The difference is that one player was a restricted free agent and the other would be unrestricted. Signing Memo to an extension was questionable, but nobody could have predicted his injury.
David Locke's Podcast interview with KOC
- Thread starter Chad Feldheimer
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The difference is that one player was a restricted free agent and the other would be unrestricted. Signing Memo to an extension was questionable, but nobody could have predicted his injury.
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Sounds like a typical person who wants to avoid taking responsibility, a few of KOC's decisions created the circumstances that cost us Wes. Mostly, re-signing Okur before he had to offer him a contract (with Okur's nagging injuries and obvious lack of defense the market was small at best). Why not wait until he becomes a free agent. Okur wanted to stay in Utah. KOC knew he had the Boozer issue to deal with in a year. Most fans knew that the Jazz would not be able to keep Boozer, AK, Millsap and Okur so why not wait and let him test the market. When Wes came along he did the exact opposite, he should have worked the deal from the start and offered him a CJ or a little better contract to keep him.
The problem is that KOC had already screwed up by signing Okur and not trading AK. The fact that KOC showed his hand with Boozer he was unable to trade him for anything good so he had to beg Kahn for AJ. There was no choice between them both KOC just mismanaged the situation and he just covered his mistakes up by signing AJ and Raja. At least that is the way I see it.
i realize you're never going to get it, but i'm not busy today. so what the hell, here goes.
of course, extending Okur at the time was a risk. extending any player is a risk. Matthews could rupture his achilles tomorrow. who knows?
on the other hand, it is perfectly obvious that replacing a 17.5 PER center is always going to be difficult. do you think there are a lot of 17.5 PER centers that KOC can just sign as an undrafted free agent (like he did Matthews)? here is the list of centers with a PER higher than Okur after the 2008-2009 season:
https://www.basketball-reference.co...tat=&c5comp=gt&c6mult=1.0&c6stat=&order_by=ws
for those of you too lazy to click the link: Howard, Yao, Okafor, Shaq, and Lopez. that's it. four of those guys were making far more than the $10 million KOC spent on Okur, and the last one was on a rookie contract. Considering the premium you have to pay for size in the NBA, how is $10 million spent on Okur so extravagant? and only a two-year deal?
your boy Matthews? he's a good player too, but his FG%, 3P%, and per-minute rebounds, assists, steals, and blocks are all down this season. and he wasn't very good at any of those last four when he was here. his 15.2 PER rates him as an "average" player at his position league-wide.
face it: both the Okur and Matthews decisions that KOC made were defensible at the time.
now if you had been the Jazz GM in the summer of 08-09, your approach would have been: I'm going to pass up extending my 17.5 PER center (when any potential replacement is making double that and would be unavailable anyway because of the salary cap), because I need to save money to re-sign that undrafted free agent "average" wing player that I'm going to find later this Summer. right?
Brendan Haywood is the same age as Okur. His career PER is 15.3. He re-upped with Dallas for $55 million over 6 years.
The Haywood contract probably worst of the offseason. A lot of people seem to forget the Okur contract was before the injury, 2 for 20 seemed quite reasonable.
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That's because Mark Cuban is an idiot.
He gave away Nash
And then traded Devin harris for Jason Kidd
Using Cuban to justify our moves is like using Bush II as the standard for Presidents. Compared to Cuban, EVERYONE looks like a genius (although with much lighter wallets)
He gave away Nash?
you did not know he was traded for a sack of taters?
Dragicevic? Some nobody from Illinois to I believe.
Memo's injury was not even part of my argument. Okur was having back issues prior to his heel injury. Even though he played through most of his injuries he always seemed hurt come playoff times. Memo also was in his 30's so a guy with back issues in his late 20's isn't going to get better as he gets older. My point was if the Jazz had waited on extending Memo or traded AK they could have kept Wes. The only other chance they had was to offer Wes a CJ similiar contract at midnight on the night of FA signings. Instead they left him hanging to deal with the Boozer issue which most people knew he wasn't going to stay. They let the market determine the price instead of being proactive and offering Wes a contract. To say the Jazz needed to offer him the full except is a weak argument because Wes has said he would have taken less and the Jazz could have signed him to the MLE before allowing Portland to include th poison pill.