2014 Cats

The Charlotte Bobcats have extended a qualifying offer to guard Gerald Henderson, making him a restricted free agent, but not to center Byron Mullens.

The qualifying offer of $4.2 million to Henderson will allow the Bobcats to match any offer he receives from another team.

The Bobcats decided not to extend Mullens a $3.2 million qualifying offer. Mullens becomes a free agent.

Charlotte selected Henderson with the 12th overall pick in the 2009 draft. He's coming off his best season, averaging a career-high 15.5 points, 3.7 rebounds, 2.6 assists and one steal in 31.4 minutes per game.

Mullens played in 53 games last season, averaging 10.6 points and 6.4 rebounds in 26.9 minutes per game.

 

WTF?! Jordan is spending money! Signed Al Jefferson to a 3 year 42 million dollar deal

 

I don't think Jordan refused to spend money before, it's just that you have to overpay by 25% for anyone to come to Charlotte. Jefferson is almost as injury prone as Bynum and not as talented, but he's not as much of a headcase so I guess you look for that on a young team that isn't going anywhere.

 

At least he can score and there's a team option after year 2

 

Well, it happened. After a week of rumors, Al Jefferson is reportedly set to sign a three-year contract worth $41 million, reports ESPN’s Marc Stein. The deal will have a player option that allows Jefferson to opt out after the second year. As expected, Tyrus Thomas will be amnestied to make the numbers work, according to NBA.com’s David Aldridge.

A lot of the conversation around this signing has been pitched as “winning” vs. “tanking,” but that’s a simplification. While he’ll provide the team a low-post scorer they’ve lacked for years, there are very real reasons to be hesitant about giving Jefferson this kind of money. Here’s how Grantland’s Zach Lowe described his game earlier in the year:

We have almost a decade of evidence now that Jefferson’s failings on defense outweigh his very real value on offense. His teams have generally been worse with him on the floor than with him on the bench, and that’s been true on the defensive end in almost every season in which he’s played meaningful minutes, per NBA.com and 82games.com. Let’s be clear: He is a valuable offensive player, even though he shoots just 49 percent, rarely gets to the line, and does little out of the pick-and-roll. There’s value in an automatic double-team who never turns it over, and Jefferson has been one of the league’s best crunch-time scorers for years.
That’s what the Bobcats will be getting for $13.6 million a year. You can decide whether that’s worth it.


Another bonus: if he maintains his TRB% from last year, he’ll immediately become the team’s best rebounder. That’s another area of weakness, as the Bobcats ranked 29th in defensive rebounding last year.

Now, the negative: Defense, defense, defense. Last year, the Jazz posted a defensive rating of 107.6 when Jefferson was on the court. When he was off it? That number dropped to 98.4. Part of that was playing in front of Enes Kanter, whose main value comes on that end, but it’s still sobering.

If you want a silver lining here, it’s that the Bobcats were already terrible on defense. The team was last in defensive rating, and the post play of Byron Mullens and Bismack Biyombo had a lot to do with that. If Jefferson represents an improvement on offense while keeping the defense “steady,” that’s still progress. We may even get a marginal improvement on D with new coach Steve Clifford’s schemes.

Jefferson’s contract isn’t a positive, but I wouldn’t call it a disaster. It’s a clear overpay, and you could easily argue that the money was better spent elsewhere. But it’s short, doesn’t significantly tie up the team’s cap space moving forward, and expires when the team will start committing serious money to their young guys. Jefferson has enough perceived value that the contract could eventually be moved, as well.


— In the short term, a Zeller-Jefferson frontcourt projects to be a defensive sieve. Zeller doesn’t have the strength to defend one-on-one down low at this point, and Jefferson’s issues on that end were covered above. It’ll be interesting to see where Biyombo fits in; while he’d help protect with shotblocking playing next to Jefferson, spacing would be nonexistent with an MKG/Bismack/Jefferson frontcourt.

— GM Rich Cho, on Friday: “We’re a running basketball team, and [Zeller] fits that.” While Jefferson is a slow-footed big man more comfortable operating out of the post, this doesn’t necessarily mean the death of that idea. Jefferson’s teams have played at an above-average pace in seven of his nine years in the league. That said, I wouldn’t expect to see him do much in transition. Pushing the ball upcourt will be everyone else’s job.

— This pretty much taps out the Bobcats in free agency. We should still see Gerald Henderson re-sign, and there will be a few more marginal pick-ups, but this could mean saying goodbye to Josh McRoberts. It just depends on what the market is like for him.

 

From Cbssports.com
Grade: C. Not to be rude, but this deal barely registers on the relevance scale. It amounts to a pure cash-out for Jefferson, who probably has one more meaningful contract coming to him after this one. You can’t blame him for taking the money and running and you can’t really blame the Bobcats for deciding to pony up, given that they’re overpaying for a known quantity in the middle of his prime. It’s hard to convince anyone worthwhile to sign as a free agent in Charlotte, given the recent history, and here they bent over backward to get a useful, professional big man to hang around for a little while.

The whole thing just seems rather meaninless: Jefferson will score a lot of points, collect a lot of rebounds and accumulate a lot of direct deposits in the middle of the forest and no one will be around to hear it. Avoiding a fourth year at this price qualifies as a minor victory for Charlotte.

 

He's missed 9 games in the last 3 years.

 

Bynum missed that many in 3 weeks...


... per year.

 

no its a Player option

 

Signed Josh McDoughnut for 2 years? Fuck that get a scorer