Harrison Press Conference 2-10

[soog]

DB is a shooter, it is THE reason he exists. His career is 40.0% from three....he is down to 31.9% this year. His "whole body" is 40% from three. That is REALLY valuable.

SD is a creator. His PER the three previous seasons were 17.8, 16.3, 15.9...now he is down to 13.6 and his true shooting percent his way down from career as well. 

Point is both are clearly under-performing their career averages, almost across the board. And most importantly their on-court impacts are down as well.



The contracts do NOT last longer. SD's contract is the same length as KP...BUT the last year is unguaranteed whereas KP's was fully guaranteed. So SD's contract is shorter. And DB's contract is one year longer than KP....BUT the last year is unguaranteed, so functionally it is the same length as KP's. 

Their contracts are a HUGE improvement on KP's from a trade asset standpoint.

Re: Dinwiddie - looking at the PER from his best years isn’t the whole body of work.  But even then lets run with the PER you refer to.  His PER was higher in those three seasons. In the latter two of those seasons, his shooting percentage was uncharacteristically high from the field.  His Usage was also through the roof which for a per40 metric makes him look significantly better.  This year he is shooting the ball about as well has he has in his career and has a fairly average usage rate for his career, excluding the first couple of years.  As a result, his PER is…. meh…. So for him to suddenly show a significant improvement in PER he either needs to resume an uncharacteristically high shooting percentage for what he has demonstrated he can do and his usage needs to go back to what it was when he was the best player on a bad team.  Even then, I would argue that it doesn’t really matter what his PER is if he is still the same inefficient player he has proven to be throughout his career.  And let’s not forget that he is coming back from ACL surgery.  Since we have worked with Wes Matthews, Chandler Parsons, and KP - what are your thoughts about the chances that he fully returns to what he once was…?

Re: Bertans - yes, he is a career 40% shooter from deep.  But the guy is one dimensional and wont be able to stay on the floor because it will be hard to hide him as the team is currently constructed.  Let’s say he resumes his 40% shooting with his current usage stats from this year.  He’s going to up his ppg by about 0.8 ppg, but all other aspects of his game will continue to be atrocious

Re: Contract length - You are partially correct.  I looked into this a bit more. It’s not that they are “unguaranteed”, they are only partially guaranteed… sort of…. To start with Dinwiddie only $10M of his last year is guaranteed… unless he plays in 50 games this year and next.  Then it becomes fully guaranteed.  On top of this he has up to almost $8m in bonuses he gets pay just for playing 50 games or more, 50% of playoff games, and advancing in playoffs.  Then for Bertans, his contract does extend on year longer than KPs, but only $5M is guaranteed that year.

When all is said and done:
If Dinwiddie gets his guarantee and hits his bonuses - the Mavs will pay him and Bertans approximately $110M total through the end of the 23/24 season.  
If he doesn’t hit any of this the mavs will pay two of them $94M through 23/24
If they kept KP the would have paid him $101M through 23/24

So maybe this saves them $7M through 23/24 if these guys are so bad they don’t hit their bonuses and we waive them because we’re willing to give them money just to go away.

Then back to the length of contract - Dinwiddie’s contract is the same length as KP’s, but Bertans does go one year longer.  And as mentioned before there is still a partial guarantee, so he is owed at least $5M in 24/25.  But to only pay him $5M he had to be so bad that the mavs just paid him to go away.

So best financial scenario, these guys are trash and we pay both a combined $100M stretched out to 24/25 compared to the $101M we owed KP through 23/24. But we could potentially end up paying them $126M through 24/25.  So this is at best a marginal cost savings over the same period of time, and for it to be a marginal cost savings these guys both have to be disappointments.

Only upside as I see it is that the Mavs REALLY value the unguaranteed portion of their contracts as assets in the final year.  Mark said it’s really bad next year but get’s better after that.  The only way that works is if he is already thinking about trading these guys the year before their contracts expire.  Then you have a trade chip that allows another team to get $9M in savings in 23/24 and another trade chip that allows for up to $11M in savings in 24/25.