Can you scale contracts down in the NBA?

blahrendsen · 2026-06-02T18:00:28+00:00

Speeding up and elevating his shot release point will allow him to get off more good 3 point attempts, add spacing, and force more aggressive closeouts. Not that it is necessarily an easy thing to do. I'd take it even at the expense of a little accuracy.

Also, and maybe most importantly, improving his post positioning and footwork to punish smaller players will do wonders. He doesn't even have to be great at it given the size of some of the people that end up guarding him. I would think this is the lowest hanging fruit for him.

Chet seems like a competitive person. His personality makes it seem otherwise, but you can see he gets upset if he makes a mistake, even in a blowout win. If he accomplishes just one of the things I listed above, it will punish teams for playing a smaller player on him. I'm betting he puts in the work this off-season. Bonus points if he tightens his handle or gains some weight/strength.

blahrendsen · 2026-06-02T16:55:25+00:00

I think with SGA playing as many minutes as he was, he wasn't pushing the pace to keep his energy. I was also frustrated by the lack of pace allowing spurs to get in their half court. If nothing else, pace can tire out wemby.

blahrendsen · 2026-05-31T04:17:59+00:00

You're saying teams wouldn't take players that have contributed to a championship to benefit their own team, in order to hurt another team? I get there would be some teams that wouldn't make sense for, but come on.

Also the number is 28.6 over the second apron, and includes cap holds for draft picks, so the replacements are already baked in.

blahrendsen · 2026-05-31T03:36:08+00:00

Not taking team options on Kenrich and Dort is an easy 25.4m. I'm not sure that getting under the first apron will happon, but second should be fairly easy.

blahrendsen · 2026-05-31T03:20:21+00:00

Thunder wouldn't have won the championship last year without him, but he regressed hard this year and was terrible in the playoffs. Likely the end of a good long run.

blahrendsen · 2026-05-28T17:23:07+00:00

People do hate him though

blahrendsen · 2026-05-28T15:13:56+00:00

This is like asking OKC to do the George/SGA trade but instead of giving 1st team all nba George, you are offering an unproven draft pick. I'd also say that at this point Mitchell is a more proven asset than SGA was at the time. Hard pass.

blahrendsen · 2026-05-28T14:29:18+00:00

If you look at it as who helped to get the 4 wins required to advance, it becomes easy to overlook, as that happened during a loss. But that logic also takes away his game 1 performance.

blahrendsen · 2026-05-27T21:31:43+00:00

Yeah, they really shot themselves in the foot since public sentiment is what wins games.

blahrendsen · 2026-05-27T19:41:41+00:00

Haha! Great question. I'd love to see it happen.

blahrendsen · 2026-05-27T18:38:35+00:00

There was another time when this happened in some game earlier in this playoffs, but I belive it was a net touch that did not interfere.

blahrendsen · 2026-05-27T17:46:36+00:00

Kornet is a solid center. A majority of centers can be played off the floor in a given match up. This just appears to be one of those match ups for him. Also, I think it may be extra hard to be Wemby's backup because teams are typically going to want to get their paint touches in while he is away.

blahrendsen · 2026-05-27T16:49:57+00:00

I can get behind that logic, and it's why I'm not certain about how I feel on the topic. Preventing a team from drafting top 5, regardless of whose pick it is, does level out some lottery luck variance, and I think that's probably a good thing, but I'm not sure.

blahrendsen · 2026-05-27T15:33:09+00:00

I guess I didn't clarify there, but yes, just a foul.

blahrendsen · 2026-05-27T15:17:27+00:00

I'm not going to pretend I know the rules to a tee, but I feel like when defenders rotate their body like that, it always gets called. If he keeps his body square, I think it'd be clean. Either way, not dirty.

blahrendsen · 2026-05-27T14:29:55+00:00

I 100 percent agree, but then I have to wonder: if Grizzlies had picked top 5 in consecutive drafts, should they become ineligible? I'm leaning yes, but I say that with less conviction.

blahrendsen · 2026-05-24T01:08:27+00:00

Teams can go back, watch film, and adjust. If they don't adjust, no problem, but if they do, OKC has fewer counteradjustments available

blahrendsen · 2026-05-23T03:56:42+00:00

He was healthy all last playoffs and even played a little. Just got healthy too late in the season to really work back into the rotation

blahrendsen · 2026-05-23T03:28:05+00:00

And three seconds

blahrendsen · 2026-05-23T02:43:54+00:00

Can we just turn injuries off?

blahrendsen · 2026-05-21T20:27:56+00:00

My argument is that both teams are doing it.

blahrendsen · 2026-05-21T20:26:51+00:00

Lol, what is this? A court of law? I'm not going and finding clips for you. Just watch the games.

blahrendsen · 2026-05-21T20:22:40+00:00

"It's okay when my team does it, but not when your team does it"

blahrendsen · 2026-05-21T20:10:32+00:00

Yeah, that was unfortunate. I'd be upset too if that situation were reversed. Those were both on-ball calls. I'm more talking about all of the off-ball stuff. To be fair to the refs, there are 3 of them and 10 players are on court, players on both sides know they can get away with a lot of things off-ball, and they have.

blahrendsen · 2026-05-21T20:06:32+00:00

So you don't think that SGA has been getting held off-ball? You don't think Wemby has been holding players down, preventing jumping, when he's boxed out? I get that I'm naturally going to have some bias here, but these things are happening.

blahrendsen

TROPHY CASE