FanPost

Asset Maximization

So Kahn has certainly taken a lot of crap over the past year for his moves now. I don't think it is deserved, though I do think he has done a poor job. I really can't find any deals that blow me away, though I can find plenty of deals, even knowing the plan, that are questionable.

Simple solution for those of you who don't want to hear about this stuff again: Don't keep reading. Some of us want to make sure we don't forget this stuff so we can hold Kahn accountable for his mistakes (and believe me, this isn't on the level of the "KAAAAAAAAAAAAHN!" BS. I'm just trying to hold him accountable for the stupid trades he has made and point out how easy (yes, easy. I'll try to back that up, but some of the deals are tough without being able to talk to other teams in the league) it would have been to do better.

Instances where Kahn has maximized assets:

  • Second rounders for Beasley (easy)
  • Brian Cardinal for Darko Milicic (easy, I was wishing we could have traded QRich for him immediately... woulda saved us quite a bit of money)
  • Signing. Ramon. Sessions. (easy)
  • Tucker and second rounder for Hart (easy)
  • Staff hirings (so far so good, but we still need proof of this)
  • Foye and Miller for Rubio et al (hey-o!)
  • Daniels and a second rounder(?) for Songaila and Brown (Loved this trade, too bad Daniels didn't want to be here... %I hear he really helped out on that championship contender that he signed with though...)
  • Pavlovic (WHAT?! Seriously, he wasn't a bad signing, especially at one year when we needed vets and we needed that spot filled. He didn't pan out, but I'll give him credit for listening to Rambis here... also it's not his fault that Rambis continued to play him)

Instances where Kahn has NOT maxmized assets:

  • Ramon Sessions, a second rounder, and buying out Telfair and West for Cleveland taking Hollins' contract (more below).
  • Jonny Flynn at 6 (take Curry and hold a team hostage)
  • Wes Johnson at 4 (See above, Cousins)
  • Lazar Hayward at 30 (unless they were really high on him and knew a team right after them was too... which I doubt)
  • 23 and 56 for 30 and 35(?)
  • Etan Thomas and 2 (one very high) second rounders for Damien Wilkins and Chucky Atkins' contract (Look what Presti just did with that pick...)
  • Buying out Chucky Atkins when there were teams looking for salary relief (See again, Presti)
  • Holding on to Gomes past the trade deadline (his only value was in cap relief, why hold on to him until too many teams can offer that relief, thereby diluting his worth)
  • Al Jefferson for cap space and mid to late first rounders (Still think he sold low... and apparently most people agree, though they seem like they just wanted another reason to jump on Kahn)
  • Hollins getting a player option (Was confused about him at the time, but hadn't seen him play so I gave him a chance. I still think it's a good signing, but poor performing upside players should be team options)
  • Henk
  • Calathes
  • Telfair, Smith, Madsen for QRich (easier to dump smaller contracts than all at once, especially if a team needed a backup PG/PF at the deadline... just let Madsen expire and let him continue to write letters to Rubio. If nothing else, don't you think we could have gotten Darko from Memphis before NY got him for this same deal? They needed to get deeper, after all. More below)
  • QRich for Blount (we needed vets and he would have been more valuable, albeit not much, at the deadline than Blount)
  • Cap space (He got saved from himself on multiple occasions)

For the record, I'm still hoping that we are getting the second rounder from Cleveland otherwise this doesn't make any sense. Sessions has positive value and this is not realizing it. This trade is just using a second rounder and $2.5M to get erasies on our signings last summer. Buuuut.... only about $2M more than that is "bad" cap space. So tell me how a second rounder and getting rid of Sessions' +value contract is worth that. I don't see it. Better be a bottom 10 pick...

On the Telfair, Smith, Madsen trade: Like I was saying, the only way we can't figure something out with Memphis for Darko is if they already had a deal in place for ZBo and really thought he would turn them around (I'll let you judge how likely that is). But ZBo was given in a salary dump anyways. Three team trade and just cut NY out of the deal woulda been so easy. SO. EASY. AND. AND! We would have saved having to pay Blount to sit on a couch and instead gotten a full year look at Darko, plus we wouldn't have been paying them both for a couple months. Out of all of these deals, I find it kind of funny that this might be the one where Kahn did the worst with maximizing our assets (not including the draft, which we won't know for a few years yet). I guess the one advantage is that we really didn't lose out on quite that much money since we would have paid Darko or Blount either way. But we would have paid a guy who was playing and who we ended up getting anyways. Ugh.

Well I won't go into too much analysis of these trades, I just wanted to list out his poor asset maximization. He only "found" two good trades (IMO, and one of those was a minor trade and was a stretch to call "good") and a few good staff signings (which really haven't even panned out yet), other than that all he did was do the obvious deal. So many trades that he left value on the table and considering we were going into last summer with "assets" as our only hope for the future, it hurts when those assets don't get used well.

Well what did I miss? Where does he deserve more credit or more blame? What would you have [realistically] done in his position since hindsight will affect very few of these trades?