Best rumor of the day: Somehow, some way, Detroit's Tayshaun Prince will end up with the Clippers next season.

I think Kaman is the obvious scenario.

We can only hope. He'd be an all-star in the East.

Howard
Bogut
Noah
Horford
Lopez
No.

Sign and trades may not be allowed in the next CBA, so this may be a moot point.

Howard
Bogut
Noah
Horford
Lopez
No.
THEN EVEN MORE REASON TO ACQUIRE A SOLID CENTER.

and Bogut, Noah, and Lopez haven't made an all-star game yet. Kaman has.

It's nice that Lopez scored 20+ppg, but 6 rebounds from a C on a sub-.300 team doesn't cut it.
Horford may move to PF full-time, especially if they succeed in trading Josh Smith.
Noah has missed 52 games the past two seasons. If he's an all-star, that means Chicago would have three of them when healthy (Rose and Boozer). and if all it takes is averaging a double double...
Bogut's stats dropped dramatically after he fucked up his arm two seasons ago. I don't think 13/11 is insurmountable.

Lots of years a center doesn't represent. Sheed and Bosh have been centers at the AS game.

And Bogut is 13-11-leadstheleagueinblocks. Let's be fair.

I'd be for this move though. Let's us draft a SF, maybe Leonard? Monroe-Kaman is a pretty good offensive combo and that's all our guards do.

Lots of years a center doesn't represent. Sheed and Bosh have been centers at the AS game.

And Bogut is 13-11-leadstheleagueinblocks. Let's be fair.
How right you are. and hey, our boy Darko is in the top 5 :-o

do you really add another 8-10 mil to the current roster (if sign-n-trade is still possible) when you pay RIP, Gordon, Maxiell, Charlie big bucks? if you resign Stuckey and Jonas (combined about 10 mil a year) i think its better to let go Tay, and try to trade some of our bad contracts

So you want to save the owner money?

How right you are. and hey, our boy Darko is in the top 5 :-o

Mana from heaven sir.

And good post from Glan there. We aren't going to touch free agency again, we need valuable assets.

if Gores is willing to spend, sure if there is a good sign and trade for Tay go for it, im just saying, you have to pay the right guys the most money, before we add any more mayor salary i want efforts to get rid of RIP, Gordon, Charlie and Max first, we cant spend 2/3 of our capspace for those guys and expect to contend any time soon, in this rebuilding phase i want more young cheap talent + some salary structure that makes sense, fiscal responsiblility was huge in the past, we lost that reasonalbe-spending by paying way too much money on the wrong players, it will be even more important in the new CBA for sure

Joe Dumars might consider re-signing Tayshaun Prince, according to Tayshaun Prince’s agent (http://www.pistonpowered.com/2011/07/joe-dumars-might-consider-re-signing-tayshaun-prince-according-to-tayshaun-princes-agent/)

If Tayshaun spent another 5 years as a Piston and makes it to 1000 regular season games as a Piston, I'd anticipate #22 hanging up in the rafters.

The dude already has an NBA ring and Olympic medal, so he might not care if we show him the $ and the front office doesn't suck.

Prince's agent should certainly look to convince teams that there is a bidder in the Pistons.

i love prince. but i think it's time to part ways. we aren't going anywhere and we need a young core to build with. prince's pricetag is likely to be far more than i'd be willing to pay him, even if there isn't much of a market for him. (which i think there will be a decent one for him, even if it's just for the MLE, if that still exists in the new CBA)

do we really need to overpay another guy? and before people chime in with the 'veteran leadership' argument, prince did nothing to help in that area this past year. in fact, he whined a bunch publicly and disappointed me a great deal in that aspect this year. no doubt- kuester's regime was a disaster and prince had a right to be irritated. but his publicly crying and complaining (sometimes merely subtley) was not what i would expect from a true leader.

price is a good guy and an OK player. but he doesn't offer anything we can't get elsewhere, from cheaper and younger players.

He made way too much money on his last contract, so I wouldn't have him back unless he cut Joe a major league discount.

We need to blow this shitstorm up, I'm still in favor of keeping Knight, Jerebko, Monroe and Bynum and dumping anybody else that we can for comparable value.

Would love to S&T Tayshaun for a good, young, rotation player or two, and maybe a pick.

He made way too much money on his last contract, so I wouldn't have him back unless he cut Joe a major league discount.
Way too much money? Get real. For someone making all-D teams with enough all-around game to be an Olympian, including a season where he was top 10 in minutes played, I think he was paid just right by NBA standards.

Way too much money? Get real. For someone making all-D teams with enough all-around game to be an Olympian, including a season where he was top 10 in minutes played, I think he was paid just right by NBA standards.

I agree with Mxy on this, prince was well worth the money. It's not his fault that he was asked to shoulder more of the scoring/playmaking load when others were supposed to take on these responsibilities while failing miserably (gordon and stuckey especially). He's the perfect complimentary player that can play big minutes while doing just about everything well enough to really good on both ends of the floor. There isnt one winning team or organization that would deny the chance to have prince play on their team.

I also absolutely do not question his "leadership" the last few years when being forced to basically give up two productive, prime years suffering through kuester and his complete inability to lead a team. I'm glad he called out kuester as it only reinforced our outside perception of the chaos.

Prince is a nice player, but guys like him making $10-11 million a year are a big reason why we have a lockout right now.

that's exactly it- he's not worth the money he was being paid now. not even close to it. i know- you can't blame him for it and there are a few other guys just on our own team who are even more grossly overpaid. but in looking strictly at his situation heading into FA- there's no way on earth he's worth an eight digit salary. sure, lots of other teams would love to have a player of his abilities. but i guarantee you they won't pay him that kind of money. no way.

he's a MLE guy in a best case scenario for him. what was that, between $5-6 million...? about where he should end up IMO.

I agree 100% with Mxy on this one. Trying not to assume what you're saying Glan, but I do think you touch on a point when you say his $10m a year is the reason we're having this lockout. I wonder if we're putting a dollar figure on his salary as what we think he should earn versus market value. IMO his market value is definitely higher than any $5-6m a year. Just look at the quality of players at each salary range. Are tons of the $10m a year guys overpaid? Sure. But that's the market and his value is still comparably high in that market.

At the time he signed that contract, one could argue that he was the team's 4th or 5th best player. How many guys in that position in the pecking order get that kind of money?

No wonder the owners are looking for artificial methods to control salaries.

prince was 130th in PER last year. Regardless of his "brings more to the table" intangibles you can't justify that guy getting paid top 40 cash.

At the time he signed that contract, one could argue that he was the team's 4th or 5th best player. How many guys in that position in the pecking order get that kind of money?
Probably the guys on teams that make it to the ECF 6 years in a row.

He's certainly not worth that kind of money _now_. But, $9 million/year for 5 years was right for Prince at the time. During his contract, he was an above-average player who played above-average # of minutes. As a late 1st rounder, he was quite underpaid relative to his performance before. Average it all out and he got MLE for every year he was starting. And, he called out the buffoonery when he saw it. No complaints.

You're muddying the waters by trying to average his career salary by doubling back to include the years before the extension. Of course he was appropriately paid or underpaid before the extension, that was never included in this discussion.

What I stated is that he made too much money on his most recent contract.

We paid nearly $10m a year for a guy that has averaged 13 pts and 5 rebs.

10 million!

Most players that overperform in their rookie contract are going to get a contract extension that they won't even come close to living up to.
Here's how it went down with Tayshaun after his contract extension:

2007 All-Defense
2008 All-Defense
2009 Top 10 in minutes played league-wide
2010 Injured (but played well for half the season)
2011 Buffoonery

A couple of (2nd team) all defenses are nice, no doubt. Even if I think "the block" on Reggie really helped him get those.

You'd think that in all those minutes played that he would have put up better numbers, but he didn't.

I'm nonplussed.

I think the contract was definitely appropriate but obviously not worth it in hindsight. Most teams would have given it to him though....

Tayshaun still outperforms opposing SFs according to his PER and opponent PER, and has for his entire career, by about 25%.

(according to 82games.com)

Intangibles aside, this makes him worth about 7.25 million a year, relative to the MLE that was worth 5.8 million last season.