Big Lead Article: "Al Horford Has Become a Big Problem for the Celtics"

[kozlodoev]

why does it matter to us how much horford is paid?

Because in a world where a hard cap exists, paying Horford this much invariably means you're not paying someone else. There is certainly more to this than, "Hey, why do you care how Wyc and Steve spend their money".

[mctyson]

It is obviously an over the top piece of literature, but a lot of what was discussed in the article, we have been discussing in the Horford thread.  He isn't the 11th best player in the league, but he has the 11th highest salary.  He is 31 and signed for huge dollars for 2 more years.  His salary number will likely cause Boston to lose Smart and/or Monroe this summer so the team avoids the luxury tax.

Please give me one sport where the yearly salaries strongly correlate to "best players" each season.

[mctyson]

why does it matter to us how much horford is paid?

Because in a world where a hard cap exists, paying Horford this much invariably means you're not paying someone else. There is certainly more to this than, "Hey, why do you care how Wyc and Steve spend their money".

Who else are you paying?  Who did they miss out on when Horford was a free agent?

This argument is speculative.

[PhoSita]

He isn't the 11th best player in the league, but he has the 11th highest salary.  He is 31 and signed for huge dollars for 2 more years. 

This again is engaging in the same kind of shallow sophistry as one can find in click-bait articles like the one in the OP.

You know very well that many of the best, most valuable players in the league have their salaries artificially limited by the CBA, i.e. rookie contracts and limits on max salary based on years played in the league.  Others signed their current deals before taking their games up a few notches.

Horford, if anything, is one of the few star players in the league who is probably appropriately paid for his contributions.

He's the second best player and the unquestioned veteran leader and culture-setter on a team that is going to win 50+ games and finish with a top 3 record in the conference, likely top 5 in the league.

The only reason that may not seem as though it's "worth" max salary is because the CBA causes so many players to be extremely underpaid.

Furthermore, I'd rather have Horford than Smart + Monroe, and the salary cap situation can only fairly be assessed by looking at all of the player salaries together.  Al Horford's salary alone does not push the Celtics within shouting distance of the luxury tax.

Of course I understand why Horford's salary is so large, but that still doesn't change the fact that he has the 11th highest salary in the league and is no where near the 11th best player in the league.  He is 24% of Boston's cap space this year and based on estimates of next year's cap will be close to 27%, and something like 25% in his final year (if he picks up the option).  Horford is a very good player, but he isn't worth that contract.

I don't agree. The market rate for an all Star caliber two way veteran is a Max contract. The Celts don't get Hayward or Kyrie without horford being on the team already. He's worth the money and then some.

[kozlodoev]

why does it matter to us how much horford is paid?

Because in a world where a hard cap exists, paying Horford this much invariably means you're not paying someone else. There is certainly more to this than, "Hey, why do you care how Wyc and Steve spend their money".

Who else are you paying?  Who did they miss out on when Horford was a free agent?

This argument is speculative.

We're not just talking about free agency here (that's not much of a conversation either, since Horford was obviously the best FA not named Kevin Durant that year). But there were a number of players that changed teams who you could have absorbed with that slot while retaining the ability to sign someone like Hayward.

Or alternatively, signing Horford to a more manageable contract could have given you cap room to sign a solid midlevel player to fill out a position of need.

If you think Ainge deserves praise for how he managed the team's cap space then you can't just turn around and say it doesn't matter how much we're paying Horford. It does.

[green_bballers13]

why does it matter to us how much horford is paid?

Because in a world where a hard cap exists, paying Horford this much invariably means you're not paying someone else. There is certainly more to this than, "Hey, why do you care how Wyc and Steve spend their money".

Who else are you paying?  Who did they miss out on when Horford was a free agent?

This argument is speculative.

We're not just talking about free agency here (that's not much of a conversation either, since Horford was obviously the best FA not named Kevin Durant that year). But there were a number of players that changed teams who you could have absorbed with that slot while retaining the ability to sign someone like Hayward.

Or alternatively, signing Horford to a more manageable contract could have given you cap room to sign a solid midlevel player to fill out a position of need.

If you think Ainge deserves praise for how he managed the team's cap space then you can't just turn around and say it doesn't matter how much we're paying Horford. It does.

What realistic targets would you have preferred over Horford?

And the Celtics weren't going to sign Horford on a manageable contract. He would have gone somewhere else for big $.

[Big333223]

Chris Forsberg just tweeted:

Al Horford...

has the second best on/off net rating differential on the Celtics (+7.0)

is 2nd on the team in win share

is 5th in the NBA in 3-point%

is 5th among high-volume defenders allowing 0.813 points per play per Synergy, for No. 1 defense in NBA.

So there's that.

[kozlodoev]

What realistic targets would you have preferred over Horford?

And the Celtics weren't going to sign Horford on a manageable contract. He would have gone somewhere else for big $.

The question was why we should care what he's paid. I explained why. If you didn't get it, going down this rabbit hole ain't going to help.

[kozlodoev]

is 54th among high-volume defenders allowing 0.813 points per play per Synergy, for No. 1 defense in NBA.

You mean 5th.

[green_bballers13]

What realistic targets would you have preferred over Horford?

And the Celtics weren't going to sign Horford on a manageable contract. He would have gone somewhere else for big $.

The question was why we should care what he's paid. I explained why. If you didn't get it, going down this rabbit hole ain't going to help.

In a vacuum, I agree with you.

When looking at the NBA and signings, I'm not sure which players (again, realistically) we would rather have.

I don't think it was a great signing, but I don't think it was a bad one. The timing of it works, as the Celtics should get cap space in 2 years when they have a more competitive team.

[kozlodoev]

I don't think it was a great signing, but I don't think it was a bad one. The timing of it works, as the Celtics should get cap space in 2 years when they have a more competitive team.

I think we can agree on this. By and large, the Celtics decided to push all the chips in on Horford rather than risk that their cap space be eaten by player raises while they wait for other stars to become available. It was a low risk, low reward move.

[JBcat]

I don't think it was a great signing, but I don't think it was a bad one. The timing of it works, as the Celtics should get cap space in 2 years when they have a more competitive team.

I think we can agree on this. By and large, the Celtics decided to push all the chips in on Horford rather than risk that their cap space be eaten by player raises while they wait for other stars to become available. It was a low risk, low reward move.

First we won’t get cap space when Horford’s contract is up in 2 years.  Irving will be up for a max extension, and Brown and Tatum will be on their way to their 2nd contracts, and if Smart and/or Rozier are still around will already be on their second contracts.

Flashback to 2016.  It was the first year of the big spike in cap space that led to wild spending across the league.  We only really had a 2 year shot at max cap space so if we could get a star year 1 it would certainly help in year 2 get a star which is exactly what happened.  Cause and effect.  If we didn’t sign Horford what was the alternative in the summer of 2016?  Mostly everyone was overpaid.  I guess someone like Eric Gordon’s 4 year 53 mil contract turned into a good contract, but you saw the Mozgov’s of the world being vastly overpaid.  So yes we might have overpaid for Horford but the alternatives out there weren’t as appealing plus Horford really helped solidify our bigs.

If we just tried not signing anyone in 2016 to preserve cap space we would still lose it eventually when extensions start kicking in. So we basically had a 2 year shot at max cap space with the big spikes in cap space across the league in 2016 and 2017. Let’s say we used that money on Ryan Anderson (he got 4 years 80 mil) and Eric Gordon I don’t think Hayward would have signed with us, and maybe Irving doesnt agree to waive his trade kicker in order to be dealt to us.  Look at the other contracts that got signed that year.  Lots of dead weight now.

[mmmmm]

Of course I understand why Horford's salary is so large, but that still doesn't change the fact that he has the 11th highest salary in the league and is no where near the 11th best player in the league.  He is 24% of Boston's cap space this year and based on estimates of next year's cap will be close to 27%, and something like 25% in his final year (if he picks up the option).  Horford is a very good player, but he isn't worth that contract.

You are begging for a false premise:  That league salaries should be ordered in accordance to talent.

They are not.  They are not every going to be.  They are not really even supposed to be.

Whether a player is "worth" a contract is not based on this sort of dubious and contrived ranking.   A player on a rookie contract or a value deal blows that sort of methodology completely away.

Here is the proper way to assess whether a player is 'worth his contract'.

The job of a player is to help his team win.  That is what you are paying him to do.   His value is realized in how well he does that and can be estimated by estimating the share of his team's wins his contributions resulted in.  There are various analytics that estimate this, one of the more commonly known being BBREF Win Shares.

A win has a dollar value.   Based on BRI projections, I'm going to conservatively estimate that a Win Share this season will probably be worth on the order of $4M - $5M.

Horford is on pace to generate about 9 Win Shares this season.  That would put his revenue value at somewhere around $40M, plus or minus some handful of millions, but probably well, well above his salary.

Note, due to the size of Boston's market and the fact that wins on this team will contribute to a playoff run (thus generating playoff revenue), the case can be made that a Win Share is more valuable to a team like Boston than it is to the league on average.   Thus the real number is probably higher.

[nickagneta]

I don't think it was a great signing, but I don't think it was a bad one. The timing of it works, as the Celtics should get cap space in 2 years when they have a more competitive team.

I think we can agree on this. By and large, the Celtics decided to push all the chips in on Horford rather than risk that their cap space be eaten by player raises while they wait for other stars to become available. It was a low risk, low reward move.

First we won’t get cap space when Horford’s contract is up in 2 years.  Irving will be up for a max extension, and Brown and Tatum will be on their way to their 2nd contracts, and if Smart and/or Rozier are still around will already be on their second contracts.

Flashback to 2016.  It was the first year of the big spike in cap space that led to wild spending across the league.  We only really had a 2 year shot at max cap space so if we could get a star year 1 it would certainly help in year 2 get a star which is exactly what happened.  Cause and effect.  If we didn’t sign Horford what was the alternative in the summer of 2016?  Mostly everyone was overpaid.  I guess someone like Eric Gordon’s 4 year 53 mil contract turned into a good contract, but you saw the Mozgov’s of the world being vastly overpaid.  So yes we might have overpaid for Horford but the alternatives out there weren’t as appealing plus Horford really helped solidify our bigs.

If we just tried not signing anyone in 2016 to preserve cap space we would still lose it eventually when extensions start kicking in. So we basically had a 2 year shot at max cap space with the big spikes in cap space across the league in 2016 and 2017. Let’s say we used that money on Ryan Anderson (he got 4 years 80 mil) and Eric Gordon I don’t think Hayward would have signed with us, and maybe Irving doesnt agree to waive his trade kicker in order to be dealt to us.  Look at the other contracts that got signed that year.  Lots of dead weight now.

Of course I understand why Horford's salary is so large, but that still doesn't change the fact that he has the 11th highest salary in the league and is no where near the 11th best player in the league.  He is 24% of Boston's cap space this year and based on estimates of next year's cap will be close to 27%, and something like 25% in his final year (if he picks up the option).  Horford is a very good player, but he isn't worth that contract.

You are begging for a false premise:  That league salaries should be ordered in accordance to talent.

They are not.  They are not every going to be.  They are not really even supposed to be.

Whether a player is "worth" a contract is not based on this sort of dubious and contrived ranking.   A player on a rookie contract or a value deal blows that sort of methodology completely away.

Here is the proper way to assess whether a player is 'worth his contract'.

The job of a player is to help his team win.  That is what you are paying him to do.   His value is realized in how well he does that and can be estimated by estimating the share of his team's wins his contributions resulted in.  There are various analytics that estimate this, one of the more commonly known being BBREF Win Shares.

A win has a dollar value.   Based on BRI projections, I'm going to conservatively estimate that a Win Share this season will probably be worth on the order of $4M - $5M.

Horford is on pace to generate about 9 Win Shares this season.  That would put his revenue value at somewhere around $40M, plus or minus some handful of millions, but probably well, well above his salary.

Note, due to the size of Boston's market and the fact that wins on this team will contribute to a playoff run (thus generating playoff revenue), the case can be made that a Win Share is more valuable to a team like Boston than it is to the league on average.   Thus the real number is probably higher.

2 excellent posts. TPs for both of you.

[mmmmm]

He isn't the 11th best player in the league, but he has the 11th highest salary.  He is 31 and signed for huge dollars for 2 more years. 

This again is engaging in the same kind of shallow sophistry as one can find in click-bait articles like the one in the OP.

You know very well that many of the best, most valuable players in the league have their salaries artificially limited by the CBA, i.e. rookie contracts and limits on max salary based on years played in the league.  Others signed their current deals before taking their games up a few notches.

Horford, if anything, is one of the few star players in the league who is probably appropriately paid for his contributions.

Right, but artificial or not, the fact remains that you can get better players for the same amount of dollars. That's not sophistry, that's good cap management. Sure, you can argue that he was the best on the market, but then you have to at least have the conversation of whether he's a max player because he was fortunate with when his FA offseason was, or because of where he belongs in the NBA percking order.

No.  That is not a fact.  The players you can acquire are not from an open market.   You can only acquire players via draft, free agency and trade and your ability to use any of the three markets is tightly limited, due to the constraints of the CBA.

And whether a player is worth the contract he is being paid has nothing to do with where he belongs in the NBA pecking order.