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May 13, 2011Back in May, 2008, we featured a little series called “Re-Sign or Release” where we went through every player on the Cavaliers roster and turned to the readers to see what they would do if they were the general manager of the Wine and Gold and – hypothetically, of course – all of the players were up to have their respective contracts renewed.
Same hypothetical this time around: We’re looking to build for the future; all players are restricted free agents, likely requiring a bit of a pay raise from last season. Do you re-sign them? Andrew has already laid out the roadblocks currently facing the Cavaliers in 2011; now it’s your turn. Vote below and leave your support in the comments.
After overwhelming support for Christian Eyenga, the next guy up has his work cut out for him in terms of earning an equally positive response. Enter point guard Baron Davis.
*****
2010-11 Salary: $13,050,000
2010-11 Statistics (as a Cavalier):
| PTS | REB | AST | STL | TO | eFG% | TS% | PER | USG | WS |
| 13.9 | 2.4 | 6.1 | 1.1 | 2.6 | 52.2 | 54.8 | 19.3 | 27.3 | 0.7 |
2010-11 Recap: The trade which brought Baron Davis to Cleveland was rife with discussion as no one quite knew what to expect. National pundits opted to cite the veteran guard’s lack of work ethic, volatile behavior – especially with regard to Byron Scott – and exorbitant contract. Local guys, especially those those with a glimmer of hope, not only focused on the lottery selection which came along, but the fact that Davis was going to come to Cleveland with the goal of revitalizing his career while teaching those younger than him how to play the game.
Dubbed a locker room malcontent, Davis brought nothing but positives when he was able to be on the floor. Sure, back issues and the death of his grandmother limited B-Diddy’s floor time to just 15 games, but the production provided was enough to make Davis the second-best performer on a PER basis (Ramon Sessions) if his Cleveland-based work was extrapolated over a full season.
Davis not only took younger players under his wing, but helped coach when he couldn’t play. Lob City was alive and well, and he even made Ryan Hollins look like a professional basketball player (potentially worth the $13 million right there) and brought back a sense of swagger that had been missing over the course of the 2010-11 season.
Fans loved everything the bearded one did for the Wine and Gold during his short stint in 2011. The questions is, how much longer should the team keep him around?
Re-Sign or Release: Christian Eyenga (95 percent say re-sign)
Re-Sign or Release: Anthony Parker (76 percent say release)
Re-Sign and Release: Ramon Sessions (87 percent say re-sign)
Re-Sign or Release: Manny Harris (68 percent say re-sign)
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(AP Photo/Mark Duncan)
11 Comments
well, if it’s between signing him to a multi-year contract at a pay raise from $13mil or just drafting Irving and paying him 1/3 of that for a better longterm future. Bye, bye Baron.
that said, I, like everyone else, am very pleasently surprised by what we got from Baron last season and hope it continues. Having ‘good’ Baron Davis is a nice weapon to have on the court and in the trade market.
so well over two-thirds of WFNY voters want the exact same backcourt + guards on the bench (from a team that couldn’t win 20 games) in order to compete next year?? and a whopping 95% approve of throwing Eyenga on the wing to go up against the rest of the league’s 2 guards??
i’m a homer myself but we have to forgo loyalty and cut ties with some of these scrubs if we want a backcourt than can match the rest of the talent in this league..
(ok /rant, for full disclosure: i also voted to re-sign all these guys except parker..)
I don’t think people understand the hypothetical. Would I actually release Baron today and pay him the $13MM he’d be owed? No, I think he brings more value to the team than that, but if there’s another team out there willing to take him off of our hands for free, I’d love the $13MM in cap space.
@#2… if it said cut these guys & sign someone better, then there might be more saying cut.
However, the purpose is just to see if they sthould be on the team. Nothing wrong with our backcourt from last year if we have no one to replace them. Realistically we’d probably just sign more undrafted free agents, so we’re better off keeping these guys.
@dwhit – I think you misread the hypothetical. The scenario as stated in the post is that the player magically becomes a restricted free agent and to resign them you will need to give them a slight pay raise (and multi-years).
So, Baron would have no current contract and we could let him leave for nothing. Or, we could sign him to a multi-year contract at higher than $13mil/year.
Here’s the relevant part of the above post:
“all players are restricted free agents, likely requiring a bit of a pay raise from last season”
or I misread your post. not sure.
I read “likely requiring a bit of a pay raise” to only be pointing out the fact that most players would be worth more on the free agent market than they are currently paid. Obviously that’s not true of Baron. Mostly, I just decided to determine the ambiguity in favor of keeping him because I like what he did last season.
He was a pleasant surprise last season, but he has a hard time staying healthy and makes a ton of money. In this hypothetical situation, I wouldn’t resign him.
@mgbode,
Yeah that’s what I’m saying. It seems to me that the people who are voting are missing that hypothetical. Why give Baron Davis upwards of $13MM on the open market? It makes no sense. At least not at an 80/20 response rate.
I say resign, if you can get him for $8M or less, otehrwise he has to go (btw, I’m in the camp of releasing Jamison and Sessions).
Re-sign.. if only to trade him at the deadline for something.