No, like Eja said, I'd rather just try and re-sign Sully to a cheaper deal after his minutes are reduced this season. Sully's a better passer and just as a good a rebounder if used similarly to Thompson.
Thompson's unsung skill is defending pick and rolls as the big where he does a decent job but he's just way overpaid at the max.
If Ainge won't pay Tobias Harris or Khris Middleton the max, then there's no way in hell he'd pay Tristan Thompson the max.
The offer they gave him in the first place was way too much, and they just wanted to keep team chemistry/Lebron happy. Thompson's scumbag agent knew this and thought they could wrestle another few million out of the Cavs but they've stood their ground. Good for them too.
Anyway, I'd rather sign Sully to a 4 year deal like Crowder's with a team option after the 2nd season. Something like 4 years 32 million or something and see if he can grow up a bit as he hits 25 years old. He'd be a solid bench rebounding big man and a few more seasons of working on his three point shot he could be a great value contract.
The fact that we've got Mickey locked up long term also makes this easy decision even easier.
Anyway...sign Thompson to the max?
To me it's a 'hell no'.
I agree with all your comments here except for the part in bold, because indications are that Ainge probably was willing to pay Harris the max, but Orlando wasn't going to let that happen. After Orlando lost on the Millsap bidding, they turned around and indicated that they would match any offer on Harris and, indeed, ended up giving him a max contract. 'Nothing Danny could do there, no matter how much he may have wanted him.
I seemed to remember that Danny offered him close to the max but wouldn't go further...I may be way off.
Perhaps it was my preconceived thought that Danny would only sign 'iffy' guys like Harris if he thought he was getting a potential bargain and there was no offer sheet given to Harris by us. Basically if we were attempting to sign Harris then at least an offer sheet would've been put out there even if the Magic said they'd match anything.
But yeah you could be completely right.
Regardless Tobias Harris was a fairly 'iffy' max contract target and he's a helluva better player than Tristan Thompson both now and potential wise.
So Thompson to the Celtics would basically never happen which most of us would tend to agree on.
The rumor train went roughly as follows:
1) Orlando was going after Millsap, so they were not going to match on Harris (because of cap space). This made a lot of financial sense since they had two younger SFs that they drafted with high picks in the last two drafts.
2) So Danny was going aggressively after Harris and was rumored (as you note) to have unofficially offered a 'near max' offer (note - not yet an actual offer sheet).
3) Orlando lost out on Millsap and turned their attention towards retaining Harris. This now also made sense because he represents a potentially tradable asset down the road. They let it be known that they would match any offer.
4) Danny backed away. The problem with trying to 'call their bluff' by making an actual offer sheet is that it ties up cap space while waiting to find out if the other team will match.
5) Orlando went ahead and tied up Harris with a max contract. This will probably look like a reasonably cost-effective contract under the new cap so even if he ends up redundant with Gordon & Hezonja, he should be easy to trade (available for trade as of mid-december).
Danny then seemed to express a lot of interest in Danilo Galinari, but he, too, ended up getting retained by his team (signed a two year extension, through 2018, final year a team-option).
When you add those two events to how hard he was apparently going after Justice Winslow in the draft, it would seem Danny was pushing hard towards getting a stud SF.
As I noted up above, Harris will be eligible for trade as of mid-December. It will be interesting to see if Orlando is truly committed to him long term or if he gets moved and if Danny shows any interest. Or, do they move one of Gordon/Hezonja?
EDIT: To clarify a bit more on the offer sheet issue -- To make an offer sheet ties up cap space, which means you have to HAVE the cap space, so for Danny to have made an offer to Harris would have required him to first clear some space, which would have forced him to make a renouncement or two before he really wanted and before he was certain he would get Harris. So an offer sheet was only going to happen if he was 100% certain that he was going to get Harris and that Orlando wasn't going to match (which would have been the case only if they got Millsap). So that's why you didn't see an actual offer sheet publicized during all that.
As far as, "if he thought he was getting a potential bargain", a bargain is, of course a relative thing, but a max contract for Harris was/is only 16M. That's 23% of the current cap, but would only be 17.8% of next year's probable cap and an even smaller percentage of where it likely will be the season after that.
Topic: Would you sign and trade for T. Thompson at full 4 year max? (Read 7196 times)