re: Omer Asiks health status

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A public official cannot recover from a person who publishes a communication about a public official’s conduct or fitness unless the defendant knew that the statement was false or acted in reckless disregard of the statements truth or falsity. This standard is referred to as “actual malice,” although malice in this sense does not mean ill-will. Instead, the actual malice standard refers to the defendant’s knowledge of the truth or falsity of the statement. In this case Asik may not be able to establish actual malice but the post is walking a fine line and has no place in a public forum.

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FWIW, "malice" is defined in this context as a desire to inflict financial harm to the plaintiff, or if the public figure is a politician malice can include damaging his or her reputation with intent to harm the person's political career.

Regardless, even if Asik could sue for libel because someone made a joke comparing his weight loss from bacterial diarrhea to AIDS-induced weight loss, he'd spend more in legal fees than he could ever hope to recover. There are few if any people in the history of this website that have posted here that make the kind of money he does.

Filing suit would be akin to biting off his own nose to spite his face.

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If he could become adequate at catching passes and get better at securing rebounds he's in position to get and usually gets his hands on, he could very well be useful to someone.

If the Pels model succeeds, and the Pels, T-Wolves and other teams with star bigs have enough success to balance our the league from going all-out small-ball, pace-n-space, guard driven, Asik with the improvements suggested above would be an ideal rotation big to defend the paint and rebound.

The fact that he didn't seem to have such bad hands prior to arriving in NOLA suggests to me that maybe his eyesight is slightly off (same thing happened to an ex-LSU WR a few years back... Lafell I think, maybe Bowe). If it's not that then he just needs to practice catching passes more until he masters it.

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Bowe had lasik going into his senior year.

I agree with your assessment of Asik. I like how we are trying to go big with the rest of the league going small. If Asik can play like he did his first year here (and I don't expect him to at all), it would be awesome to consistently have 2 legit bigs on the court at all times. You would theoretically have the size and rebounding advantage over almost every team you play.

Asik has always had bad hands. The evolution of the league to such small ball has made him basically unplayable in crunch time, and I think his confidence is shot after being benched last year. He's just kind of a dinosaur the way that things in the league are now. If you can't contribute on offense at all, i.e. Sefolosha, Tony Allen, Roberson, etc., it's very difficult to get minutes on a winning team. Those guys are all first team All NBA defense type guys who are still unsigned and will be had on relatively cheap contracts.

FWIW. Pels ALWAYS put tweets about players' birthday.

Guess who's birthday is today?

Accident?

Interesting... Maybe whoever manages the Twitter account is just out celebrating and forgot?

I don't know what if anything can be taken from that.

I would like to revise my earlier statement when I said "he sucks". He really does play hard and rebounds well and agree the ball seems to end up in his hands a lot. I think my issue is he loses the ball WAY too easily and his shooting is atrocious, even point blank.

Obviously, it's been covered that he doesn't fit with the new direction of the team. Is there a team in the NBA that he does fit with? This is an honest question, not a smart arse comment.

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Pierre the Pelican

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Creepy looking AF.

Some TD posters (TigerATL etc), 42 (BSS), MM (twitter) and NOLAJake mentioned recently Asik and value of his contract.
I thought a little and I am not sure what is better.

First - facts.
1. Asik is owed 10,59m ; 11,28m, 11,97 m (3 millions guaranteed)
2. some facts from basketball insiders website: 6/21/19 — Team option on Omer Asik; 7/1/19 Omer Asik’s $12.0 million salary guarantees for 2019-20.
3. agreeing full buyout now and stretching Asik now - cap hit is 3,6m/7 years ; eating his salary one more year - it falls to 2,86m/5 years.

Small difference, smaller than cap hold for minimum roster spot.
Theoretically shorter deal gives us chance to trade him.

And here is a part hard for me to agree.
Asik is seen leaguewide as terrible player/dead salary. But his contract might be useful in the future where everyone will be looking for easiest way to dumping $$$$.
But it looks that teams are starting to think before spending money. So his unguaranteed money might not be useful.

Why? Take Rondo.
He had ~15 millions projected for 2017/18 (3 millions guaranteed). He had great end of the season, and terrible season in total. But he is not thrash as Asik.
Bulls tried to flip him before the season. But there were no takers...

We are assuming that Asik's contract will give us opportunities. Maybe. Maybe not.
We don't know how new financial reality will look now...

I am not saying that we should stretch him now.
I am saying that leaving his $$$ in books might not give us edge in the future.

We can clear 7m in cap space this year, and 7,6 next year. We will open roster spot. We will for sure stay below tax this year.

In the future - if everything clicks right - we will be a tax team. We will see how much Benson is willing to pay.

I just think and expect that those 7,5 millions this year, when Dell's job is on the line - should be used properly.

So go through the offseason with stretching in mind. And stretch.

yeah - it makes sense

wait and see is probably the best way for now

let's see where we will stand after summer aquisitions tax-wise...