Ten Of The Worst New Contracts This Offseason
May 8th, 2014
[Originally published on Hoopsworld, 30th 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. But not all of them. After taking a look at the best contracts of the offseason last week, here, in no particular order, are ten of the worst ones from this past offseason: Al Jefferson – Charlotte Bobcats The harsh but undeniable reality is that the Bobcats, regardless of the presence of Michael Jordan, have to pay over the odds on the free agent market to compensate for their franchise’s position. They’ve done that with Al Jefferson, paying him three years and $40.5 million, including a player option in the third year. That player option makes Jefferson extremely difficult to trade until the summer of 2015. And while they haven’t necessarily signed him to trade him, a team with such little foundation as Charlotte must position themselves to permit that as soon as possible. They haven’t. Instead, they’ve paid Jefferson to be the cornerstone of the team for at least the first two years of the deal, which he simply isn’t. Jefferson, a poor defender, is also an inefficient volume scorer who contributes on only one end and leads on neither. It looks like a strong commitment to the present, just as Jefferson looks like he is a centerpiece to his team. But appearances can be deceptive. Josh Smith – Detroit Pistons As with most of the players on this list, it is not necessarily the price paid so much as it is the purposelessness of paying it. Detroit, like Charlotte, has to pay an invisible tax (manifested through inflated contracts) to attract free agents. This is a reality that has […]
Preview Sort Of Thing: Portland Trail Blazers
October 20th, 2008
I write this post while speaking from inside a pair of Portland Trail Blazers shorts. It’s not the smartest choice of garb right now, given that it’s essentially snowing outside. But I’m wearing them anyway, because I’m a maverick, who doesn’t play by the rules, a Mad Max gone maniacal, a man whose killing expertise and suicidal recklessness make him a Lethal Weapon to anyone he works against. Or with. I own these shorts for two reasons: 1. As a cutting edge fashionista, I firmly believe in the simplified yet magnetic beauty of novelty oversized black shorts. 2. When I bought them back 2002, I counted myself as a Portland fan. Over time, this feeling has dissipated. As my NBA fandom has gone from “hardcore” to “oh Jesus just shut up already”, my allegiance to the Bulls became firmer than a Kevin Lyde backscreen, before slowing dying away into more of a general NBA kinship. Through that timeline, any Blazers allegiance was left by the wayside. However, I never retracted the right to be able to crank that support right back up when I wanted to. The time for that is now. (Note: I’m not claiming to be a Portland fan, even if I do invoke The Shorts Clause as a defence of any such claim. Instead, I am an NBA fan. And right now, all NBA fans are Portland fans. Or at least, they should be.) Everything is coming up Milhouse in Portland. The team has the best collection of young talent in the league, and easily the best that I’ve ever seen. Not even the 2002/03 Denver Nuggets can rival these bad boys. Every position is three deep, with the only hole in their rotation being at starting small forward, and even there it’s all relative, as the […]
