Udonis Haslem

The idea of a one-club man is a romanticised ideal in sports, yet one increasingly impossible to achieve in this heightened free agency era. Even Paul Pierce eventually got traded. However, it does occasionally happen, and Luol Deng is one of the few true veterans in this league to have spent his whole career with one team. Indeed, the only players to have been with their current teams longer than Deng has been with Chicago are Kobe Bryant, Dirk Nowitzki, Nick Collison, the Miami duo of Udonis Haslem and Dwyane Wade, and the Spurs trio of Parker, Ginobili and Duncan, while Jameer Nelson and Anderson Varejao are the only other 2004 draftees to have never left the team that first signed them. This kind of longevity, then, is rare - usually, one party is sufficiently disgruntled with the other by now to have moved on.

[...] It is also not true to say that Miami have done nothing this offseason. Battier betters any team he is on, Cole has a skill set to contribute what is otherwise not present on the roster and the return of Udonis Haslem gives Miami the rare and special gift of a big man who contributes on both ends of the court, while also defaulting Chris Bosh into playing a lot of center. That, in itself, is a sufficient Ilgauskas replacement.

Haslem’s return, though, seems to have been determined to be the extra piece that gets them over the top. Without any determinable key acquisitions to speak of, save for the solid but somewhat redundant Battier, Miami’s biggest offseason acquisition will be a guy they signed as an undrafted rookie eight years ago. That’s a lot of trust to place in a backup. If Miami is going to get over the hump, they’re going to have to do it with the team they already had, the one that wasn’t quite good enough.

After the Jones buyout came their renouncements. With the team option on Mario Chalmers exercised, the team promptly renounced everyone other than Dwyane Wade [sic] and Joel Anthony. This meant that 10 free agents from the previous season were renounced; Jermaine O'Neal, Quentin Richardson, Udonis Haslem, Dorell Wright, Yakhouba Diawara, Rafer Alston, Carlos Arroyo, Jamaal Magloire, Shavlik Randolph and Kenny Hasbrouck. Some free agents from previous seasons were also still clogging up cap space; namely, Alonzo Mourning, Steve Smith, John Wallace, Wang Zhi Zhi, Gary Payton, Bimbo Coles, Christian Laettner, and Shandon Anderson. In total, before these renouncements took place, Miami's free agent cap holds amounted to a total of $88,184,132, $24,166,800 alone was for Jermaine O'Neal.

To facilitate all this, Udonis Haslem had had to be renounced. So in order to keep him, as they so badly wanted to, Miami had to use that space on him. As was the case with the big three, it involved Haslem taking a discounted contract that was below his market value, yet with the incentive of the stars around him, maximum raises and a big arse trade kicker (more on that later), Haslem was persuaded to do so. He signed a five year deal starting at $3,500,000, using up the last of Miami's cap space in doing so. And they still only had six players under contract.