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No-Shots

The 2019 No-Shot Contracts

When the Wizards signed Ian Mahinmi to a four-year, $64MM contract in the free agent bonanza of 2016, I started laughing. Literally. When the ESPN alert popped up on my phone, I lost my mind laughing and immediately called my best friend. He’s a Wizards fan. He picked up my call in a somber tone, to discuss what had just happened: the deal that had no shot of working out for the Wizards.

If you’re not familiar with Ernie Grunfeld, the former Wizards president and head decision-maker, he had two talents. The first was being unkillable. He had inexplicable, unbreakable trust from Abe Pollin and then Ted Leonsis, the two owners during his tenure. The Wizards were never a very good team during Grunfeld’s regime. They never reached the ECF. From 2003, when he was hired as president of basketball operations, to 2019, the Wizards went 568-724. The other executives who had been tenured that long read like a who’s who of Tier 1 NBA GMs: R.C. Buford, Danny Ainge, Pat Riley, etc.

His second talent was pulling out/lucking into a good trade or draft pick right as his last three had blown up, repeatedly saving his job. When Grunfeld traded the #5^th overall pick, used to select Ricky Rubio and two picks before Steph Curry was selected, he got back one-year rentals in Randy Foye and Mike Miller. He then blew up the whole thing when that team (predictably) sucked and the team got John Wall at #1.

When Grunfeld gave an instant, no shot contract to Gilbert Arenas in 2008 after he tore up his knee, he found a greater fool in the Magic who sent back Rashard Lewis. The list goes on and on. Literally.

Should Grunfeld have been fired five, maybe ten years before he was? Absolutely. Did he make bonehead moves with somewhat astonishing frequency? Sure. But he also seemed to counteract that move with another that bought him one more season, over and over again.

Until he signed Ian Mahinmi.

Let’s remember where NBA teams were in 2016. Smart teams in the league had downsized and started hoisting threes (the top three seeds in each conference that year: GS, SAS, HOU; BOS, CLE, TOR). What my poor, Wizards-loving friend and I had seen as the future of the league (a tremendous need for 3-and-D types, especially on the wings; a shift-up across the positional spectrum to goose this process) was happening.

And so, the Wizards decided to sign Ian Mahinmi.

Ian Mahinmi was not downsizable or able hoist threes. He had had made great strides the year before, possibly unsustainable strides. NBA News summarized the signing by noting Mahinmi was “coming off a career year… he averaged career-highs of 9.3 points, 7.1 rebounds, and 1.1 blocks.”

He had blossomed into a homeless-man’s version of Roy Hibbert.

Roy Hibbert was not in demand in 2016.

Grunfeld said in his press conference that Mahinmi “will give us defense, rebounding, and rim protection at the backup center position.”

For $64MM.

What was so galling about the signing was that there was no shot it was going to work. The Wizards, that summer, needed a million things, namely the wing depth every smart team had begun to hoard.  The problem with Mahinmi’s signing was thus two-fold: money and fit. With big men becoming cheaper and cheaper on the whole, and long-range shooting in those men becoming more and more valuable, old-schoolers were slowly falling out of fashion. They were also readily available, pretty much everywhere. Even in that crazy offseason, the following deals were given out:

• Zaza Pachulia, C; 1 yr/$2.9MM
• Roy Hibbert, C; 1yr/$5MM
• David West, PF/C; 1yr/$1.55M (ring-chasing)
• Jason Smith, PF/C; 3 yrs/$16MM
• Nene, C; 1yr/$2.9MM
• Dewayne Dedmon, C; 2yr; $6MM
• Festus Ezeli, C; 2yrs/$15MM
• Mo Speights, PF/C; 1yr/minimum

Those players would’ve represented something close to Mahinmi on something close to the veteran’s minimum. To be fair to the Wizards, a lot of bad big-man contracts were signed that summer. I will ask my friend whether that makes him feel better. When you factor in how the poor value Washington got; the abundance of cheaper, and possibly better, options; and the four-year cap hit that kneecapped any filling-out of the roster behind John Wall and Bradley Beal, there was no shot that contract would work out.

Here, we present my favorite five contracts that have no shot of working out for their teams. Named after our patron saint, here are the 2019 Ian Mahinmi No Shots.

A couple of rules:   

1. This article isn’t just about who got overpaid. It’s about getting a notification on your phone, looking at the player and the deal he just got, and immediately knowing, this team will regret this. Bryce Harper and Manny Machado will not be worth their contracts in the last years of their deals. If the Phillies/Padres have a great 5-year run, those teams will have little to no regrets. Is DeAndre Jordan worth $30MM with a better center already on the Nets’ roster? No. But if that was the price of getting KD and Kyrie to come to Brooklyn, he may have been worth $45MM. The deals below, all things considered, are terrible the moment you see them and have no shot of being remembered as smart deals.
2. If you laugh when you see the deal announced, or think, “I wish I could get paid $__ million to be a below-average pitcher/big man with no offensive talent to think of/a small-forward who is destined to continue keeping hundreds of millions of dollars for being about the definition of an average NBA player,” they are a candidate for this list.

Without further ado, the 2019 No Shots.

5. Nikola Vucevic, Center, Orlando Magic / 4 years, $100 million

This is dicey territory to start, given that Vooch was a first-time All-Star in 2019. He deserved it, carrying a mediocre Orlando Magic deal with badly needed three-level scoring and offense creation from the elbows. He just turned in the best season of his career. How can this be a no-shot contract? There’s got to be some world where this works out, right?

Sure. There’s a chance this deal works – it’s just stunningly, stunningly low. Vooch’s case here is similar to our holy grail of 2019 no-shots (#1). He brings a lot more value than our #1 and can even shoot 3’s!

Like our #1, however, the Magic have no business or room to be signing this deal. The future of the depends on its young core: Mo Bamba, C; Jonathan Isaac, SF/PF; and somehow still-24 year old Aaron Gordon, PF. Shoehorning these three into frontcourt minutes would be difficult. It is just about impossible with Vooch playing 30 minutes a night at the 5. Bamba brings the most potential as a 5; a potentially hellacious rim deterrent with a good 3-point stroke. He’ll have to develop as a 4, out of position, soaking up any spot 5 minutes he can get.

The Magic won Game 1 of the playoffs last year against the Bucks. They were swept after and last year, at 42-40, they had their first winning season since 2011-2012.

This move locks in the Magic’s frontcourt for multiple years. The 42-40 Magic frontcourt. They started DJ Augustin at the point last year. He is scarily, comfortably, their second-best ball-handler. The Magic can’t get past the second round with the imbalance of talent/salary in their frontcourt. They likely cannot get past the first round with this roster. Vucevic’s signing yelps of a team that is desperate to stay out of choice lottery position, without harboring serious playoff ambitions for four years. They will have to salary dump Vucevic, Gordon, or Isaac soon. They may pull the plug on Bamba. They won’t get a chance to see the latter three play together as much as they should.

There is no chance that the Magic view this as a productive signing in three years. Unless, of course, Ernie lands another job and trades them two firsts for Vooch.

4.  Luka Jović, Striker, Real Madrid / £54 million transfer

Real Madrid do a lot of things well. It wins a lot of Champions Leagues. It wins La Liga. It wins the Copa del Ray. Despite the never-ending managerial turbulence whistling around the Bernabeu, Madrid are a remarkably, consistently successful team. It seems they only ever lose to Wales and golf.

The team’s success, of course, comes from buying the hottest talent on the continent. El Clasico is a clash of the two bigger soccer clubs in the world and of philosophies. Barcelona develops its world-class talent through the La Masia pipeline. Real backs up a Brinks truck for theirs.

The Madrid roster still has plenty of Galacticos on the books but that generality doesn’t apply much these days, when Real’s young players are by far the more promising group of the two and Barcelona has dished out €360MM on three players in two years. Still, there’s another thing Madrid does very poorly: buy strikers.

That statement has a couple of caveats. It doesn’t include all attackers – Vinicius Jr., Rodrygo, and Marcus Asensio spare those blushes in recent years. Those three are young but have performed at high levels for the team when called upon.

As a club president elected by socios, there is tremendous pressure on Florentino Perez to win major trophies on an annual basis. That pressure extends directly to the Real’s managers. Rafa Benitez spent a little over six months on Madrid’s touchline before being fired. Zinedine Zidane became the first manager ever to win three consecutive Champions Leagues and promptly left. Caretaker Santiago Solari had five months on the bench. The man he replaced, controversial hire Julien Lopetegui, was around for four.

This goes to say, as a club, Real has little tolerance for development or rebuilding. It recognizes wins. Underperforming talent, in any position, have just as tenuous a hold on their roles as underperforming managers. Strikers seem to have a particularly tough time at the club of Raúl, Di Stéfano, Puskás, and  Ronaldo.

Karim Benzema, far and away the most successful strikers of Madrid’s last decade (depending on how you look at Cristiano), is a whippingboy for poor displays by Los Blancos.

Mariano Diaz (more often seen out wide than centrally) was bought back from Lyon after a successful spell there. In what will become a recurring theme, he wasn’t (or hasn’t been, at least) good enough to break into the starting eleven.

Alvaro Morata had a good spell at Juventus, came back to Madrid, and couldn’t find enough minutes. He  pushed for a move to Chelsea and flopped.

Chicarito had a nondescript loan spell in 2014.

Gonzalo Higuain struggled for consistent game time in Madrid. Upon departure he promptly set the Serie A record for goals in a season. And it goes on.

Enter Luka Jovic.

Jovic, unlike the next players on this list, was perfectly not-terrible value at his price tag. He scored 27 goals in 48 appearances as a 21-year-old, all for an exciting Europa League semifinalist. He was linked to other clubs that play in Madrid’s tax bracket. And yet, there is little chance of Jovic’s deal being remembered fondly at the Bernabeu.

Personally, this is the signing I’m least sure belongs on the list. One-season wonders sometimes beget multi-season wonders. Even the tag “one-season wonder” isn’t fair at his age. But Jovic’s leash will be incredibly short. He’s competing with Vinicius Jr., Rodrygo, Mariano, Bale, Asensio, Benzema, Lucas Vazquez, and even James and Isco for attacking roles. At his price tag you’d expect a player to step straight into your starting XI. Jovic will find little game time unless if opens with a purple patch of form.

I just know, deep down, there is no shot Jovic is in a Madrid jersey in four years. He will be referred to as former Real Madrid player Luka Jovic, though, and there is no shame there. Expect him to follow in the footsteps of Alvaro Odriozola; Mariano; Dani Ceballos; Morata; Mateo Kovacic; Danilo; or Asier Illarramendi. They were all expensive young stars.

It is extremely understandable that there is little patience for development at Madrid. The club churns through coaches at a laughable rate. They feel the pressure. Florentino Perez has unknown, numerous enemies gunning for his throne. He feels the pressure.  The only way a player gets into the Madrid line-up is if he’s a Belgian goalkeeper he’s ready to play when called upon. Jovic is likely not. With Kylian Mbappe heavily linked to sign with Real, he will likely be in a different uniform (loan or makeweight) by summer 2021.  

3. Nathan Eovaldi, Pitcher, Boston Red Sox / 4 years, $68 million

The Red Sox resigned Eovaldi in December 2018, not 2019. Whatever: a) close enough and b) my exact thoughts when I saw the news were no shot. Eovaldi came over from the Rays as an interesting, low-cost live arm during the 2018 regular season. As you may remember, the Sox were an absolute juggernaut, winning 108 games and rampaging through the playoffs. Eovaldi had a 4.26 ERA (97 ERA+) thru ten starts in Tampa Bay, but with movement and velocity on a new cutter he adopted. He profiled as fill-in starter during an injury crisis that could make the postseason bullpen. He did that and more. After two sterling starts thru the ALCS, Eovaldi had that relief appearance in the World Series. The Sox would wrap up the championship two games later.

The Red Sox fell into a very niche kind of no-shot hole when they kept Eovaldi on a 4-year, $68MM deal: the small-sample, in-season championship hero. Past examples include: Aubrey Huff (2010; 2yr, $22MM; 0.0 WAR), Angel Pagan (2012; 4yr, $40MM; 1.6 WAR), and Marco Scutaro (2012; 3yr, $22MM; 1.9 WAR, retired after second year).

It’s fair to wonder how many millions Eovaldi made on the back of that playoff run and that Game 3 loss in particular. Imagine he came into the 12^th inning and gotten destroyed (multiple hyperlinks, 2019). Is Eovaldi a $68 million pitcher? No. Is he a $68 million pitcher in any world? No. Hindsight is 50/50 but again, I promise you I laughed when I saw his deal.

The driving impetus behind the contract was a beautiful loss in the World Series and the hope, underpinned by 123.1 innings, that a new fastball made the eight-year vet and two-time TJ under-goer a new pitcher. The Sox already had three aging question marks in their 2019 rotation. David Price got $31MM for a 2 WAR season this year. Rick Porcello got $21MM for a negative WAR season. Chris Sale signed a five-year, $145MM extension that was forced at best and already one of the league’s albatrosses at worst. That doesn’t fit with the looming extension for Mookie Betts and it takes away the flexibility to lock in Rafael Devers with an Acuna-esque deal. The Sox, barring trade, will have $77MM committed to three pitchers in 2020 (Price, Sale, Eovaldi). Those three may not combine for 50 starts. That’s what Dave Dombrowski does best: he comes in, trades away the farm, wins a lot of games, and leaves the house burning down.

Whether you look at Eovaldi’s injury history off the mound or his actual history on it, there’s no shot this works out for the Sox.

2. Terry Rozier, Point Guard, Charlotte Hornets / 3 years, $56.7 million

Several of these contracts (including #1) have no shot of working out because of the terrible fit they’ll provide with their respective teams. The Hornets don’t have this problem by virtue of being terrible everywhere on the court. In a vacuum, if you squint hard enough, signing Rozier for a large, four-year contract may make sense.

The problem is a combination of the player and the money.

In the 2018 playoffs, Rozier replaced an injured Kyrie Irving and, across 19 starts, put up 16.5 points on 40.6% FG/34.7% 3P% with 5.3 rebounds and 5.7 assists.

In the rest of his (regular-season) career, across 272 games, Rozier has averaged 7.7 points, 3.6 rebounds, and 2.3 assists on 37.4%/34.3% shooting.

37.4%.

Rozier has some potential upside as a 3 and D-esque point guard who’s the fourth best option on a good team. His career numbers, under one of the best coaches and systems in basketball, indicated that he should be paid about, I don’t know, not $57 million. Through four years, similarity scores put him as in the same league as: Buddy Hield (good!), Joe Harris (very not good thru four years), someone named Michael Dickerson (out of the league in 5), and Jamal Murray, although Murray has consistently rated above Rozier. Yes, two of the four of these players have gotten paid and probably deserve it. Those deals came after career-best years from both players. To be fair, no one on the 2018 Celtics acquitted themselves well, but come on.

Of course you don’t only get paid on past production. The Hornets surely added some millions based on Rozier’s potential. Credit to Zach Lowe for pointing out this tidbit by Mitch Kupchak, GM of the Hornets:

“We feel like if he was in the draft this year, Terry Rozier would have been a lottery pick.”

As Lowe points out: are you saying the 25-year-old you just threw $58 million at would have dominated college basketball last year? The Hornets will, in three years, be glad to have Rozier off their books. They’ll be able to then go max the next kind-of promising RFA (see Batum, Nicolas). Rozier would have to become a borderline top-10 point guard to justify the contract. He’s a ways off.

That’s what you get from the franchise that turned down four first-rounders to draft Frank Kaminsky.

1. Harrison Barnes / 4 years, $85 million

The course d’resistance. Harrison Barnes is the reason I wrote this article. I pretty much penciled him in at #1 and found four others to fill in behind him. When my NBA friend and I saw the news blast on his 5-year, $90MM contract, we had a 20-text conversation with “hahaha” attached to all of them. When this contract was signed, there was a close-to-zero probability he’d earn the $85 million, four-year deal. There was and is a zero percent chance that the Kings will look back fondly on this investment. Two reasons:

1. He’s not that good. Barnes was a fourth-option on the 73-win Warriors 2016 team. The Mavs, trying to bridge the gap between Dirk and… Dennis Smith Jr., had swung and missed on pretty much every valuable free agent they had chased. Tired of failure, they pivoted and maxed out one with no value.

That’s probably too harsh on Barnes. He’s, on paper, a multipositional defender that had the chance to become a supercharged 3-and-D option. The Mavs’ thinking also held that, freed from the ball usage of Steph and Klay, and under the tutelage of perennially-underrated warlock Rick Carlisle, that Barnes would realize that potential. He did not. His Mavericks career:

2016-2017: 79 games played; 0.8 VORP

2017-2018: 77 games played; 1.0 VORP

2018-2019: 49 games played; 0.3 VORP

There are two main market inefficiencies in NBA basketball. The first is a valuable player on a rookie contract. The second is a max-level player that’s so good, the max is a ceiling on what he should be paid. As a near-max player that resembled PJ Tucker, Barnes was a cap monstrosity from the second he penned his deal. The Mavericks feared Barnes opting into his player option for 2019-2020 and were happy to deal him for salary room. (A good rule of thumb: if a max-level player is traded for salary-cap relief, he shouldn’t be a max-level player. You can’t blame the Mavs – they had won 33 and 24 games with Barnes as their highest-paid and highest scoring player. A Rick Carlisle-led team finds it very hard to tank. Make it a Rick Carlisle/Harrison Barnes led team and picking high becomes a lot more attainable.

So what do the Kings do in the summer of 2019? They sign Harrison Barnes to a four-year, $85MM contract. This is an even bigger problem because…

• The Kings, long known for being the worst run 21^st century NBA franchise west of Manhattan, stumbled into a promising situation last year. They won a trade, sending Boogie (one-and-done with the Pelicans) for Buddy Hield. Recent draft picks had blossomed: DeAaron Fox, Bogdan Bogdanovic, Harry Giles, Luka Doncic, DeAndre Ayton, Trae Young, and Marvin Bagley showed potential. They pulled off a surprising 39-43 season under Dave Joerger with Fox and Hield having breakout seasons. They entered the offseason with cap space, a potential All-Star backcourt, and assets.

They used that cap space to sign Harrison Barnes.

Fox’s deal expires at the end of next season. He’ll deservedly get a max deal. Hield signed a 4 year, $94 million deal extension. Bogdanovic hits restricted free agency this offseason, where a weak free agent class will boost his payday. Giles’ deal will expire after the season. Signing Barnes isn’t bad in a vacuum. Much like the mistake of picking Saquon Barkley (article coming soon) the decision is terrible because of the opportunity costs involved.

The Kings saw a promising season after years of being a laughingstock. The yearning to make win-now, supplemental moves is understandable from every point of view but a team-building one. Sacramento is locked into its Fox-Hield-Barnes-Bagley core for the next three years and will have to scrape along the edges to retain Bogdanovich. There’s a high level of doubt that that group is good enough to be a consistent playoff candidate. Here’s a quick rundown on the risks the Kings took on, all but damning their first promising nucleus in years:

• Fox and Hield both made stratospheric leaps last season. There is a decent chance one or both slide backwards next year (although Fox is the real deal).
• Barnes is at his best as a stretch-four who can guard both positions. Do you know who else plays the four?
• The Kings should’ve taken Luka Doncic, yes. Put that aside. With their last seven first-round picks, the Kings selected two power forwards (Bagley, Labissiere) and three centers (Papagiannis, Cauley-Stein, Giles). Signing a $85MM man to play the four in 2019 wreaks of organizational malfeasance, especially given the man you just took second overall needs the majority of his minutes there. Giles and Bagley showed very promising flashes last season. Why would you possibly use your money to stunt their development?

In summary: the Kings took an enviable, raw roster stocked with talent and placed a hard ceiling over their long-term potential. The organization believed it had reached the mountaintop at 39-43. It called an end to its development phase. That cap space could’ve been used to sign someone who better fit a need or shopped around for assets. If the Kings are lucky, they’ll pick up 4 VORP for their troubles.

Was this the worst overpay of 2019? No. But it has the least chance of being a good deal of anything signed in 2019.

To be fair, he’s reportedly great in the locker room – PJ Tucker-esque (4 years, $32MM).

HONORABLE MENTION: DeWayne Dedmon, C, Sacramento Kings; 3yr/$39 million; Nick Foles, QB, Jacksonville Jaguars, 4yrs/$88 million (no shot, but I guess you need a QB); Le’Veon Bell, RB, New York Jets, 4yrs/$52.5 million (deserves to be on here but there were zero weapons for Darnold); Landon Collins, S, Washington Redskins, 6yrs/$84MM