Indians 10 Twins 4: That’s Five
July 20, 2010Diary of a First Pitch
July 20, 2010Matt Barnes, the 30-year-old forward is a coveted free agent. That first sentence in and of itself should say a lot about what kind of position the Cavaliers are in right now. Cavs fans were marginally excited to pursue Barnes because he is 6’7″ tall. Why else would you possibly want to land Barnes? Well, because the Cavaliers might need to acquire another player or two. At this point that is my answer. Barnes is known for his toughness and defense, but chasing Matt Barnes is still a tough pill to swallow. Still, the Cavs need people to play minutes this season now that they lost 39 minutes per game from the small forward position. Barnes isn’t a bad player, but you might consider Barnes a good option if you already have an alpha dog on your team. I digress. Running down the career of a guy who appears to be another poor man’s James Posey isn’t the point of this post.
Yesterday Matt tweeted the following:
Nxt season I will b playing for the Toronto Raptors. I wanted to thank the fans in orl you guys were amazing the way u guys excepted
My family & I and the tremendous support you showed the team. Wish things could have went down alil different but thx for everything. B EZ!!
One would have to think that Barnes was told by his agent that it was a done deal. It started leaking out that Barnes was getting a two-year deal from Toronto for somewhere in the neighborhood of $10 million. Many Cavs fans started justifying his departure by the fact that that was way too much money on Twitter. I certainly understand that sentiment, but it seems to me that in these financial times in the NBA you can’t get anyone on your team with any name and experience for much less than $5 million per season. I know that offends our sensibilities, but those are the realities of the situation. Then something strange happened.
NBA media members like John Hollinger and Adrian Wojnarowski started wondering how, exactly, a deal like that would work. First off, Toronto doesn’t have their mid-level exception anymore. If they signed Barnes outright, they wouldn’t be able to pay him more than $1.9 million per season. A sign-and-trade could work, except that those deals need to be a minimum of three years. Additionally, the Orlando Magic didn’t have the ability to sign Barnes for anywhere close to the reported $5 million per year amount, and even if they did, it would have to be for three years to execute a trade.
So what we are left with are stories this morning blaming the deal falling apart due to a “miscalculation” in the deal. So, what happened for sure, nobody knows. It is possible that the stupidity is 100% in the court of Barnes’ agent because you have to assume he said something to the player. Beyond that, assuming the front offices of Orlando and Toronto were involved, this whole incident screams of amateur hour. Who knows? Maybe they are allowing their summer interns to negotiate sign-and-trade deals and they learned a valuable lesson about the salary cap yesterday.
16 Comments
Does this mean he coudl still end up in Cleveland?
*could
fail
Jeremy – Toronto isn’t going to be able to come close to paying him that $5 mil per, and as Craig outlined, he can’t do a sign and trade with ORL, so I think the answer is yes. I assume the Cavs didn’t want to pay that much – probably wanted to give him something in the range of Jamario’s deal at around $3 mil/year. Looks like if he can do better than that he’ll go elsewhere, but if he can’t, I would assume the Cavs would still be on his radar.
Would not mind having Barnes on the team, especially if we get rid of Delonte; we need one person on the team with prison tats…
“Still, the Cavs need people to play minutes this season now that they lost 39 minutes per game from the small forward position.”
Nice! No need to name names, just the facts please.
A deal similar to Jamario’s would be great. Tough guy, awesome tats, and a good athlete who would fit well in Scott’s system.
I say “Welcome to Cleveland Barnes”
It’ll be tough that he ‘chose’ to sign elsewhere for more money, but couldn’t make it work. Hopefully he won’t be upset that he has to ‘settle’ for Cleveland. But he has the chance of starting on a Cavaliers team that will make the playoffs, playing against his former team the Magic should be a game Barnes marks on his calender.
With Barnes starting in the 3 our team takes on a new look, he’s a good defender and I think he’s a decent shooter (please, someone correct me if I’m wrong with that opinion) Plus, I love how he ball faked Kobe in that game last season. Kobe stood his ground, but I love how Barnes had the gall to try and get into Kobe’s head.
Brandon Bass is unhappy with his playing time in Orlando, I wonder what it would take to get him. He’s not stellar, but he’s another warm, big body, we so desperately need.
I think the Toronto tried to do the deal in metric units
/Canadians
Looking at Matt Barnes’ averages over the past several seasons, he’s not a great shooter. I think you would call him average for a small forward, at best. He’s never averaged more than 10 points per game. If he’s someone who can guard Kobe, LeBron, and guys like that, then I am changing my tune and saying bring him in. I didn’t know he was defensively stout. I think I’d still rather see Moon as the starting SF though.
Another Twitter failure!
So our big offseason acquisition which were *hoping* to acquire is… a guy the Cavs waived back in 2002?
Oy vey – this is sad.
I’ve liked Barnes for a few years now. He’s a decent compliment, like you said.
We need to tank this year and end up drafting the next Kevin Durant.
Look, we wanted Barnes last year, and settled on Jamario and AP. I like the guy. If we sign him, great. If we don’t, great. If Byron Scott is truly going to implement a running offense, I say poaching well-rounded ex-D’Antoni and ex-Nelson guys is a good move. If he plays on the Cavs next year, he will get PT, he’ll hit shots, and he’ll get in scraps with other players. If we keep Delonte (which I’m pretty sure we won’t), then we could have a pretty good “Mighty Ducks”-esque bash brothers thing going on with the two of them.
Basically, right now I’m in favor of any roster move that either uses part of our TPE to rebuild or DOESN’T get rid of our TPE by pushing us far under the cap.
Echoing Vengeful Pat’s point, Matt Barnes is not really a good shooter. The guy has several good facets to his game, but shooting the ball (especially from behind the arc) is not one of them. He’s a career 33 percent 3 pt shooter, 72 from the line, and 44 overall.
Those numbers are pretty similar to Jamario Moon. Plus, Moon’s rebound numbers are about the same despite less PT.
That’s my take on this whole free agency crap: Why should we overpay for a skill set we already have on the roster?
Well, we will need another SF somewhere along the line. As long as we don’t pay him $5 million per, I would be happy to have Barnes around for a year or two. Probably not 3 though.