I'm pretty happy with our off season so far. I was one of the guy that didn't want Ben Gordon. But he's here now (in principle), so I will support him, especially considering it looks like we will keep Rip, which means we keep length on the wing.

But what about our bigs?

I like Villenueva, I was early on his band wagon a few months ago. But he isn't interested in playing time at center, otherwise Toronto wouldn't have moves him (This hurt us landing bosh IMO).

So we have one center on our roster. I know we are trying to bring Dice back. I LOVE DICE, he's never mailed a in a game in his life, and I know he's played center for us at times, but that's when we HAD to have him play it.

So shouldn't we be going after another big body? We probably can't afford a run at Gortot now, so is anyone going to be a happy with Brown as our only true big man?

What cheap veterans are out there with 15 quality rebounding and defensive minutes for us?

I think we resign Dice to play backup 4 and then trade one of Tay or Rip for a Center like Okafor or Camby. I would be pretty happy with our front court depth then.

It will be interesting to see what happens with the front court - I do feel that we have to make at least one more move to make this a contending team especially considering we must go through Dwight Howard or Shaq next season!

Guys remember we traded Amir for Fabricio Oberto... I'm not a big fan of Oberto myself, but for now I guess it would be Kwame and Oberto-- and no not satisfied with that at the C spot.

Bosh has said he wants a max contract. That means $20 Million+ a year. Rasheed Wallace was the highest paid player in Pistons history at $13 million this season. Dumars wasn't, isn't and never will pay that much for one player. Chris Bosh will never be a Detroit Piston

That aside, there really aren't that many true centers in the NBA to begin with. The only reason Dwight tore up the Cavs was b/c Z couln't guard the pick & rolls that Orlando was running over & over again. I think even Kwame has enough lateral quickness to be able to at least show on those types of plays.

Moreover, Shaq is still a good center. But no longer a dominant one. He will also struggle mightily defending pick & rolls, and we can use that to our advantage.

quote:

Originally posted by MasterBigShot:
Bosh has said he wants a max contract. That means $20 Million+ a year. Rasheed Wallace was the highest paid player in Pistons history at $13 million this season. Dumars wasn't, isn't and never will pay that much for one player. Chris Bosh will never be a Detroit Piston

That aside, there really aren't that many true centers in the NBA to begin with. The only reason Dwight tore up the Cavs was b/c Z couln't guard the pick & rolls that Orlando was running over & over again. I think even Kwame has enough lateral quickness to be able to at least show on those types of plays.

Moreover, Shaq is still a good center. But no longer a dominant one. He will also struggle mightily defending pick & rolls, and we can use that to our advantage.

A max salary for Bosh will only be about 15 million I think. How much your max contract can be is contingent upon how many years you are in the league.

quote:

Originally posted by YoUnGeR & hUnGrIeR IN 09:
Guys remember we traded Amir for Fabricio Oberto... I'm not a big fan of Oberto myself, but for now I guess it would be Kwame and Oberto-- and no not satisfied with that at the C spot.

We have already bought Oberto out. As it stands, our frontline is Villanueva, Kwame & Maxiell.

Assuming Gordon & CV were signed to progressively increasing contracts with max yearly increases (i.e. lowest possible starting salary), than they should have been signed starting @ $9 and $6 million/year, leaving us with $4-5 million still to spend on a servicable back up. We're still going to need more bigs eventually, and I don't think any of us are under the illusion that we're actually going to win the title next year anyways. But we could return to the ECF or at least the second round. My guess is that we can lock up another center next year when we again have a full MLE to spend. The only FA options are center next summer are: Jermaine O'Neal, Brad Miller, Tyson Chandler and Okur.

We need three players capable of playing each position, At PF we have Villanueva and Maxiell, backed up by three rookies and possible Plaisted.

But, at center, we only have Kwame Brown. None of the PF's are capable of playing center, other than Plaisted. If we can sign McDyess, he could probably play against some centers, but, Kwame is the only true center.

On July 8, we'll know how much cap money is left, and whether it's enough to sign McDyess. If not, the remaining money should be used to get a center capable of backing up Kwame, or we'll have to trade for a center, which will probably cost us RIP or Prince.

We cant use MLE, can we? I dont think so, considering we were under the cap.

quote:

Originally posted by Afflalo2theMax:

quote:

Originally posted by MasterBigShot:
Bosh has said he wants a max contract. That means $20 Million+ a year. Rasheed Wallace was the highest paid player in Pistons history at $13 million this season. Dumars wasn't, isn't and never will pay that much for one player. Chris Bosh will never be a Detroit Piston

That aside, there really aren't that many true centers in the NBA to begin with. The only reason Dwight tore up the Cavs was b/c Z couln't guard the pick & rolls that Orlando was running over & over again. I think even Kwame has enough lateral quickness to be able to at least show on those types of plays.

Moreover, Shaq is still a good center. But no longer a dominant one. He will also struggle mightily defending pick & rolls, and we can use that to our advantage.

A max salary for Bosh will only be about 15 million I think. How much your max contract can be is contingent upon how many years you are in the league.

Chris Bosh is scheduled to make some $15.8 million this upcoming season, and will be eligible to sign a maximum contract starting at 115% of his 2009-2010 salary, or in other words $18.17M. Continue giving him max salary increases (15% a year), and that means over the course of a 5 year deal, he would look to earn:
$18.17M, $20.89M, $24.02M, $27.634M, $31.77M, netting him 5yrs, $120M. Chris Bosh is not worth $31.77M a season. Chris Bosh will not get a max contract from the Pistons. Chris Bosh will never be a Piston. (This also means that Stoudemire will never come to Detroit, as he will be on track for an even bigger contract - he earns $16.7M/year next year). That seams like a lot of money, but half the teams in the league will have $20M+ to spend next summer. Someone will dish out the dough for Bosh & Stat.

Although, I honestly think that CV can grow to become a 20/10 guy shooting in the high 50's from the floor and high 30's from three. He's a good pick up and is about as close to Chris Bosh as we are going to get.

quote:

Originally posted by Clutch 2k:
We cant use MLE, can we? I dont think so, considering we were under the cap.

Nope, unfortunately we can't. The mid level exception is just that, an exception given to teams already over the salary cap at the start of a new season so that they can sign players. At the start of this new season (July 1, 2009) we were already under the salary cap, so no MLE for us this year. We should have $3-4M left to pick up somebody else.

quote:

Originally posted by MasterBigShot:

quote:

Originally posted by YoUnGeR & hUnGrIeR IN 09:
Guys remember we traded Amir for Fabricio Oberto... I'm not a big fan of Oberto myself, but for now I guess it would be Kwame and Oberto-- and no not satisfied with that at the C spot.

We have already bought Oberto out. As it stands, our frontline is Villanueva, Kwame & Maxiell.

Assuming Gordon & CV were signed to progressively increasing contracts with max yearly increases (i.e. lowest possible starting salary), than they should have been signed starting @ $9 and $6 million/year, leaving us with $4-5 million still to spend on a servicable back up. We're still going to need more bigs eventually, and I don't think any of us are under the illusion that we're actually going to win the title next year anyways. But we could return to the ECF or at least the second round. My guess is that we can lock up another center next year when we again have a full MLE to spend. The only FA options are center next summer are: Jermaine O'Neal, Brad Miller, Tyson Chandler and Okur.

Those number are not for sure yet since the cap number won't be announced until next week but remember we still have to subtract the 1.5 Mill for Daye, so it is more like 3.5-2 mill left (if the contracts are staggered like you mentioned). Might as well focus on Minimum contract players.

quote:

Originally posted by Motown Madness:

Those number are not for sure yet since the cap number won't be announced until next week but remember we still have to subtract the 1.5 Mill for Daye, so it is more like 3.5-2 mill left (if the contracts are staggered like you mentioned). Might as well focus on Minimum contract players.

I'm pretty sure that Daye's contract was already figured into our salary cap for next year. I recall Keith Langlois talking about how unless we traded away the first round pick, we were going to have a $1.5M cap hold, and that along with the decreasing cap number was going to reduce our free space from $23M to ~$19M. So we could still have upwards of $4-5M to spend.

I keep reading reports of Sheed going to X or Y team and how experts say of how great Sheed would be for teams like Cavs, Celtics, Spurs and Magic.

And Im thinking that now that Villanueva and Gordon are almost pistons, Why the hell not try to retain both Dice and Rasheed? Just one season, with both of them back, this team will be back in business.

Stuckey/Bynum
Rip/Gordon
Tay/Afflalo
Villanueva/Maxiell
Sheed/McDyess/Kwame

quote:

Originally posted by swift_carlos:

And Im thinking that now that Villanueva and Gordon are almost pistons, Why the hell not try to retain both Dice and Rasheed? Just one season, with both of them back, this team will be back in business.

Stuckey/Bynum
Rip/Gordon
Tay/Afflalo
Villanueva/Maxiell
Sheed/McDyess/Kwame

That would be an amazing line-up, and probably good enough to conceivably beat LA, Cleveland, Orlando or Boston come playoff time. But remember, we're only going to have at most $5M left to spend this summer, and we would be hard pressed to get either Sheed or Dyess for that kinda money, let alone both.

quote:

Originally posted by DupreeNJenkinsfan:
I think we resign Dice to play backup 4 and then trade one of Tay or Rip for a Center like Okafor or Camby. I would be pretty happy with our front court depth then.

Both Camby or Okafor would be great options. I'd prefer to rent Camby for a year, though.

quote:

Originally posted by MasterBigShot:


That would be an amazing line-up, and probably good enough to conceivably beat LA, Cleveland, Orlando or Boston come playoff time. But remember, we're only going to have at most $5M left to spend this summer, and we would be hard pressed to get either Sheed or Dyess for that kinda money, let alone both.

Cant the Team pay the luxury tax to keep them? Im always confused by this cap stuff. The best thing about keeping them, is avoiding someone else have them...

quote:

Originally posted by swift_carlos:


Cant the Team pay the luxury tax to keep them? Im always confused by this cap stuff. The best thing about keeping them, is avoiding someone else have them...

Unfortunately, we can'at do that either. You can only go over the salary cap to sign players if you own their Bird Rights (i.e. if they've played 3 consecutive years with your team). In order to free up all this cap space, we had to renounce our Bird Rights to Rasheed Wallace, so we can no longer go over the salary cap to resign him. When McDyess was bought out of his contract last season by Denver, he also lost his Bird rights. So we can not go over the salary cap to sign Sheed, Dyess, or any other player for that matter.

It sucks, but the CBA was actually written with this situation in mind. The league has actually has a vested interested in assuring that one team doesn't get too strong or dominant, which is why they instituted this rule. Otherwise, a smart team could arrange for all of their players to sign contracts that end the same year. Let's say this hypothetical team was a very good, perienial title contender (ala Denver or Dallas or SA or somebody). After all their players' contracts expired, they would have $0 in committed salary, or ~$60M in cap space. They could use all that cap space to sign a bunch of marquee players (At least 3 ala Kobe, Lebron, KG, Duncan, D-Wade, etc...), and then exercise the Bird Rights they they held on their original players to sign back their original team, which, according to our example, was already a contender. Imagine adding 3 All-NBA first team players to any contender (Denver, Dallas, SA) and you've got yourself a dynasty. Granted the team would be paying a boatload in luxury taxes, but they'd have the best team in the league, hands down.

The CBA prevents teams from doing this because the NBA thinks it would be unfair for some wealthier teams to just buy up all the good players regardless of the salary cap & luxury tax levels. So you have to choose: Resign your own players with their Bird rights, or renounce your bird rights to those players and sign FA. Dumars elected to do the latter.

We don't have depth at center. Kwame is the center. We did improve our forward positions though. I think Maxiell could be part of a trade for a center.

What depth?