Yet another article making the 50 million dollar player the victim.
carguy121
Steph is right on the money as usual. Zach got hurt at maybe the worst possible time for his trade value: immediately after signing a massive deal that was already slightly debatable at the time of signing. But we know he’s a talented offensive player with the kind of varied shotmaking that can fit with a variety of rosters. Giving up picks to move off of his salary would be a massive mistake and a clear panic move by AK. Just wait. His value literally cannot get worse than it allegedly is now.
Dunlocke
How will the haters spin Steph fucking Noh?
Parking-Tree9012
To be fair this is the same argument that’s been said all summer so nothing new. I guess I agree with most of it but it just felt like summarizing his situation for like the 100th time.
Basically lavine is a good guy who plays good, unfortunate to never have a consistently good team to be on, and his contract holds him back more than anything. Not much to disagree with but I think at this point every team knows all of that and yet they still not knocking down the door to come get him so as much as we try to be positive about him there’s obviously something teams ain’t liking that isn’t overlooked by his production so until some team willing to just take a chance we can talk all day about the narrative around him but it don’t matter at this point since it’s just regurgitating the same talking points from the last 6 months
Geo-92
Finally someone is saying this. People have been acting like Zach is Ben Simmons. Hold onto him if teams don’t want to trade for him now. There will certainly be a desperate team that thinks they can contend in the next year. Especially when the contracts being signed these days (Quickley making almost 40, Wagner making over 50!) put Zach’s deal in a better context.
poopy_mc_pantsy
This is a good response to Zach’s character and effort concerns which I don’t think are really founded.
To me though there are still major issues:
1. There really aren’t a lot of bad contracts right now. It’s hard for a lot of teams to give up ~$40m in contracts for Lavine and improve significantly. And they would have to improve significantly in order to give us any kind of future assets to make the deal work. Sure you’ve got like Jordan Poole or whatever but it’s not like the Wizards are really trying to improve…so why would they move him
2. Not clear that Lavine is a 25/5/5 guy still, he pretty clearly dropped off last year and at 29 years old teams have to consider that he could continue getting worse rather than better
3. The new CBA really disincentivizes gratuitous spending; teams trying to be prudent with their capital are going to be increasingly wary of any top paid players outside of clear superstars. We use Bradley Beal as a comp to say “well Zach should at least get more than that” but it’s a different climate now. And also the Beal trade went horribly so possible teams aren’t trying to do that again lol
AdventurousTear260
Cause ain’t nobody else left.
DrStevenBrule69
I sorta agree and I’ll be surprised if a team doesn’t bite by the end of the off-season.
Gyshall669
A ~40-55% overpay is kind of glossed over here as essentially being “not that bad.” Not really sure how true that is, especially because most teams will hit the second apron for this.
Still, it’s true his value is at an all time low. The only reason to attach a pick is if it’s the Portland pick and if the FO wants to be sure we have a bottom 10 record. I think we are bottom 10 with him anyway, but we’ll certainly be worse without him.
hankbaumbach
It feels pretty right to me as his contract makes his fit awkward for the teams where his playing ability make his fit ideal.
Zach makes the same salary next season as Luka Doncic, Trae Young, Rudy Gobert, and Anthony Davis. He makes $1M more than VanVleet, ANT, Siakam, Haliburton, $2M more than Kyrie, $3M more than Sabonis.
The people who make more than Zach are all better than him and aside from Beal it’s not even close:
If it was easy (or even medium difficulty) to trade him he would have been gone already. There’s going to be lots of hysteria that comes of it but the truth is he isn’t an appetizing trade asset for teams.
Danny_K_Yo
Trade Zach to a team with a similar overpriced contract but lower value player. Something like Bradley Beale (SUNS), Jordan Poole (WIZ), Khris Middleton (BUCKS), or Andrew Wiggins (WARRIORS) could make sense if they’re including draft assets as well. The biggest problem with Zach is he isn’t worth the money, but he’s not washed up and will continue to produce better than these 4 guys. We can take them on, get some picks, certainly lose out on cap relief from the trade, but at least get some picks out of it.
sparknado
Giving Zach the player option was unbelievably stupid
chazz8917
Nobody has $40 million to spend on LaVine that is competitive.
15 Comments
I’d rather keep him honestly
Yet another article making the 50 million dollar player the victim.
Steph is right on the money as usual. Zach got hurt at maybe the worst possible time for his trade value: immediately after signing a massive deal that was already slightly debatable at the time of signing. But we know he’s a talented offensive player with the kind of varied shotmaking that can fit with a variety of rosters. Giving up picks to move off of his salary would be a massive mistake and a clear panic move by AK. Just wait. His value literally cannot get worse than it allegedly is now.
How will the haters spin Steph fucking Noh?
To be fair this is the same argument that’s been said all summer so nothing new. I guess I agree with most of it but it just felt like summarizing his situation for like the 100th time.
Basically lavine is a good guy who plays good, unfortunate to never have a consistently good team to be on, and his contract holds him back more than anything. Not much to disagree with but I think at this point every team knows all of that and yet they still not knocking down the door to come get him so as much as we try to be positive about him there’s obviously something teams ain’t liking that isn’t overlooked by his production so until some team willing to just take a chance we can talk all day about the narrative around him but it don’t matter at this point since it’s just regurgitating the same talking points from the last 6 months
Finally someone is saying this. People have been acting like Zach is Ben Simmons. Hold onto him if teams don’t want to trade for him now. There will certainly be a desperate team that thinks they can contend in the next year. Especially when the contracts being signed these days (Quickley making almost 40, Wagner making over 50!) put Zach’s deal in a better context.
This is a good response to Zach’s character and effort concerns which I don’t think are really founded.
To me though there are still major issues:
1. There really aren’t a lot of bad contracts right now. It’s hard for a lot of teams to give up ~$40m in contracts for Lavine and improve significantly. And they would have to improve significantly in order to give us any kind of future assets to make the deal work. Sure you’ve got like Jordan Poole or whatever but it’s not like the Wizards are really trying to improve…so why would they move him
2. Not clear that Lavine is a 25/5/5 guy still, he pretty clearly dropped off last year and at 29 years old teams have to consider that he could continue getting worse rather than better
3. The new CBA really disincentivizes gratuitous spending; teams trying to be prudent with their capital are going to be increasingly wary of any top paid players outside of clear superstars. We use Bradley Beal as a comp to say “well Zach should at least get more than that” but it’s a different climate now. And also the Beal trade went horribly so possible teams aren’t trying to do that again lol
Cause ain’t nobody else left.
I sorta agree and I’ll be surprised if a team doesn’t bite by the end of the off-season.
A ~40-55% overpay is kind of glossed over here as essentially being “not that bad.” Not really sure how true that is, especially because most teams will hit the second apron for this.
Still, it’s true his value is at an all time low. The only reason to attach a pick is if it’s the Portland pick and if the FO wants to be sure we have a bottom 10 record. I think we are bottom 10 with him anyway, but we’ll certainly be worse without him.
It feels pretty right to me as his contract makes his fit awkward for the teams where his playing ability make his fit ideal.
Zach makes the same salary next season as Luka Doncic, Trae Young, Rudy Gobert, and Anthony Davis. He makes $1M more than VanVleet, ANT, Siakam, Haliburton, $2M more than Kyrie, $3M more than Sabonis.
The people who make more than Zach are all better than him and aside from Beal it’s not even close:
[Lebron, Giannis, Dame, Jimmy, PG, Kawhi, KAT, Booker, Beal, KD, Jokic, Embiid, Curry.](https://www.spotrac.com/nba/rankings/player/_/year/2024/sort/cap_total)
If it was easy (or even medium difficulty) to trade him he would have been gone already. There’s going to be lots of hysteria that comes of it but the truth is he isn’t an appetizing trade asset for teams.
Trade Zach to a team with a similar overpriced contract but lower value player. Something like Bradley Beale (SUNS), Jordan Poole (WIZ), Khris Middleton (BUCKS), or Andrew Wiggins (WARRIORS) could make sense if they’re including draft assets as well. The biggest problem with Zach is he isn’t worth the money, but he’s not washed up and will continue to produce better than these 4 guys. We can take them on, get some picks, certainly lose out on cap relief from the trade, but at least get some picks out of it.
Giving Zach the player option was unbelievably stupid
Nobody has $40 million to spend on LaVine that is competitive.