Grading the deals: FA Day 1

[jwoo]

Good gentlemen of SLN, it is late and the eve of my busiest week of the year, but I can't sleep and as I was doing rough accounting for my reward camps got anxious about paying to develop all these youngsters and so I decided to cook up an article since I won't have time for a while and we are desperate to break even, more or less.

Here we go — fun first day of FA and great to get all the bids in on time, let's keep it up this weekend.

Lakers Sign PG Shaun Livingston for $131,250,000 over 6 years.

This is a whopper of a deal for one of SLN's most decorated players. The Rockets turned him down, he went into the market and said Eff You to Nolan and took basically the same deal to move across the apartment into GX's room. Thunder buddies for life. I think we have to work under the assumption that Livingston gets traded now — this jumbo max is not cheap, nor is he a player who neatly fits on to every team (we've never seen him really play anything but inside offense in his prime) but I figure GX will get some value for him, so probably worth it, at least to him. Grade: A-

Kings Sign SG Dwyane Wade for $142,829,742 over 6 years.

Kind of the same logic here. Jesse is ready to light the beam and beam Wade's ass somewhere else in North America (is that an easter egg about Canada???). He had to pay Wade the max to make sure he could trade him for value. Wade is one of the best players in the league and will be worth the money for at least the front half of this contract, one would think. He's still a top player and is movable, so nothing wrong with this for Jesse, other than blowing up his title team (lame!) Grade: A-

Bulls Sign PF Eddie Griffin for $17,700,000 over one year.

Matt couldn't really afford to lose Eddie Griffin, so he basically just spent all his room under the hard cap to get him back and is now trying to figure the rest out on the fly. That's solid logic in my book. Eddie is still a beast, he'll have trade value as well as on-court value as the Bulls try to make it back to the playoffs after this year's disappointing finish. Eddie is worth that number and it was a must-pay situation. Grade: A

SuperSonics Sign PG John Wall for $87,500,000 over 7 years.

I'm not sure if Nick knew something we didn't here about some other GM coming to snipe Wall, but John Wall has been pretty ass to this point in his career and the seven-year flat rookie max feels like...a large investment. I don't doubt that Wall has some TC juice left, but I do doubt that he'll end up being a top-flight starting point guard. If anyone can figure out what to do with him, it's Nick (maybe Wall gets flipped to Houston?), but I do not think he's worth the money at this stage and it's a very expectant contract. Not quite Sasha Paxlovid, but not good. Nick will probably figure this out, but I don't know how Wall fits into the tea. Grade: F

Trail Blazers Sign C Dwight Howard for $175,138,602 over 7 years.

I texted Quady to get his bids in and I know he was afraid to lose Dwight, but having to pay him quite this much (particularly after he offered to re-sign for just a normal max) is definitely an L for Portland from an optics perspective. If this were real life, the beat writers would be all over Quady, and Dwight would have seven mansions in Lake Oswego for his various baby mamas. It's not real life, but this is a lot of money for Dwight, who is elite at certain things but also a guy who shoots a lot and is nearing the back part of his prime. Good that Portland kept him, but sheesh! Grade: C-

SuperSonics Sign SF Jamario Moon for $15,400,000 over one year.

I think we all agree by now that Jamario is worth this for what he does defensively, so not much to see here. His stip won't go into effect on an expiring and he's reformed his behavior as a 14-year vet or whatever. Sheesh we've been at this for a long time as a league, huh. The 2000 draft feels like yesterday. Anyway, good deal for Moon. Grade: A

Hawks Sign SF Andre Iguodala for $18,655,547 over one year.

This expiring deal isn't prohibitive or anything, but I also don't think Heimer had to give Iggy that big a base salary to get him back. He still has like $9-10m to fill out his roster, but I would have angled to keep Iggy for less money on Day 1. He does play an important role and was a must-keep in my opinion though, so I don't think this is bad. Grade: B

Knicks Sign SG Paul George for $93,750,000 over 6 years.

Standard RFA max offer, Nav made some RP off it, PG is going back to Boston, not much to see here. He's probably worth it anyway. Grade: A

Clippers Sign C DeMarcus Cousins for $120,312,500 over 7 years.

Bobby is now in quite the cap pickle, but he couldn't afford to lose Cousins, so DeMarcus is back and much richer now. This deal itself is probably good, I'm a believer in Boogie, the seventh year makes it pricier and the optics of the cap sitch suck, but this still had to happen and get done. It was a must. Grade: A-

Pacers Sign PG Jason Hart for $5,500,000 over one year.

Hart is still a perfectly useful player who can start or back up reliably and do what you need him to do. Good number for him on an expiring and the Pacers needed a PG in the fold. Grade: A

76ers Sign SF Kris Clack for $4,500,000 over one year.

The 76ers are looking mighty geriatric over there, but Clack has been good pretty much every season of his career, so I don't expect him to bust on a midlevel exception. Probably a good pickup for Philly in a vacuum, but he also has a lot of tweener forward types on the roster now, so I don't know what the plan is Grade: B+

Cavaliers Sign PG Jeremy Lin for $30,000,000 over 3 years.

I thought this was one of the most interesting contracts of the FA period — Lin was a really tricky guy to value, but when you bake in the locked-in month of insane production and possible playoff gains, this could be a really nice number for him. It could also be way too much if he sucks during the regular season, but the Cavs are a great landing spot for him, with minutes to burn at PG and no pressure to make the playoffs anytime soon. I think this is a good gamble, if maybe a tad pricy. Grade: B

Raptors Sign SG Gordon Hayward for $12,500,000 over one year.

Really wanted to make sure I got Hayward back, but really didn't want to give him a six-year max, so I'm personally satisfied with this one-year deal. We'll see if he makes me eat shit and has another good season, making me rue not giving him more years, but yeah, this is a fine contract. Maybe a little expensive for what he did last season but hopefully there's good growth left for Gordon after his rookie deal. Grade: B

Heat Sign C Hassan Whiteside for $92,216,514 over 6 years.

Scoops really needs RP, so this worked out well for him, even if it baked in a slight discount for Hoff to keep Hassan. Hoff is also about to go into the hard cap, so that's another issue, but this deal did exactly what it was supposed to for Miami. I think he might be worth it if he can stay efficient, but Hoff has some roster stuff to navigate. He had to match regardless. Grade: A

Editor's note: I am really fucking tired so I'm gonna speed-run the rest of these.

Warriors Sign SF Wilson Chandler for $5,000,000 over one year.

Have to admit I am still not sure if Wilson Chandler is any good. But a cheap number for a role player, so no worries. Grade: B+

76ers Sign SF Lamar Odom for $5,400,000 over one year. Grade: D
76ers Sign C Spencer Hawes for $25,429,688 over 3 years. Grade: A
76ers Sign SF Josh Childress for $7,000,000 over one year. Grade: A

Doing these all at once: I still do not understand why DMo decided Lamar was good last season — I've thought he was completely washed for a bit. Not a bad deal or anything, just a player I'd be looking to trade, so maybe it's just salary fodder, but I also would have just offered more money to Millsap or something who is actually good. Lucky for DMo, he got Hawes back on a nice cost controlled deal (his shooting was close to A- in the FA file which is cool). He also re-signed Childress, who he for some reason decided to bench down the stretch despite the fact he is good.

Rockets Sign SF Julian Wright for $20,918,135 over 4 years.

Love this contract for Wright, one of the coolest glue guys in the league and a great development story in Houston. He gets stocks and stays out of the way, and fits great in an inside offense. No notes here. Grade: A

Nuggets Sign C Fabricio Oberto for $4,500,000 over one year.

Oberto has to die in TC sometime soon right? If he doesn't, he will continue being great value on an MLE. Hard to know, and Denver has butts already, but a good pickup nonetheless even if we can expect decline. Grade: A

Pacers Sign SG Danny Green for $2,890,000 over one year.

This contract was just to get Jonas Jerebko back to Indy, so no grade here.

Nuggets Sign C Ian Mahinmi for $30,630,600 over 4 years.

We all love Mahinmi, he's super reliable, I don't think Kipke will regret having him under contract for the rest of Melo's prime. Considering his history of re-signing for cheap, maybe there was a case to just offer him an expiring and hope for a cheap re-sign, but not something to nitpick. Grade: B+

Magic Sign SF Damion James for $2,140,611 over 3 years.

Merv went from desperately trying to trade you this man to aggressively hiding him as much as possible after figuring out he was actually kinda good. Great number for a good role player! I think he's kinda like Millsap in terms of how his offense must be built, so having that on basically a minimum level contract is sweet. Get ready, Merv is going to go back to marketing him againGrade: A

Spurs Sign C Hasheem Thabeet for $4,500,000 over one year.

The Spurs need to fill out a bench, and Thabeet was a great snag, having turned into a nice rim protector and useful backup. Maybe someone worth extending on the MLE too, which is a nice bonus. Great fit here. Grade:A

76ers Sign PG Norris Cole for $1,000,000 over one year.

Yeah, no comment or grade for Norris Cole.

Nets Sign PF Pops Mensah-Bonsu for $6,000,000 over one year.

Good price for Pops - Steven needed to get him back and he did. That was his only real task in free agency, so good job Steven. Grade: A

Hornets Sign SG Evan Turner for $8,000,000 over one year.
Assume this is trade fodder, because ET is almost incredibly bad for a former lottery pick. No grade.

[SoNicks]

Clearly you don’t know shit about the sunken cost fallacy. Mr wall is going no where. He gonna be the first SLN player to get entirely benched through a max

[quady]

Dwight was selling himself short, what can I say

[Merv]

Damion James is hella good, cost controlled and has birds now. Maybe he just rides out the tank in Orlando since no one else wants to appreciate his greatness

[Kipke]

300 RP