On the misinformation, groupthink bashing the Asik deal

By Richard Fischer
G-4-2 Sports Exclusive

Surely you’ve heard the phrase many times, “Don’t judge a book by its cover.”

Well, unfortunately, many fans and members of the local media judged the Omer Asik re-signing by its cover last night.

They trashed the signing and trashed the player without taking the time to look into the complexities and contingencies of going in a different direction.

Because, after all, that’s easy, right? It’s much easier to judge an issue from the surface than take the time to delve deeper. It’s also much easier to join the social media groupthink movement – regardless of the topic – in 2015.

Well as you read and watch plenty of columns and commentaries today, I’m here to dispel much of the misinformation regarding the signing and quite frankly much of the fear mongering stirred up by the fans – and the lazy local media following the lead of the fans.

1. “They gave him five years. Oh My God.”

Use your Joey Styles voice for “Oh My God” if you want. It actually fits perfectly.

Jumping to conclusions before all the facts are in is something the fans and media members are great at.

Before even hearing the dollar figure, Twitter would have you believe the Pelicans attached themselves to Charles Manson – not a player who can help them win games next year.

Then the facts come out.

Oh by the way, it’s really a four-year deal because the last year isn’t guaranteed.

Boy, that was a worthless exercise.

Now, is four years to many?

Yeah, probably, but I don’t blame Asik, at 30 years old, for demanding as long of a contract as he could get his hands on.

2. “60 million dollars!!! OHHHH MYYYY GAAAWWWWDDDDD”

There’s Joey Styles again.

And once again, instant reaction didn’t reflect the facts. Taking the non-guaranteed year into account, the deal is really a far more manageable 4-year, $45 million contract. Plus in its entirety it’s $58 million. Not $60 million. Small potatoes, but facts are facts and they were few and far between last night.

Eight-figures per season isn’t what it used to be with the cap set to skyrocket to $89 million for the 2016-17 season and $108 million for the 2017-18 season. It currently sits at $67 or $69 million (we’ll know for sure by this time next week).

Assuming Asik gets the standard rate of 7.5 percent raises per year, his contract will take up 15, 12.1, 10.6 and 12.25 percent of the Pelicans’ cap in the next four years, respectively.*

Those percentages shouldn’t result in the panic, groupthink movement we saw on social media last night.

And although I wish Asik would have settled for one fewer year on the deal or a little less money, come on, it’s just over 12 percent* of the cap in four years. That’s not a killer, nor should be it a deal breaker. The Cavs just beat the champs twice in a row in the NBA Finals without 40 percent of their salary healthy. You can still do great things with a great player.

 3. “The Pelicans were bidding against themselves and could have had him for less had they waited the process out.”

There’s some truth to this one.

Honestly, you can never predict what the market is going to do, and always remember that it just takes one asshole to overpay someone and ruin another team’s plans.

Getting the deal out of the way early removed this possibility.

By my calculations and from what I’ve gathered, Milwaukee, the Lakers, the Knicks, Dallas (assuming DeAndre Jordan remains with the Clippers), Boston and Portland had eight-figure cap space and were in the market for a center.

At the time of Asik’s announcement, the remaining bigs on the market worth more than chump change were Asik, Jordan, Robin Lopez, Greg Monroe, Enes Kanter (likely going back to Thunder, anyway) and Kosta Koufos – Koufos being a notch below the other five.

So by applying the simple rules of supply and demand, there would have been a very real possibility that after Jordan, Lopez and Monroe signed, a bidding war between two or more teams would have ensued for Asik’s services.

I, or anyone else, honestly couldn’t tell you what would have happened had Asik stayed on the market for a few more days, but just think about the supply and demand factor before throwing around words like “he’s overpaid” and “he isn’t worth it.”

So were the Pelicans bidding against themselves? Yes and no. Yes, but by doing so, they removed the strong, in my opinion, possibility that someone would have bid against them after the big boys signed.

It’s tough for me to knock the Pels for being proactive here, because it just takes one asshole to get desperate and throw an absurd contract Asik’s way – leaving the Pels with very little money and very little time to find a replacement. We’ll never know if that would have happened or not.

4. “Asik’s contract is an Albatross and the Pelicans will be stuck with it for its duration.”

Wrong.

Health permitting, of course.

With the cap skyrocketing in each of the next two offseasons and another talented group of free agents set to hit the market next summer led by Kevin Durant, a record number of teams will have max-level cap room 12 months from now. Maybe upwards of 20. Seriously.

Not all of those teams will be able to fill that much cap room with quality players. In normal years, the demand exceeds the supply. Well, in the next two years, the demand will exceed the supply to a ridiculous degree.

That means that there will be several opportunities in each of the next two offseasons to trade Asik into someone’s cap space if that’s what the Pelicans decide they want to do.

Now of course this is contingent on Asik’s 30-year-old body not betraying him and his ability to remain a quality player. That’s the gamble New Orleans took and it’s the one they’ll have to live with.

5. “This deal takes the Pels out of the running for max free agents next summer.”

Myth.

If a max player lets it be known he wants to join your team, there are ways to make it happen. Look at how quickly and easily the Spurs dumped Tiago Splitter with signing LaMarcus Aldridge in mind. With the cap going up, bad contracts that other teams don’t want are becoming rarer and rarer.

Plus, if a max player wants to come here, he’s gotta take a rotation spot, right? That makes whoever’s role his appearance diminishes a trade chip that, voila, would create max-level cap room.

This is Dell Demps creating more work for himself, but if it means having a legit big down low to play alongside Davis in the interim, I’m sure he’s more than happy to put in the hours and make the calls.

6. “The Pelicans should have used the money on someone else.”

They couldn’t have.

NBA rules allow you to go over the cap to sign players ONLY on your own team.

You cannot go over the cap to sign a player who most recently played for another team.

With the Pels inching up against the cap, the choice was quite frankly Asik or nothing.

With no immediate opportunity cost of signing Asik, the Pels chose to take him back.

That simple.

7. “The Asik deal locks the Pelicans into being a good but not great team.”

OK.

And what’s wrong with that?

Given the options on the table that I’ve extensively gone through, there was clearly no avenue to being among the elite teams in the league next year, and they still likely have the flexibility to improve in the future.

So why a certain member of the local media is bashing the Pelicans relentlessly over this is beyond me.

8. “Asik sucks. He was run off the court by Golden State. Why pay him?”

Asik is quite possibly the most egregious case I’ve ever seen of fans and local media members misevaluating a player’s value.

Even as we move into a position-less era, guys who can protect the rim and rebound are still at a premium. The problem is that only one of those things shows up in the box score and the other requires a keener basketball eye to notice. Since it’s much easier to be lazy and ignore such an intangible attribute, rim protection is often ignored.

Asik gives the Pelicans a body to allow Anthony Davis do what he does best, and although numbers can’t show it, watching games tell you that Asik’s presence contributed to Davis’ amazing 30.89 PER last season.

Offensively, Asik has problems. That isn’t a myth, to say the least. Leave him in the gym all night and tell him he can’t dunk, you’ll come back in the morning and he’ll have six points. But Andrew Bogut has similar deficiencies (better finisher at the rim, it must be noted), and new Pels head coach Alvin Gentry and Steve Kerr found a way to mask those deficiencies last year with the Warriors. It can be done.

The overbearing point here, however, is that the regular season is a marathon. The playoffs are a sprint. If you sprint during the regular season, you’ll be worn out by the time April comes along. Teams need bigs like Asik for the marathon of the regular season, even if, and especially if, you run into a team like Golden State that forces him off the court. Davis’ legs will thank you then.

And here’s where the arguments get lazy again. It’s real easy to continuously bring up the Golden State series but neglect to mention that you may, instead, have to face DeAndre Jordan and Marc Gasol in consecutive series. You’ll wish you had your big then, huh? Every series is different, and you can’t make franchise-altering decisions based on the matchups of one playoff series.

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So those are my eight responses to the far-too-many misinformed opinions out there regarding Asik’s re-signing.

This column wasn’t meant to defend the deal as much as educate fans and allow them to make a more informed decision on where they stand regarding Asik.

And quite frankly, I want members of the local media to be better. Do more research and don’t succumb to popular opinion and groupthink.

As for what I would do, if I’m in Demps’ position playing the same hand dealt to him (or the one he dealt himself, to be fair), I reluctantly make the same decision he did while fully accepting the risk that there’s a chance the deal becomes a disaster if Asik’s body breaks down.

If I let him walk, I’m surrendering him for nothing now and cap space later – when in my opinion, he could be traded for said cap space later.

If I play hard ball and let his free agency draw out, I risk losing him, paying him even more or guaranteeing the fifth year. That course of action might also piss him off, in order to, best case scenario, save $2-4 million per season. Better to avoid that possibility also, in my opinion.

Without other immediate options on the table and likely having the ability to move him down the line – even if you have to include a first as a sweetener – I think signing him now was a risk the team was smart to take.

Maybe it works out. Maybe it doesn’t.

But Dell’s decision deserves a much more complex breakdown than the one it’s receiving.

And if you’re still reading this, I hope you feel you received that.

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*A previous version of this story operated under the assumption that the salary cap would stay at $108 million in year four of Asik’s contract. It has been brought to my attention that it is currently expected to drop to $100 million, changing the percentage of Asik’s amount of the cap from 11.3 percent to 12.25 percent in that year.