You won’t find Neil Olshey, Sam Hinkie or David Griffin on a beach at some island resort this week. We are deep into summer, but those three general managers have plenty of unfinished business as we head into the latter third of July.
If you want to take pity on one of the three, pick Olshey. His Portland Trail Blazers lost four-fifths of their starting lineup from a team that ran away with the Pacific Division, and his only center heading into next season is Chris Kaman (though not for a lack of trying, as Portland signed Enes Kanter to a max offer sheet that was matched by Oklahoma City.)
The Blazers are still $27 million below the $70 million salary cap, and there ain’t a whole lot out there to spend the money on. Kevin Seraphin and JaVale McGee remain the top unsigned centers, but it would take a huge leap of faith to commit a ton of long-term dollars to either of those guys. If the Blazers end up with one of them, my guess is that it will be Seraphin.
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Anoher option for Olshey is to hang onto his cap space into the start of the regular season and see if he can pick up a future draft pick or two by taking on someone else’s unwanted salary. This is a strategy that has been used for the past two seasons by the Sixers, and it already paid off for them once this summer as they acquired Jason Thompson, Carl Landry, Nik Stauskas and first-round draft pick and the right to swap two other first-round draft picks with Sacramento — a deal that allowed the Kings to open the space to sign Rajon Rondo, Marco Belinelli, Kosta Koufos and Caron Butler.
Philadelphia is still sitting on $20 million in unused cap space, and the move I’d like to see them make is bringing in Norris Cole on a front-loaded, short-term contract that the Pelicans would be deterred from matching. At some point, Hinkie needs to quit kicking the can down the road and find some backcourt and wing players who can stick around long-term.
And then we have the Cleveland Cavaliers, whose owner is looking at a luxury tax bill approaching $100 million if he chooses to re-sign all three of his remaining free agents — Tristan Thompson, Matthew Dellavedova and J.R. Smith. That is an awful lot of money to spend on a luxury tax bill, but Dan Gilbert certainly has the wallet to foot the bill if he wants to.
More on those three teams, along with a look at Houston’s acquisition of Ty Lawson, is this video with CineSport’s Brian Clark.
Chris Sheridan is publisher and editor-in-chief of SheridanHoops.com. Follow him on Twitter.
I don’t believe that Olshey acquired Mason Plumlee to play the 4 as he also has Ed Davis and Noah Vonleh at the 4. Kaman will be backing-up Plumlee. The unfinished business for Olshey is finding someone to replace Matthews shooting as Henderson has no where near the range of Matthews. We saw how weak Portland was when Matthews got injured as Afflalo is/was no where near the shot maker as Matthews. Trading a future #1 for renting Afflalo was a big mistake.
It wasn’t a “big mistake” to trade away a #1, because it will never convey. Portland will be in the lottery both of the next two seasons (intentionally), so that 1st round pick will instead convert to two lousy 2nd round picks. So who cares.
On another subject, Sheridan still refuses to respond to this bold pronouncement: “An NBA big shot who I know and trust just told me a coach is getting fired in next couple days, and nobody sees it coming.” Technically, Chris, nobody is going to see it coming because it’s almost two months later. It’s not coming. Your trustworthy source is not trustworthy. You’ve been taking the coward’s way out by refusing to respond to being called out on it.