Using Larry Coon's projection, the salary cap for 2015-16 will be about 66.7M. The 'cap' number used to calculate max salaries would then be 61.36M.
That would put the max for Monroe (a 5th year player, eligible for 25% of the latter number) at about 15.3M.
Just a year later, the salary cap is expected to hit on the order of 89M, so the price for a similar player will jump to 20.5M.
If you can lock a player like Monroe (only 25 years old) for 4-year deal with a starting basis of 15.5M, he will look like a bargain in one year and a steal in three.
Danny obviously has to shop around. And personally, I'd still give the edge to Aldridge as the preferred FA big out there. At this point in time he is a better player overall than Monroe. But one of the reason's he is better is because he is more experienced (almost 5 years older) and he will cost 18.8M per to start his contract this year. So it's not a huge edge when you consider cost/value. So I'll be glad if Danny can lock up either one of these guys.
It's all moot, of course, unless Danny actually convinces one of these guys to sign with us.
If I'm Monroe, one of my questions would be: Who is going to be my point guard?
Because if we continue with the offensively-challenged three-guard combination of Bradley-Smart-Turner in the starting lineup, why should Monroe want to put up with that?
That trio were all terrible at running the pick-and-roll and at feeding _Zeller_, who like Monroe is a very good pick and roll offensive big man.
For whatever reason, Brad opted to not start Thomas, despite Thomas being a premier pick-and-roll guard who should have been combined with Zeller as much as possible.
When Zeller was on the floor _without_ Thomas, his efficiency was good: 53.1% eFG, 55.5% TS%.
When Zeller was on the floor _with_ Thomas, his efficiency jumped to 59.0% eFG and 62.7% TS!!!
But unfortunately, Thomas was only on the floor for 27% of Zeller's minutes (as of when IT joined the team). And Zeller was only on the floor for 32% of IT's minutes.
Which also meant that 68% of the time IT was on the floor with other bigs not named Zeller who were not as good at pick & roll (Sully and IT played well together, but only for limited minutes until that last game of the playoffs).
This meant that, in a typical game, we were only putting one of our most potent offensive weapons (the IT+TZ p&r combo) on the floor for a handful of minutes.
I think one big benefit of bringing Monroe on board, putting Zeller on the bench, is that we would have 48 minutes of excellent P&R talent at the center position, so as long as IT got 30+ minutes, whether off the bench or starting, we would have that weapon working in our offense for at least 100% of those minutes.
If Smart can make a step up in his game as a playmaking PG this year, that would really help to improve that for the rest of the game, but can you sell that 'potential' to Monroe or Aldridge?
We also need to get better outside shooting than we got from AB+Smart+Turner+Bass last year, though, to really take advantage of Monroe. Replacing Bass with Sully or KO or Jerebko would help there. I think we need to also get a serious upgrade at SF.
What's Danny's sales pitch to these guys going to be about that?
Topic: "Speculation" Monroe to sign with either Boston or NY (update on 1st page) (Read 42298 times)