had a 8M contract. We let him walk. Did we lose him for nothing? You could say so. But you could also argue that by letting him go, we received the opportunity (or at least he was a piece of that opportunity) to sign Hayward.

[incoherent]

I admit that's a little premature, but are we at risk to have lost a complete starting team in the NBA in just two years for essentially nothing? We let Sullinger and Turner walk last year for good reasons, but at the same time they were valuable pieces who could've been used in trades earlier on. Now Olynyk is a free agent and again we will not resign him. A player who would certainly have yielded something in a trade.

The negotations over a sign and trade for Hayward are all pretty vague, but what if Crowder is included and no real asset (2nd rounders are almost worthless) comes back? Then there is the fact that Thomas, Bradley and Smart are all expiring contracts. Thomas will ask a ton of money, which could go at the expense of Bradley and Smart who both will also be looking at their payday. In the worst case we can't afford them and so they walk as well.

End result, we let this whole team walk for nothing in return and I won't even mention Johnson, Jerebko, Zeller or Young whom all at some point could've been used in a big trade. That would be a tough pill to swallow even though a nice roster is left due to the Brooklyn picks.

PG:  Smart
SG:  Bradley
SF:  Crowder
PF:  Olynyk
C:    Sullinger
6th: Turner

What a ridiculous notion. Im sorry OP but this post is absolutely absurd, and it has an extreme lack of context.

Every single point you make can easily be rebuffed by simply thinking about each scenario for 5 seconds.

Half the players you list are gone because we are signing Gordon Hayward to max... like... why are you even mentioning James Young in this conversation?

I cant even spend time on this one....just come on OP, next time use a little context. 

Also, three of those people (as of right now) are still on our team!! ??