Taj Gibson. Was Thibs’ go to guy but started moving around the block to Washington, Detroit, Charlotte, now Memphis.

I volunteer. Can do it for $200,000 per season.

End of their career Garrett Temple, Taj Gibson, Anthony Gil (in general) are all guys who were rostered last season for this reason.

I wish the NBA would create a 16th roster spot specifically for the locker room vet. Guy wouldn’t even have to play, just a dedicated 35+ or 10 yr of service roster spot for teams to have a dedicated mentor on the roster.

I feel like James Posey did this, then became a coach.

Plenty of guys get contracts just for being locker-room guys; not many that team-hop. Garrett Temple comes to mind.

It’s extremely common in MLB. See every 35 year old first baseman ever

Looney

Locker room guys make sense if you have good players and are lacking culture. Pelicans don’t have anything worth saving the culture for. What are they smoking

Niang?

Signing vets for locker room presence isn’t a new concept, no.

The Pels’ FO thinks?

I mean obviously - they were getting dragged so they wanted to point out the obvious- they felt they had to bid for him. Seems surprising they couldn’t just give him a handshake deal for the second year, but maybe he wouldn’t trust that the same FO would be employed in NO after this year 😂…

Yes. This is absolutely a planted story.

I don’t believe such a source exists.

The Lakers just signed Jordan’s backup. In this center market, I can totally believe the Pelicans offered Deandre 2 years because a more attractive team offered him 1.

Whether or not they understood the implications of that is another question. As much I hate the front office, I could see a world where they think Deandre is worth the 3mil difference over another minimum salary player.

No, it’s just funny they felt they had to leak this to Stein to respond to stories that Dumars didn’t know the rules about minimum contracts.

It’s not a huge thing, it’s just that the one year deals like Haslem got and other washed vets get only partially count against the cap. It’s currently an era of maximizing cap space with the aprons and what not, so not getting the relief from the one year minimum looks worse than it is. Losing about 1.5 million in cap space. Not a lot but something

The difference is UD took 1 year deals so that Miami got reimbursed by the league for about 40% each year. Because the Pelicans gave DJ 2 years, they get 0 reimbursement. But the money to DJ would be the EXACT same if they just gave him two 1 year deals. So essentially the Pelicans gave up $3M for absolutely no reason.

I scoured the internet trying to find any 2 year fully guaranteed vet min. deals for players with 10+ years of experience, and the only one in recent memory that I could find is Derrick Rose signed for 2 years with Memphis. Naturally, this is so rare because if the league is going to give you free money, then why not structure it was a 1 year deal every year? There’s no benefit to making it a 2 year deal unless the player just cannot trust your front office to get another deal next year (which is a big problem in itself).

I’m honestly surprised any athlete can do hookah and compete at a high level — I like it but always struggled to run the next day

I didn’t know he and Luka were that close

Except making the decision was stupid even if they knew. They could’ve just told DJ they planned on signing him back for the vet minimum again next year and still had the NBA pay for some of it both years. Instead, they’re paying it fully for both years for no reason.

I mean…from what I’ve seen in the sub most pelicans fans also hate anything that front office does, because it’s shit.

Brother they were more than healthy enough to know this team is very far away. If we stand pat it’s a tank year.

Please play Matkovic and Zion together and Missi and Queen together more. Best balanced big duos the Pels have to offer.

Yeah, it’s actually not a big deal at all if you don’t badly need the cap room for something else.

I’m obv skeptical of Dumars and Weaver, but Fears and Queen look like very good players and the idea of bringing in vets to spark a long-term culture reset makes a lot of sense

I don’t hate you guys, I’m rooting for you I wish you were better. I love Bey and DJM, especially Bey so I hope you guys win some games next year. All that being said you can’t really give your FO the benefit of the doubt when they’ve made some objectively, and I do mean objectively, terrible moves in the past few years.

Another year, another year to not be fully healthy

Poor 14 year old DeAndre, already washed.

I mean, a minimum contract and the last spot on the bench to guarantee a happy and functional locker room seems worth it.

Dude they got Poole and Zion. They absolutely need someone to hold down the locker room.

Let him walk, then someone shits on their owner for being cheap for letting him walk for the vet minimum.

He was pretty important to the locker room and Queen’s development last year. We’re talking about a two year vet minimum deal here to keep that in place. But now they’re being shit on because some idiots thinks that the team isn’t aware that they lose the subsidy for giving him that deal.