Quote:
Originally Posted by dalger
I don't think that a two-year deal worth $10-14 million would be too significant for a player who could very well turn out to actually be worth it. Losing a well-liked, team-oriented guy like Butler, his potential productivity and his desirable effect on Dirk's and Marion's minutes because of unwillingness to offer him two years instead of one wouldn't exactly thrill me, to be honest.
I'd actually argue that he was a pretty good fit alongside Dirk and Marion. At the time he got hurt, he was arguably our best scorer behind Dirk and stepped up big time as soon as Dirk injured his knee (admittedly, only for a very short period of time). He's a two-way player who can easily be paired with an offensive or defensive minded shooting guard, thus providing us with a nice deal of flexibility at the wings. It's also worth noting that, while he might expect to play 25+ minutes, Caron was fine with being on the bench during crunch time and living up to Rick's "role acceptance" mantra.
Finally, it comes down to alternatives. Right now, our alternatives at the forward spots are Brewer and Cardinal. Not adding Butler to that list due to his effect on a payroll that'll be lower than last year's anyway doesn't make sense to me, assuming that we're talking about a two-year deal. Plus, we could re-sign Chandler, JJB, Butler and Cardinal and still have an open spot on our roster.
Again, I'm not preferring a two-year deal, yet it wouldn't bother me in the slightest to take that risk. The potential upside of having Caron play some decent basketball with a reasonable salary until 2013 is something I'd prefer over losing him for a mere and meaningless $6 million.
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Two things:
1. I don't understand how you can say that he's a good fit with Dirk and Marion when he can't be on the floor with both of them.
2. I'ts not 6 million, it's 12 million. And keep in mind that we're going to have to stay under the Luxury Tax twice in the next five years or face even more ridiculous penalties. You can no longer just say "I really don't want to lose him, eff it we'll give him an extra year even though we really don't want to".
The bottom line for me is that we acquired Butler to be our SG, only to discover that he couldn't play the position. They made it work last year and no one's saying that it's a bad thing to have two starting caliber SF's on the roster, but he's not a great fit, and we have Brewer who I think the Mavs expect to contribute this season.