Again, no one has been able to shed any light on the extent of Semih's shoulder injury.
What is the likelihood he'd be unavailable by the time the playoffs roll around, anyways?
If his injury requires surgery and rehab, how likely is it that he'll be back to play out that last year on his contract next year?
Also, BTW, Erden is owed less than $500K this year, and less than $800K next year. I have no doubt that Wyc would be willing to eat that contract if the roster could be improved by doing so.
Erden's shoulder will eventually require surgery, and they've described it as similar to Perk's shoulder injury a few years back, something which took an offseason to take care of. It's something you can play through indefinitely if you take the pain.
The original plan was to get Erden's surgery out of the way during 2nd half of the season, so they could get the surgery and rehab underway before the lockout disrupts the communication between the team and Erden. With JO and Shaq's injury problems, that idea was shelved.
Semih will not be released to create room for Sheed--not only has DA never worked that way, the Cs think they have good value in Erden and won't let him go for nothing. If anything, they'll make a trade to open up a roster spot. Even a stiff like POB had enough value to get traded and open up a roster spot, and it will be easy to do the same with someone with more value.
If you want to talk economics, Wafer and West's deal represent less money overall (because they only extend to the end of the year) and so if it was a question of luxury tax savings than Wafer would be the one to go. There is absolutely zero credence to the idea of cutting Erden (or Gody for that matter)--it just isn't the way the Cs have traditionally done business.
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As for the Sheed v. Baby debate: when everyone was healthy last season during the playoffs Baby and Perk were Doc's preferred closing options at center. Even granting that Sheed did 'turn it on' during the playoffs, he still wasn't playing crunch time minutes. With a year layoff and lots of rust, Sheed's nothing more than a 5-10 minute a night player--and we've already got JO to fill that's relatively unimportant role. This is just not happening unless there's a major injury to Shaq/JO/Perk/KG/Baby....