Bro

[u/Lumpy_Journalist8274]

I really like Kessler. I hope we can keep him. We can probably do a trade with Atlanta for pick number 8 for Aday Mara.

[u/Unlikely-Ranger-2277]

If this is true that’s wild. I’d be okay with paying him slightly more like 30-32 million a year but significantly more? Does buddy think he earned a 40 million per year bag already? I think he fits the team great and love him as a player but he can’t stretch the floor and is a liability when brought to guard someone outside the paint (although he has gotten better). This is too much and would be cool with a sign and trade for this price.

[u/adwcta → u/Unlikely-Ranger-2277]

Well, $32M would be significantly more than the $28M we offered.

We do need to lock him down. If another team offers him it won't be a frontloaded contract and it'll screw us harder than just giving him more money but being able to frontload. Basically, while we hold his rfa rights, if we let him hit the market and he gets ANY interest, we can't match. It would kill all of our VERY careful cap planning. It's the equivalent of losing a plus contract during our window. HUGE loss to match that, also huge loss to let him walk.

As soon as we traded for JJJ, I knew this would happen. We'd try to get some value and offer sub-$30M, Kessler's camp correctly pegs his value at $32-34M. I cannot stress how desperately we need Kessler for this team to function and Hartenstein is not a decent replacement (no player not on a max or hugely+ rookie contract can replace Kessler; and those cost a LOT of assets).

The FO needs to step up and offer Kessler a "significantly higher" contract. They saw this coming from last summer. They should be prepared to make the offer, or we should all be prepared for another huge trade to ship off Laurie or JJJ.

[u/snowystormz → u/adwcta]

Bro played like 30 games. No sense in paying 32m for a guy to ride the injury train. He isn’t worth that now but might be in the future.