After a week of hard consideration, the Utah Jazz have decided to match the offer sheet offered up by Oklahoma City to steal away C.J. Miles.
The main reason that they said they chose to match the offer sheet was that they had invested 3 years in him and they figured that he was now at the point where he knew the system and could start making a valuable contribution.
Jazz fans and sportswriters are likely scratching their heads at this decision. They invested a lot in BYU product Rafael Araujo, but they let him go.
There has got to be a little more to this story than just “return on investment”.
Let’s take a look at things a little bit closer.
Here are the facts (involving C.J. Miles):
- The Utah Jazz have plenty of money to play the annual amount of the Miles contract over the upcoming year. The big problem comes in year 2 when they are going to have to give extensions and raises to some almost all of their key guys.
- The Utah Jazz have enough room on the roster for C.J. Miles (just barely).
- C.J. Miles knows the Jazz system.
- The Jazz, with the current lineup, might be good enough to win it all next year. They were very close this year.
Here are the Utah Jazz salaries (as near as we can guess) for 2009-2010:
Andrei Kirilenko - $16.5 million
Deron Williams - ~$15 million
Matt Harpring - $6.5 million
Kyle Korver - $5.2 million
C.J. Miles - ~$3 million
Ronnie Brewer - $2.7 million
Kosta Koufos - $1.2 million
Morris Almond - $1.1 million
Kryrylo Fesenko - $0.8 million
For approximately $52 million (I had to guess on the new contracts for Williams and Miles)
FYI, the salary cap for that year will probably be right around $60 million, leaving just $8 million to spend to stay under the cap.
If you haven’t noticed, you still aren’t paying Boozer, Okur, Jarron Collins, Brevin Knight, Ronnie Price, and Paul Millsap, all of whom are free agents or can opt-out after this year.
You will probably have to pay Carlos Boozer near the $15 million that you offered Deron Williams. Okur and Millsap might well command $10 million salaries based on what Andris Biedrins and Monta Ellis got from Golden State.
And that doesn’t count trying to keep Collins, Knight, and Price who luckily would come in at much more pedestrian $2 million per year each.
What are the Jazz planning?
I’m really not sure, but the numbers certainly don’t add up after this year.
Perhaps they are trying for one last hurrah before the team has to go its separate ways for salary cap reasons. They certainly could let Boozer, Okur, and Millsap depart after next season and be just fine. They aren’t under any sort of contract to keep them (as long as Boozer and Okur opt-out of their contracts, as they are expected to do). If they let them all go and move Kirilenko to the 4, they would have Williams at the 1, Brewer/Korver/Miles/Harpring/Almond (at the 2 and 3), Kirilenko at the 4, and Koufos/Fesenko at the 5. Certainly not a championship-caliber team, but with Williams at the helm, it is certainly one that could win a lot of games. By re-signing Jaron Collins for a couple of million per year, they have someone to sub at center and power forward (and a similar argument could be made to keep Price and/or Knight on to back up Williams at PG), without surpassing the Salary Cap.
Perhaps they are planning on trading some of their salaries after next year. Matt Harpring’s expiring $6.5 million would definitely be tradeable, but would probably involve receiving other long-term salaries in return unless they can work some deals involving draft picks (like the Nuggets did for Marcus Camby this year). A more likely scenario would be that Harpring’s salary is used to grab some good player that took the mid-level exception from a championship caliber team, but now the team wants to get involved in the Lebron/Wade/Bosh sweepstakes and has to cut salary fast.
Perhaps they think they can find a taker for Andrei Kirilenko’s whopping contract. Since they would likely have to take back contracts in return, however, that doesn’t seem like it would help the situation out unless the trade happened this year instead of next — and involved $16 million in expiring contracts. Kirilenko is a great defensive player and an energy guy that almost every team needs (but just not necessarily for the nearly $50 million and three years left on his contract).
Perhaps Larry H. Miller is willing to venture into Luxury Tax territory and re-sign most of these guys, if they are competing for championships year after year. Larry has certainly mentioned in the past that he would be willing to do that for a championship-caliber team.
Maybe the Jazz wanted C.J.’s contract to be possibly involved in a trade later on. Rather than giving him away for nothing, they can use his rather manageable contract packaged within another trade to make the numbers match, if they need to. Just because they signed him, doesn’t mean that they can never trade him. They just have to wait a period of time before his contract becomes tradeable, and that would happen sometime before the trade deadline.