Saturday, February 26, 2011

ShamSports: Tax Payers, Trade Kickers, and Other Deadline Day Bookkeeping

From ShamSports, some details for anyone wondering if/when the Atlanta Hawks could add a 15th player to balance out the roster without paying the luxury tax:
Atlanta's trade for Kirk Hinrich did not push them into luxury tax territory, but it did push them really, really close to it. Specifically, their tax number now stands at $70,140,069, a mere $166,932 below the luxury tax. They also have little depth on the wings now, and they have only a 14 man roster, one of whom is the unsuitable Pape Sy. So if one or two players get injured, and they need to bring in some reinforcements, they will now struggle to do so. Indeed, if they want to sign someone to a minimum salary contract for the remainder of the season, they must wait until March 12th until they can do so without becoming luxury tax payers. But then, this is the team with the third highest committed salary in the whole league. They are not fiscally responsible. Oh and additionally, how do they justify giving up both Crawford AND a pick?
I suspect the Hawks gave up both Jordan Crawford and a pick because 1) the Hawks really wanted to get rid of Mike Bibby and 2) the Hawks will be interested in any deal that removes a couple million in future guaranteed salaries off the books.

5 comments:

Bronnt said...

I think this franchise is attempting fiscal responsibility, they're just neither clever nor practiced in it. I'm sure it seems wise to get rid of lower draft picks (whose rate of success in the league is admittedly not that high) and to sell draft picks to add another couple million dollars, and to sign veteran bigs to fill out the bench for the league minimum. Unfortunately, it demonstrates a lack of ability to think beyond the next season or two, and a failure to properly evaluated risk/reward and opportunity cost.

Jason Walker said...

You're right, Bronn. Bret has convinced me that the Hawks aren't cheap, just not smart.

The whole offseason, ending with the ridiculous sale of the 31st pick, which is exactly the type of young, cheap, potentially productive labor the Hawks need, and the subsequent draft/follow/buy-out of the odd Pape Sy, proved that point to me.

It would be easier to hope the Hawks were cheap, rather than fundamentally incapable of being a savvy franchise.

Unknown said...

I'm looking forward to Brett's analysis of the new Cunningham article on Drew benching Zaza in favor of Josh Powell.

http://blogs.ajc.com/hawks/2011/02/26/atlanta-hawks-no-zest-for-zaza/?cxntfid=blogs_hawks

thirdfalcon said...

what I'm not hearing from people is that this trade made a lot of sense from a basketball standpoint. It doesn't look like it's going to hurt us offensively at all, and it looks like it's going to go miles towards shoring up what has been by far the teams greatest weakness for years.

We gave up Mike Bibby- a guy who's time as a hawk needed to end

Jordan Crawford- A guy that looks like a nice talent, but will probably never even be good enough to think about an all star game, will probably never be good enough to start for a playoff team, and if he ever does it will be several years from now.

And the 20th to 25th pick in the draft.

Say what you want about how the Hawks draft, but not many people that draft in that range have much success. You can't even be sure that there will be one single player past #20 that will even be good at all in a given draft.

We basically gave up 3 nickels for 50 cents. Most of it going right to a skill that we desperately needed to improve upon.

You have to admit this was a great great trade looking at it from anything other than a big-picture perspective, don't you?

Adam Malka said...

Ronald - I actually came by the site to see if there was a new post about Larry Drew's benching of Pachulia for Josh Powell. Every time the coach opens his mouth, I feel a little less good about the Hawks.