Ten Of The Best New Contracts This Offseason
May 8th, 2014
[Originally published on Hoopsworld, 23rd September 2013.] The new Collective Bargaining Agreement is designed to save teams from themselves, and make reckless spending far harder to do. It works – most free agency contracts are now, frankly, well priced. Here, in no particular order, are ten of the best ones from this past offseason: Paul Millsap – Atlanta Hawks Millsap signed with Atlanta for two years at $9.5 million per year, a significant chunk of cap space for a team who have worked so diligently to cut as much payroll as possible. Reversing the direction of the franchise is initially tough to reconcile, yet it is worth it because of how good of value his deal represents. Millsap is signed to an amount comparable to his talent, for a short period of time. His deal only being two years long is of big help to the Hawks, both on their court and potentially on other teams. He provides Atlanta with the talent boost that will keep them out of the cellar – if you want bums on seats, you need that – while this contract makes him extremely tradeable. Millsap is a valued commodity around the league as a quality, versatile, two-way role player, and by getting him at the right price, Atlanta put themselves in a position to take advantage of that. And as long as they do, he’ll help them significantly as a player. Even rebuilding teams need that. Matt Barnes & Darren Collison – Los Angeles Clippers The two are listed together as they were both acquired via the non-taxpayer mid-level exception. On his first substantial multi-year contract, Barnes will earn $3.25 million next year with one further guaranteed year, while Collison gets the remaining $1.9 million. Collison comes from Dallas where he was somewhat exposed as […]
Preview Sort Of Thing: Sacramento Kings
October 20th, 2008
As an aspiring GM with no qualifications or career prospects to speak of, and whose sole outreach into the world of the NBA is this distinctly amateur and unattractive site full of mild slander, I enjoy certain advantages. One of those is the ability to do what I want, to a half-baked standard, and then to abandon it prematurely. This explains what happened with last year’s “30 teams in 30 or so days” series of predictions, where I started well, fell behind early, and then gave up roughly half way through. Get in. This year, we’re going to do it again. There will be predictions, and by the power of Greyskull, they’re going to be woeful. Even better than that, it’s October 19th, and the season starts in just over a week, yet there are 30 teams to cover. So don’t be surprised if I only do about…oooh, five? ShamSports.com – run by an amateur. The few posts that will be made are to be undertaken in a completely random order, with no semblance of logic or reasoning. And with that in mind, we begin with the Sacramento Kings. Sacramento Kings The Kings’ glory era ended a while ago. The days of the Adelman-era Kings, with Chris Webber, Vlade Divac, Hedo Turkoglu, Peja Stojakovic, Doug Christie and friends, are over. Webber’s knee stopped working, Turkoglu surprised us all by actually getting good, Christie’s now the white Dame Dash, and Divac now works for the Serbian government. Other than the incumbent Brad Miller, the final player from those days – Mike Bibby – was pawned off to Atlanta earlier this year for a rather generous return. And that was that. With a end of an old era should come the start of a new one. “The King Is Dead”, and […]
