Tuesday Bolts – 7.30.13
Zach Lowe of Grantland doing his thing: “But a third max salary for Harden, atop Serge Ibaka’s big new deal, would have been too much to swallow regardless. This is why the Thunder tried, in the high-pressure hours before the Harden deal, to re-sign Harden to something like a four-year, $52 million contract — a deal below the max, and one that would have paid Harden $11.5 million in Year 1 and $12.5 million in Year 2. People laughed at the small difference between that kind of contract and the four-year, $60 million deal Harden actually wanted, but the difference absolutely mattered. Every dollar matters for Oklahoma City. This is a team that makes about $15 million from its local television deal; the Lakers make $250 million per year from theirs. The Thunder just lowballed Roberson in order to make sure they duck the tax this season and delay the repeater clock one more time. Oklahoma City paid into the league’s revenue-sharing system last season instead of getting a boost from it, according to several sources with knowledge of the plan.”
Darnell Mayberry on Ryan Gomes: “With the Thunder’s roster at the NBA limit of 15 players following last week’s signing of guard Derek Fisher, in addition to the team’s payroll sitting roughly $500,000 from surpassing the punitive tax threshold, it is likely that Gomes is joining the team on a similar deal. If so, Gomes would enter training camp competing for the final roster spot with DeAndre Liggins, Daniel Orton and Hasheem Thabeet, three players who also are on non-guaranteed contracts. The Thunder would not have to pay the full year’s salary to any of the four players that do not make the regular season roster.”
This looks like a neat article, but it’s behind a paywall so who knows.
Andrew Sharp of Grantland on KD at the Drew: “I first saw Kevin Durant play summer basketball four years ago in Southeast D.C. I remember it because I was one of like three white people there, and Miles Rawls — the famous Goodman League announcer — called me out for looking like Tom from Myspace, annnnnnd said I had a haircut like one of the Beatles. He also once heckled President Obama, so I considered it an honor. Anyway, Durant wasn’t one of the two best players on the planet at that point, but he was still a star, and from the second he showed up the park was packed and going crazy. Durant did his thing, and most of what made it cool was that he showed up at all. What’s weird is that he’s still doing it.”
Who will play for Team USA in 2014?
Are state taxes standing in the way of free agents?
Bradford Doolittle of ESPN Insider projects Russell Westbrook as the second best point next season: “By the time the MVP voting results were released during the playoffs, Westbrook had been knocked out by a knee injury, and, unfortunately, that’s probably what we will remember most from his 2012-13 season. Overlooked at the time was the fact that Westbrook finished ninth in the voting despite ranking third in WARP. Although Westbrook’s value to the Thunder was apparently overlooked when the ballots were completed, it was abundantly clear when he was absent in the postseason. ATH isn’t forecasting a decline for Westbrook this season as much as a regression, and the distinction is important. Regression, in a statistical context, simply means moving toward average. It can be a positive or negative effect, yet many people take the term as a pejorative. Westbrook took a huge leap last season, and, like Derrick Rose in 2011-12, he’s likely to come back to earth just a little bit. ATH sees Westbrook maintaining his roughly 33 percent usage rate of the past two seasons. Given some possible shortages on the Oklahoma City bench, it could climb even higher depending on how many of his minutes come with Kevin Durant off the floor. If so, Westbrook’s tepid efficiency could slide into the danger area.”
