Many people are continually amazed by the quality of NBA veterans that can be assembled on minimum and similar contracts. When Phoenix made the Beal trade and you looked at their cap sheet after that…but they made some moves.
They will be near the top of the conference but they still have holes and a significant talent cap after their top shelf stars. In recent years, teams that go super top heavy and fill out with minimums have a mixed return, time will tell (more like player health will tell) how this works out.
It tends to be the exact opposite in nearly every case. The big-3 style teams have tended to fail when they have a bunch of vet mins around top end stars. People actually get really hyped by the vet min additions and then are surprised when the team is struggling with practical depth 20 games into the season.
The issue is that a lot of the vet min deals tend to be either old guys who get hurt or Christian Wood-type cast offs. Occasionally a team finds a diamond in the rough, but for the most part things tend not to work out with the vet mins anymore. It’s been over 10 years since the Heatles.
Yeah, a “mixed return” is a bit generous. The KD/Kyrie/Harden trio got to the ECF and close, then imploded. Lakers won one and were back in the WCF last season, but Ainge let them our of jail by taking Russ and helping facilitate them collecting some help.
And I think alot more care went into crafting the Heatles - they had Ray Allen, and solid vets like Battier, Mike Miller, Rashard Lewis, etc. GSW was already a great team on home grown talent before adding KD.
I think these older stars no longer see it as punching a ticket to a ring and are less inclined to do the whole “I made my money, time to sign on for a minimum deal to get my ring”
I’m not sold on the Suns. They will be in the mix and win alot of games but there is alot of risk involved and if 35yo KD goes down or Book gets hurt (highly plausible occurances given history and/or age) they are fucked.
Still, they have acquired more decent players that it looked like they would be able to back when Beal was first brought on. They won’t be the Lakers catastrophe from 21-22, I don’t think, but will it be enough to win it all? I don’t think so.
Many people are continually amazed by the quality of NBA veterans that can be assembled on minimum and similar contracts. When Phoenix made the Beal trade and you looked at their cap sheet after that…but they made some moves.
They will be near the top of the conference but they still have holes and a significant talent cap after their top shelf stars. In recent years, teams that go super top heavy and fill out with minimums have a mixed return, time will tell (more like player health will tell) how this works out.
It tends to be the exact opposite in nearly every case. The big-3 style teams have tended to fail when they have a bunch of vet mins around top end stars. People actually get really hyped by the vet min additions and then are surprised when the team is struggling with practical depth 20 games into the season.
The issue is that a lot of the vet min deals tend to be either old guys who get hurt or Christian Wood-type cast offs. Occasionally a team finds a diamond in the rough, but for the most part things tend not to work out with the vet mins anymore. It’s been over 10 years since the Heatles.
Yeah, a “mixed return” is a bit generous. The KD/Kyrie/Harden trio got to the ECF and close, then imploded. Lakers won one and were back in the WCF last season, but Ainge let them our of jail by taking Russ and helping facilitate them collecting some help.
And I think alot more care went into crafting the Heatles - they had Ray Allen, and solid vets like Battier, Mike Miller, Rashard Lewis, etc. GSW was already a great team on home grown talent before adding KD.
I think these older stars no longer see it as punching a ticket to a ring and are less inclined to do the whole “I made my money, time to sign on for a minimum deal to get my ring”
I’m not sold on the Suns. They will be in the mix and win alot of games but there is alot of risk involved and if 35yo KD goes down or Book gets hurt (highly plausible occurances given history and/or age) they are fucked.
Still, they have acquired more decent players that it looked like they would be able to back when Beal was first brought on. They won’t be the Lakers catastrophe from 21-22, I don’t think, but will it be enough to win it all? I don’t think so.
The Nets did not go to the ECF. The Lakers had zero success with their big 3, all their success came when they were built around 2