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Young is better on the offensive and defensive ends of the court in comparison to thornton. Other than that, thornton is the better player.
ââ 2012 NBA Finals ââ The King has been crowned; Heat win 2012 NBA Finals! Bron Finals MVP.
- Thread in 'Sports & Training' Thread starter Started by allen3xis,
- Start date
Young is better on the offensive and defensive ends of the court in comparison to thornton. Other than that, thornton is the better player.
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You know I said Marcus Thornton and not Marcus Banks, right...?
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1. The Raptors "billbaord"under the baskets is stupid.
2. Whats Rondo wearing, PE 2011 Huarache?
2. Whats Rondo wearing, PE 2011 Huarache?
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And i said Nick Young and not Young Joc.
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Yep.
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PMatic, those are 2011 Hyperfuses.
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Originally Posted by bhzmafia14
@ this Rudy Gay guy.
Spoiler [+]
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Don't hate, we got it like that.
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I was so confused when i first saw that thing.Originally Posted by CripwalkinK
Don't hate, we got it like that.
mr marcus
Banned
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marcus thorton better than nick young
-Mr Marcus
-Mr Marcus
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Originally Posted by OHyeah10
I was so confused when i first saw that thing.Originally Posted by CripwalkinK
Don't hate, we got it like that.
I'm confused too. kept thinking that someone would run into it while on the court
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I'm thinking this is his last elite season. And when I say elite, meaning you expect him to go for 30 and when he doesn't its a surprise.
They have to play hard from the tip, and that's gone hurt his longevity and the knee is gone get balky at some point.
They have to play hard from the tip, and that's gone hurt his longevity and the knee is gone get balky at some point.
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On some
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No Sleep 'Til May: Breaking Down NBA Teams' Most Brutal Schedule Quirks
When the NBA released the truncated 2011-12 schedule in early December, SB Nation's NBA bloggers immediately looked at their teams' calendars to work up a good sense of outrage at the feats of stamina to be performed.
As a service to all readers, we asked those bloggers to send over their take on the most brutal stretch of their team's schedule. Here are all the responses we received, broken down loosely by month.
[h3]DECEMBER[/h3]
Gloriously, C.A. Clark of Silver Screen And Roll gave his take on the L.A. Lakers' schedule before the CP3 trade shenanigans went down:
When the NBA released the truncated 2011-12 schedule in early December, SB Nation's NBA bloggers immediately looked at their teams' calendars to work up a good sense of outrage at the feats of stamina to be performed.
As a service to all readers, we asked those bloggers to send over their take on the most brutal stretch of their team's schedule. Here are all the responses we received, broken down loosely by month.
[h3]DECEMBER[/h3]
Gloriously, C.A. Clark of Silver Screen And Roll gave his take on the L.A. Lakers' schedule before the CP3 trade shenanigans went down:
I hate to give the conspiracy theorists more ammunition, but there's no way around it ... the Lakers schedule is gloriously lacking in particularly difficult situations. I'm hard pressed to find any situation to deal with more difficult than the fact that the Lakers must play their first 5 (Andrew Bynum-less) games over a stretch of 7 days, including their only B2B2B, to start off the season, but 4 of those 5 games at home, and only Chicago is a top notch opponent.
The 6-game Grammy roadie is tame in terms of opponents and spacing, there's a B2B B2B B2B stretch but 4 of those games are at home and none are against top notch competition, and the only stretch of schedule that combines tough opponents and even moderately rough circumstances is the following: Feb. 19 at Phoenix, Feb. 20 vs. Portland, Feb. 22 at Dallas, Feb. 23 at Oklahoma City.
And if the Lakers flip Bynum as part of any deal for Paul or Howard? Then it becomes tough to even tell the difference between this year's schedule and any other year's. Sorry guys.
Oh no, we're sorry.
The New Jersey Nets jump right into the mess that is the compressed schedule. From NetsDaily:
The Nets start the season with six games in eight days. Four of the six are on the road, and the two home games are each the second night of a back-to-back against a playoff team (Atlanta and Indiana).
The Oklahoma City Thunder will also receive an early test. From Welcome To Loud City:
For the Thunder, it looks like the league wants to test them early. 12 of the Thunder's first 14 games are against playoff teams from last season, starting on Christmas Day (Magic) and running through Jan. 16 (Celtics).
[h3]JANUARY[/h3]
The early part of the schedule is not kind to the Milwaukee Bucks. Here's Frank Madden from BrewHoop:
While they have a good shot of starting the season 3-0 (at Charlotte, vs. Minnesota, vs. Washington), the Bucks play 12 of the first 18 games on the road including a seven-day, five-game Western road trip to open January. That trip will see them visiting the Nuggets, Jazz, Kings, Clippers and Suns, though it could have been worse. Their original schedule featured 12 of 16 road games in the month of January, whereas the revised calendar features "just" 11 of 17. The latter also spares them originally planned January visits to Orlando, Oklahoma City and New Orleans -- nice places to visit in the winter, but less so if it involves playing NBA basketball.
The Charlotte Bobcats will meet their threatened doom in January, too. Here's Ben Swanson of Rufus On Fire:
The Bobcats face a particularly difficult stretch of games between January 3 and January 17, not so much in consistent quality of their opponents, but due to exhaustion. In those 15 days, the Bobcats play only back-to-backs and have one back-to-back-to-back, for a total of 11 games. Six of those games are against 2011 playoff teams: Knicks (twice), Hawks (twice), Pacers and Magic. Six games are away, including four away games against the aforementioned playoff teams. Tyrus Thomas and DeSagana Diop may die.
The Sacramento Kings' only back-to-back-to-back is scheduled for early January, and the rest of the month is just as tough. From Sactown Royalty:
The calendar won't be kind to the Kings early. By the time the All-Star break hits in late February, the Kings will have played 11 games at home and 21 on the road.
The Toronto Raptors won't be having an awesome January, in all likelihood. From Raptors HQ:
Raptors play 19 games in 31 days in January, most against teams that made playoffs last year, or are expected to this season. As well, the club's lone B2B2B series is in that month, and 12 of the 19 games are on the road.
Happy 2011-12 season Raptors' fans!
The Atlanta Hawks get a double-whammy of pain in January. From Jason Walker of Peachtree Hoops:
The Hawks play Miami and Chicago twice each in a 5-day stretch in early January. A fun, instant litmus test of the team ... unless you have to play through it with an 8-man team, which the depth-challenged Hawks will have to do.
Then, at the end of the month, we embark on an interesting roadie that will be sure to maximize the team's frequent flyer mileage. First off to Wisconsin to play the Bucks, then down to Texas for the Spurs (where the Hawks seldom, if ever, win), then back north to Michigan for the Pistons, back down to the Bayou for the Hornets, and finally back north to Canada to wrap the month in Toronto. I don't care if the Hornets or Raptors are winless when the Hawks roll in, I'm exhausted just picturing the Indiana Jones like map trail going back and forth, from north to south, in the road trip ... those will be tough games no matter what.
The Phoenix Suns get gnarly in January. From Bright Side Of The Sun:
Here's a brutal 5-game stretch for the Suns, spanning a little over a week: Jan. 15 at San Antonio, Jan. 17 at Chicago, Jan. 18 at New York, Jan. 20 at Boston, Jan. 23 at Dallas
Only one back to back in there, but a road trip against five top-notch playoff teams. I'd be OK with the Suns winning one of those games, thrilled with taking two and not totally surprised to get swept.
The Indiana Pacers have a bad patch in January that doesn't even include either of the team's back-to-back-to-backs. From Tom Lewis of Indy Cornrows:
The Pacers play 15 of their first 22 games on the road with the worst stretch of games coming toward the end of January. They play the Lakers in the last game of their only West Coast swing, then have a day off before hosting Orlando, then hit the road the next day to play at Chicago, Boston and Orlando over the next five days.
The Chicago Bulls will be tested beginning in late January. From Blog-A-Bull:
Bulls have a 2-week, 9-game road trip starting the end of January: January 29 at Heat, January 30 at Wizards, February 1 at Sixers, February 2 at Knicks, February 4 at Bucks, February 6 at Nets, February 8 at Hornets, February 10 at Bobcats, February 12 at Celtics.
Luckily there are some bad teams in there, but still.
The Philadelphia 76ers hit a rough stretch at just about the same time. From Liberty Ballers:
For the Sixers, this six-game in nine-night stretch is probably the worst: January 30 vs. Magic, February 1 vs. Bulls, February 3 vs. Heat, February 4 at Hawks, February 6 vs. Lakers, February 8 vs. Spurs.
[h3]FEBRUARY[/h3]
The New York Knicks will open February in a bad way. From Seth Rosenthal of Posting And Toasting:
Worst stretch I see is the beginning of February: Seven games in 10 days with a silly amount of back-and-forth traveling. February begins with the Knicks' only back-to-back-to-back, a pair of home games against the Bulls and Nets with a day trip to Boston sandwiched in between. After facing the Jazz in New York and Wizards in Washington, they'll finish the stretch with a back-to-back at home against the Lakers on the 10th and in Minnesota the next night.
Dave Deckard of Blazer's Edge sees trouble in February for the Portland Trail Blazers:
Six games in eight days from February 14th through the 21st. Home vs. WAS on the 14th, at GSW on the 15th, home vs. LAC on the 16th, home vs. ATL on the 18th, at LAL on the 20th, home vs. SAS on the 21st.
Then, of course, they get seven days straight with no games. PLAY PLAY PLAY PLAY PLAY ... stop! Now go away and come back in a week. Stupid All-Star Break.
Portland also has a 5-game-in-8-night spree starting on New Year's Day where they'll have to travel between every single one of the games. They'll either be on the court or on a plane.
[h3]MARCH[/h3]
The aging Dallas Mavericks will find no respite in March. From Mavs Moneyball's L.J. Rotter.
I'd say this is a rough stretch: March 5 at Oklahoma City, March 6 vs. New York, March 8 at Phoenix, March 9 at Sacramento and March 10 at Golden State. A back-to-back followed by a back-to-back-to-back on the road. I know there's a day in between, but COME ON. Jason Kidd is going to need that cryochamber something FIERCE.
From March 11-23, the Boston Celtics go on the road. Here's Jeff Clark of CelticsBlog to break it down:
The Celtics have a West coast road trip that swings back East in March. In fact, it takes up most of March and features three separate back-to-backs and a total of eight games in 12 days before they can taste home cooking again.
Matt Watson of Detroit Bad Boys notes that the Pistons pointed out their own dastardly stretch in a press release announcing the revamped schedule:
The Pistons have an extended road stretch from March 12 through March 30 where the club plays nine of 10 games on the road. Detroit embarks on a five-game road trip, its longest of the season, on March 12 visiting Utah, Sacramento (March 14), Phoenix (March 16), the L.A. Clippers (March 1and Denver Nuggets (March 21). Following a brief home stop against the Miami HEAT at The Palace on Friday, March 23, the team heads back on the road for a four-game road trip stopping in New York (March 24), Washington (March 26), Cleveland (March 2
Steve Perrin of Clips Nation gauged the L.A. Clippers schedule before he knew Chris Paul would be running point for his team. That doesn't make this stretch in March too much prettier.
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Just read that John Wall got taller since last season...he's a legit 6'5".
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Lol I love seeing this gif just for the fact that that's one of my homiesOriginally Posted by MrONegative
On some
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The inside story on how the Chris Paul deal got done.
Link
Spoiler [+]
CP3-to-Clippers: The inside story of a rare mega-deal
It was a trade seven months in the making, and one that died three times on the operating table before being resuscitated. Before Chris Paul showed up on a podium at the Clippers' practice facility last week, he was a Knick in waiting, and a Laker for a minute, and up until Saturday, when Neil Olshey got the final e-mail confirming that the trade was final, Paul still wasn't completely sure where he was going.
Olshey was around in 2008 when the Clippers traded Cuttino Mobley to the Knicks, only to see New York counter that the heart condition Mobley had played with for years gave them pause -- unless L.A. wanted to sweeten the deal. (They finally waived Mobley's physical, though he never played for New York and sued the Knicks last month, claiming New York's doctors were inclined not to let him play.)
Moral: You never know. Especially if you're the Clippers.
But the deal went through, though many around the league are furious with the way the league, which owns the Hornets, injected itself into the trade talks, rejecting what appeared to be a done deal that would have made Paul a Laker. Forgive the Clippers if they can't work up a few tears that their crosstown-and NBA-royalty neighbors are ticked off they didn't get what they want. For once, the breaks went their way, and the conspiracy theorists can go pound salt.
No matter the machinations, at the end of the day, Olshey -- the Clippers' second-year vice president of basketball operations and general manager -- and Dell Demps, his second-year counterpart in New Orleans, had to figure out how to make a deal with one another. And they did.
The art of the NBA deal is a never-ending series of phone calls, texts, proposals and counterproposals. It's hard enough to get two teams to make a trade. Now, throw in the commissioner of the NBA acting as one team's general manager -- while trying to find a buyer for said team, with all of the contradictory issues that produces -- a glamour franchise desperate to get younger and continue winning championships also trying to make a deal, high-profile agents with their own agendas, getting up to speed on new rules that had a direct impact on the talks and a Twitterverse that creates conventional wisdom in a matter of seconds, allowing fans to create their own echo chamber, and the machinations of this particular deal became the stuff of novels.
But -- maybe for different reasons -- Olshey and Demps persevered. And the Clippers not only wound up with Paul, but with Caron Butler and Chauncey Billups to go with DeAndre Jordan and Mo Williams and, of course, Bad Blake.
"What I learned about Dell is he's no pushover," Olshey said Saturday night. "He's a pretty creative thinker. He had all kinds of deals going ... if you're going to go do a deal with him, make sure you know what it is you're exactly after. Because he's going to do it all the way through."
There have been numerous reports that Demps was neutered by the league at the last, cast aside as Stern, league president of basketball operations Joel Litvin and vice president of operations Stu Jackson took control of the negotiations. Demps and Stern have denied this, and both have cited a "miscommunciation" between the Hornets and the league that led New Orleans to initially believe the Lakers deal would get done. The Lakers, and Rockets, see it differently, of course, with each team making its feelings known through anonymous sources to its respective local media in the last week.
There are legit reasons to criticize how the NBA handled the deal and, regardless of the league's role, the public perception that Demps was powerless. It's also hard not to see why Demps may well have liked the initial deal that would have brought veterans like Luis Scola and Lamar Odom to New Orleans; altruism is fine and all, but Demps wouldn't be faulted if he wanted to try and hold onto his job, and those players would certainly have a better chance of getting the Hornets to the playoffs than the young players and picks for whom the NBA was pushing.
"He's got to sell this asset (the team) and get value," a source involved in the discussions said last week. "In the short term, people may say he's shooting himself in the foot and not improving the value of the asset."
Demps didn't want to talk about any of that this weekend, though he would say that he and Olshey started talking at the pre-Draft camp in Chicago in June.
"We were friendly," Olshey said. "I wouldn't say we're friends. When Dell got into player personnel we'd give each a ride to a game or sit next to each other at dinner. Dell was pro personnel before. He used to do a lot of the games. He was somebody you started seeing consistently on the road the last five years. I had never talked about a deal (with him) before. We're both neophyte GMs."
While other teams tried to convince the Hornets to send Paul their way, Olshey had to convince his owner, Donald Sterling.
For decades, Sterling has made money and fired people, all the way through Mike Dunleavy, the Clippers' former GM that Olshey replaced in 2010. And under Sterling's stewardship -- there were, of course, the sexual and housing discrimination lawsuits, the dismissals of employees like Bill Fitch and Dunleavy and the refusal to pay them until they went to court -- the Clippers remained a national joke. But ever since Olshey got the job, Sterling has given him the green light to make moves. He let Olshey trade Baron Davis and the Draft pick that wound up going first overall in June for Williams, clearing crucial cap space. But there was a lot more work to do. In early July, Olshey began composing a 20-page presentation for Sterling in which he laid out scenarios for three superstars -- Dwight Howard, Deron Williams or Paul -- and what it would take to get each one of them from their respective teams.
In doing so, Olshey was putting into practice what he'd learned in L.A.'s front office. He'd started in basketball coaching the camp circuits, then as a workout guy for agent Arn Tellem, helping develop players before the Draft. He worked his way up the food chain for the Clippers, from director of player personnel in 2003, to assistant coach to assistant general manager. Watching then-GM Elgin Baylor and, then, Dunleavy, work with their boss, Olshey learned a valuable lesson: always make sure Sterling is in the loop. He might say yes, he might say no, but what he didn't like was to be surprised. If you believed in a deal and could recommend it, he'd listen. Sterling gave the go-ahead to keep pursuing all three, but quickly, it became apparent that the best target was Paul.
As the lockout continued, Olshey and Demps kept talking to one another. The Hornets had given Paul and his agent, Leon Rose, permission to make deals with other teams, but there were really only three teams for whom Paul wanted to play -- the Knicks, Lakers or Clippers. (That didn't stop the Warriors from trying to get involved, and there were talks between Golden State and New Orleans, but Paul never made a commitment to staying in Golden State after the 2011-12 season.) It quickly became evident, though, that New York didn't have nearly enough valuable pieces to make a serious run at Paul; most of the Knicks' good assets went to Denver last season in the Carmelo Anthony deal. And even though the Knicks, according to a source involved in the discussions, would have dealt anyone other than Anthony for Paul -- including Amare Stoudemire, if need be -- the Hornets weren't interested. Nor was Paul interested in going to New York if it meant Stoudemire would pass him in the night down to New Orleans.
So, the Lakers and Clippers.
But, was Paul really serious about playing for the Clippers? Was he just using them as a stalking horse to make sure the Lakers paid up? The Clippers had been down this road before; they genuinely believed Kobe Bryant was coming their way in 2004 as a free agent, only to see him re-up with Jerry Buss' crew. They wanted assurances that he'd be around for at least two years, requiring him to "opt in" for the final year of his contract in 2012-13.
"We had talked early in the process," Olshey said. "I said to Dell, we can take this as far as we can take it. But I can't take Package A and rent him for 66 games. Package B is, he's coming, he's extending. I said I need to hear it from Chris. I'm not hearing it from Leon; I'm not hearing it from you; I'm not hearing it from Rich Paul (part of LRMR Marketing, which reps LeBron James, among others, along with Paul). We got on the phone and talked for two hours. There's no way a guy knows that much about our roster and what we were doing if he wasn't invested. Chris got off the phone saying, 'That's where I want to be.' "
Olshey had his own issues outside of the Paul talks, all centering on how to avoid exactly what Demps was now going through with Paul. Griffin, was entering his third season in Los Angeles, and in this new NBA era, that meant the Clippers were already on the clock. His options for 2012 and 2013 had already been picked up, but if Olshey didn't start surrounding him with more talent, Griffin would surely start looking around and the recruiting pitches would get harder to fight off. The Clippers needed a small forward that teams would defend more stoutly than they had last year's incumbent at the position, Ryan Gomes. The Clippers had three primary targets -- Tayshaun Prince, Grant Hill and Caron Butler -- and dealing Davis to Cleveland had created enough cap room to make a strong run at one of them.
Olshey knew someone would give an offer sheet to his young, improving center, DeAndre Jordan; he'd budgeted between $8 and $8.5 million per year for Jordan, but suspected the actual price would be higher, so a decision would have to be made on whether to match if the sheet came in higher. (He couldn't give Jordan a frontloaded deal like the Thunder had done with Nick Collison and Washington had with Andray Blatche, because that would have used up his cap room.) And the Clips would need a shooting guard if it had to put its own starter, Eric Gordon, in the deal for Paul.
When the lockout finally ended on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, the talks intensified. The Clippers' president, Andy Roeser, was in discussions with the league. The Rockets were available as a conduit, but they wanted a quality big man coming back, and Olshey certainly wasn't going to give them Griffin or Paul, and they weren't much interested in starting center Chris Kaman as the centerpiece of a deal. So Houston went to the Lakers, who were willing to move Pau Gasol if it brought them Paul. Demps spoke with or e-mailed his team president Hugh Weber four or five times a day, and was in constant communication with coach Monty Williams. It was a tricky, complicated dance for Demps; he not only was juggling three or four different deals, he had to gauge the trade value of the players he might get in the deal in case the Hornets decided to flip them for additional assets. And he had to communicate with the league office. Some days, the Hornets were ready to deal with the Clippers; other days, they leaned toward the Lakers.
The Lakers worked relentlessly toward a deal, and Demps told Olshey what he would need to send Paul to the Clippers -- Kaman, second-year forward Al-Farouq Aminu, Gordon, second-year point guard Eric Bledsoe and both of the Clippers' 2012 first-round picks, their own and Minnesota's, which was unprotected and a huge chip. Olshey said no; he wouldn't have much of a chance to entice Paul to stay past the season or make Griffin happy with a bunch of second-round picks. In addition, the Clippers still needed a three; Hill had narrowed his choices to San Antonio, New York or staying in Phoenix. And on Dec. 8, the Clippers were stunned when Prince decided to go back to Detroit; L.A. thought Prince would be able to handle being a third option, given his history playing off of Billups and Rip Hamilton in Detroit. L.A. had to move; Butler was the only three left on their board. They went above what they expected to get him -- three years for $24 million -- but they couldn't take the chance that he'd sign in New Jersey or Chicago or San Antonio.
On Dec. 8, the Board of Governors was meeting in New York to finalize the passage of the new collective bargaining agreement. The three-team deal between the Lakers, Rockets and Hornets was in place. Demps called Olshey, and told him: This is the last shot. This is what it's going to take. The "ask" was the same: all the Clippers' young players and picks. L.A. passed. Demps said he had another deal in place that he had to take -- the Lakers-Rockets deal, that would send Lamar Odom, Luis Scola, Kevin Martin, Goran Dragic and Houston's 2012 first-rounder for New York to New Orleans.
"I said 'I'm happy for you,' " Olshey recalled.
The Hornets had to move; they couldn't, in the words of one official involved in the talks, let Paul leave "and then the team goes to crap." The franchise had gotten commitments for 10,000 season tickets from the fan base -- a base that knew Paul wasn't likely to be around after this season. So the team had to put a representative product on the floor; a true rebuild would take three or four years. The bond between the team and the city is real; many of the team's employees lived through Hurricane Katrina like the rest of the city, and there is a genuine empathy for the people of the city and what they've endured.
But the league, while sympathetic, was evidently looking at a bigger picture; namely, would the Hornets be viable in three years with an aging and expensive core of Odom, Scola and Martin? And it would be naive to think the potential sale of the franchise wouldn't be positively affected -- that is, the team would go for a higher price -- if the roster were younger and cheaper? Stern stepped in. According to another source who was briefed on the talks, the parties waited for a call from the league on the night of Dec. 8 to finalize things, a call that never came. (This would jibe with the claim Stern made in his news conference last week that, while the Hornets thought a deal was imminent, there never was an "official" trade call between the parties and that a trade was never officially submitted. ) The source claims that Stern simply told the Hornets, "we're not doing that deal."
Stern insisted during his media availability last week that pressure from owners, including Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert and his now-infamous e-mail, who didn't want the Lakers to acquire Paul, did not factor in his decision to veto the initial trade.
"I assure all that, first, my decision was made long before I received that e-mail, and, second, I wouldn't have acted upon it even if I had received it, because my goal here was to determine what improved the Hornets,"
Stern said. "There's been some speculation that there was a reason why we didn't want -- I did not want to have Chris go to a team in a large market, because that somehow would have some impact on life under the collective bargaining agreement. All I can say there is that's not the responsiblity that I undertook as the person responsible for ultimately making decisions on transactions like this on behalf of the New Orleans Hornets."
The next day, Dec. 9, the league informed the Lakers and Hornets that in order to approve the deal, the NBA wanted different, young pieces coming from Los Angeles than the 32-year-old Odom -- the only significant piece that fit that bill would have been center Andrew Bynum -- and at least one more first-round pick to go with the first-rounder that Houston had already committed. The Lakers tried to piece the deal together again, but wouldn't include Bynum, who had to be held back in case the Lakers could, down the road, make a deal with the Orlando Magic for Dwight Howard. The league insisted. (In addition, a source says the sides couldn't agree on financial considerations.) On the 10th, the Lakers pulled out of the talks with the Hornets for Paul and sent Odom to the Mavericks for Dallas' 2012 first-rounder.
Suddenly, the Clippers were all alone in their pursuit of Paul. The rag-tag, vagabond Clippers had no serious opponents for one of the NBA's true superstars. That was crucial, because Rose, the powerful CAA agent, was determined to get his client where he wanted. And the only one of the three teams left was the Clippers. Rose became an important ally for Olshey and the Clippers, determined not to let the deal die.
The Clippers and Hornets re-engaged in discussions Dec. 9 and on Dec. 10, the talks got very, very serious. The Clippers thought they had a deal. So did the Hornets. The problem was, they were talking about different deals.
L.A. thought it had agreed to a deal for Kaman, Aminu, Gordon and the pick. The Hornets thought they agreed to a deal for those four players, as well as the Clippers' other first-rounder and Bledsoe. That's the risk when a half-dozen people are involved and they're all talking to each other; the league kept holding out for more. The problem was, the Clippers had already told Sterling they had a deal for the four pieces, not six. But the Hornets were now saying it was six. The deal died again.
But this time, they left the talks a little more encouraged. If the NBA was going to insist on young players for Paul, there were only a couple of teams, like Oklahoma City and Minnesota, that had the requisite number of pieces. And Paul wasn't interested in a long-term deal with either team, even the up-and-coming Thunder, and even though he had enjoyed his two years in Oklahoma City when the Hornets were relocated there after Katrina.
First, though, the Clippers had to deal with Jordan.
He signed a four-year, $43 million offer sheet from the Warriors on Dec. 10. Olshey's wife had arranged a party at their house that afternoon at 5 p.m.. At 4:20 p.m., a messenger delivered Jordan's offer sheet. Olshey went back to the office. And here, the Clippers caught a huge break.
They knew the Warriors were planning to sign Jordan to a sheet, and there was never any doubt they would match -- Jordan is close with Griffin and his explosive talents at both ends of the court were too valuable to ever consider letting him go. But Golden State waited a couple of days -- a couple of important days -- before officially conveying the offer.
If the Warriors had given Jordan the offer sheet on the first day they were allowed (Dec.
the Clippers would have matched the sheet. But in doing so, they would have used up all of their available cap room. The Warriors waited because they were still hopeful they could make a deal for free-agent center Tyson Chandler, but Chandler wound up agreeing to terms with the Knicks that weekend on a four-year, $60 million deal. But that deal couldn't be made official until New York amnestied Billups -- which happened on Sunday.
Billups and his agent, Andy Miller, had made it clear they didn't want anybody to claim him out of the amnesty pool once he was cut by the Knicks. If Billups cleared waivers he'd be free to go wherever he wanted, and everyone in the NBA universe knew he wanted to go to the Heat. But Olshey saw an opportunity. He still had cap room -- he didn't have to match the sheet on Jordan until Wednesday. He would need a guard if Gordon was going to be in the deal for Paul. But if he got Paul, it would be easier to convince Billups that it was worth his while to come to L.A.
"The one positive in all of this is it's not like it's your father's Oldsmobile," Olshey said. "It's not like it's three years ago and we were hijacking a guy to a 19-win team. If we were the team from a year ago, I might have given in. But you can't tell me, coming in to play with the roster we have, and being a starter, and Chauncey can now play the ball more with the ball out of his hands, we might extend his career two or three years. It was not comfortable, sitting with Chauncey. It was not a comfortable thing. Moving Eric Gordon, our second best player, the confidence we could move him to get Chris had a lot to do with Chauncey being here."
Billups would clear waivers at 3 p.m. Los Angeles time. At 2:53, the Clippers claimed him with a winning bid of $2,000,032. (The 32, signfiying Griffin's uniform number, was Roeser's idea.)
On Tuesday afternoon, the Clippers gathered their players in the film room at the team's practice facility in Playa Del Rey. Management told them the team was moving on from Paul. They had to try, he told them; Paul was a Hall of Fame-caliber player. But the deal was dead. You are, he told them, the guys we're going to war with.
But Tuesday night, the Hornets (on behalf of themselves, or with the league's prompting; we'll probably never know) called back. They wanted to take one more pass at it. Roeser contnued talks with Litvin, but the Clippers made it clear: one first-round pick, not both, and either Gordon or Bledsoe, not both. They would have one opportunity to convince Sterling that this was worth doing; Sterling isn't interested in process. When they went to Sterling, it would be to set up a trade call, not to continue haggling. There couldn't be any more negotiating. If the Clippers had to start the season with Billups and Gordon in the backcourt, and Butler, Griffin and Kaman up front, with Williams and Jordan coming off the bench, they could live with that. And they could sell that to their fans.
It was yes or no time.
On Wednesday, New Orleans, with the league concurring, said yes.
The Clippers would send Gordon, Aminu, Kaman and Minnesota's number one to the Hornets for Paul and two second-round picks. In five days, Los Angeles had signed Butler, claimed Billups, matched Jordan's offer sheet and traded for Paul. It was a transformation, but proof positive that, again, if you draft the right guys (Jordan was a second-round pick in 2008), trade for the right guys and trade the right guys away (remember the Clippers cleared all that room by dealing Zach Randolph to Memphis in 2009. Now, that was done to clear room to try and sign James in 2010, but nonetheless, the room was there), sign the right guys and pay everyone the right amount of money, you can build a contending team.
Making a final judgment on this trade before we know what the Minnesota pick turns into, or what Aminu becomes, or whether the Hornets will keep all those assets or flip them for more assets, would be ridiculous.
The Hornets can sell their future to their fans and a streamlined payroll to an owner who will keep the team in New Orleans, and if stinking on the court for a couple of years is the price to ensure there will be games in New Orleans Arena a decade from now, the league obviously thought that was worth doing. (You hope that when and if the Hornets are sold, the Commish makes it clear he wants the current management and coaching staffs in New Orleans to be retained as a condition of sale.)
Even though the Clippers are just about sold out of season tickets after this glorious spasm of activity, and even though Williams vows he'll be Sixth Man of the Year, there is no guarantee that things will work out, at least immediately, for the Clippers the way they seem clear on paper. Paul does have knees that are a concern for others around the league, and he's only made a commitment through the 2012-13 season. And Butler's less than a year removed from a ruptured right patellar tendon. And Jordan is now a starter, expected to be consistent every night. And Billups is only under contract for this season. And ...
"Blake has an extension (available) six months from now," Olshey said Saturday, his new world, officially, seconds old. "And I'd like him to sign it."
It was a trade seven months in the making, and one that died three times on the operating table before being resuscitated. Before Chris Paul showed up on a podium at the Clippers' practice facility last week, he was a Knick in waiting, and a Laker for a minute, and up until Saturday, when Neil Olshey got the final e-mail confirming that the trade was final, Paul still wasn't completely sure where he was going.
Olshey was around in 2008 when the Clippers traded Cuttino Mobley to the Knicks, only to see New York counter that the heart condition Mobley had played with for years gave them pause -- unless L.A. wanted to sweeten the deal. (They finally waived Mobley's physical, though he never played for New York and sued the Knicks last month, claiming New York's doctors were inclined not to let him play.)
Moral: You never know. Especially if you're the Clippers.
But the deal went through, though many around the league are furious with the way the league, which owns the Hornets, injected itself into the trade talks, rejecting what appeared to be a done deal that would have made Paul a Laker. Forgive the Clippers if they can't work up a few tears that their crosstown-and NBA-royalty neighbors are ticked off they didn't get what they want. For once, the breaks went their way, and the conspiracy theorists can go pound salt.
No matter the machinations, at the end of the day, Olshey -- the Clippers' second-year vice president of basketball operations and general manager -- and Dell Demps, his second-year counterpart in New Orleans, had to figure out how to make a deal with one another. And they did.
The art of the NBA deal is a never-ending series of phone calls, texts, proposals and counterproposals. It's hard enough to get two teams to make a trade. Now, throw in the commissioner of the NBA acting as one team's general manager -- while trying to find a buyer for said team, with all of the contradictory issues that produces -- a glamour franchise desperate to get younger and continue winning championships also trying to make a deal, high-profile agents with their own agendas, getting up to speed on new rules that had a direct impact on the talks and a Twitterverse that creates conventional wisdom in a matter of seconds, allowing fans to create their own echo chamber, and the machinations of this particular deal became the stuff of novels.
But -- maybe for different reasons -- Olshey and Demps persevered. And the Clippers not only wound up with Paul, but with Caron Butler and Chauncey Billups to go with DeAndre Jordan and Mo Williams and, of course, Bad Blake.
"What I learned about Dell is he's no pushover," Olshey said Saturday night. "He's a pretty creative thinker. He had all kinds of deals going ... if you're going to go do a deal with him, make sure you know what it is you're exactly after. Because he's going to do it all the way through."
There have been numerous reports that Demps was neutered by the league at the last, cast aside as Stern, league president of basketball operations Joel Litvin and vice president of operations Stu Jackson took control of the negotiations. Demps and Stern have denied this, and both have cited a "miscommunciation" between the Hornets and the league that led New Orleans to initially believe the Lakers deal would get done. The Lakers, and Rockets, see it differently, of course, with each team making its feelings known through anonymous sources to its respective local media in the last week.
There are legit reasons to criticize how the NBA handled the deal and, regardless of the league's role, the public perception that Demps was powerless. It's also hard not to see why Demps may well have liked the initial deal that would have brought veterans like Luis Scola and Lamar Odom to New Orleans; altruism is fine and all, but Demps wouldn't be faulted if he wanted to try and hold onto his job, and those players would certainly have a better chance of getting the Hornets to the playoffs than the young players and picks for whom the NBA was pushing.
"He's got to sell this asset (the team) and get value," a source involved in the discussions said last week. "In the short term, people may say he's shooting himself in the foot and not improving the value of the asset."
Demps didn't want to talk about any of that this weekend, though he would say that he and Olshey started talking at the pre-Draft camp in Chicago in June.
"We were friendly," Olshey said. "I wouldn't say we're friends. When Dell got into player personnel we'd give each a ride to a game or sit next to each other at dinner. Dell was pro personnel before. He used to do a lot of the games. He was somebody you started seeing consistently on the road the last five years. I had never talked about a deal (with him) before. We're both neophyte GMs."
While other teams tried to convince the Hornets to send Paul their way, Olshey had to convince his owner, Donald Sterling.
For decades, Sterling has made money and fired people, all the way through Mike Dunleavy, the Clippers' former GM that Olshey replaced in 2010. And under Sterling's stewardship -- there were, of course, the sexual and housing discrimination lawsuits, the dismissals of employees like Bill Fitch and Dunleavy and the refusal to pay them until they went to court -- the Clippers remained a national joke. But ever since Olshey got the job, Sterling has given him the green light to make moves. He let Olshey trade Baron Davis and the Draft pick that wound up going first overall in June for Williams, clearing crucial cap space. But there was a lot more work to do. In early July, Olshey began composing a 20-page presentation for Sterling in which he laid out scenarios for three superstars -- Dwight Howard, Deron Williams or Paul -- and what it would take to get each one of them from their respective teams.
In doing so, Olshey was putting into practice what he'd learned in L.A.'s front office. He'd started in basketball coaching the camp circuits, then as a workout guy for agent Arn Tellem, helping develop players before the Draft. He worked his way up the food chain for the Clippers, from director of player personnel in 2003, to assistant coach to assistant general manager. Watching then-GM Elgin Baylor and, then, Dunleavy, work with their boss, Olshey learned a valuable lesson: always make sure Sterling is in the loop. He might say yes, he might say no, but what he didn't like was to be surprised. If you believed in a deal and could recommend it, he'd listen. Sterling gave the go-ahead to keep pursuing all three, but quickly, it became apparent that the best target was Paul.
As the lockout continued, Olshey and Demps kept talking to one another. The Hornets had given Paul and his agent, Leon Rose, permission to make deals with other teams, but there were really only three teams for whom Paul wanted to play -- the Knicks, Lakers or Clippers. (That didn't stop the Warriors from trying to get involved, and there were talks between Golden State and New Orleans, but Paul never made a commitment to staying in Golden State after the 2011-12 season.) It quickly became evident, though, that New York didn't have nearly enough valuable pieces to make a serious run at Paul; most of the Knicks' good assets went to Denver last season in the Carmelo Anthony deal. And even though the Knicks, according to a source involved in the discussions, would have dealt anyone other than Anthony for Paul -- including Amare Stoudemire, if need be -- the Hornets weren't interested. Nor was Paul interested in going to New York if it meant Stoudemire would pass him in the night down to New Orleans.
So, the Lakers and Clippers.
But, was Paul really serious about playing for the Clippers? Was he just using them as a stalking horse to make sure the Lakers paid up? The Clippers had been down this road before; they genuinely believed Kobe Bryant was coming their way in 2004 as a free agent, only to see him re-up with Jerry Buss' crew. They wanted assurances that he'd be around for at least two years, requiring him to "opt in" for the final year of his contract in 2012-13.
"We had talked early in the process," Olshey said. "I said to Dell, we can take this as far as we can take it. But I can't take Package A and rent him for 66 games. Package B is, he's coming, he's extending. I said I need to hear it from Chris. I'm not hearing it from Leon; I'm not hearing it from you; I'm not hearing it from Rich Paul (part of LRMR Marketing, which reps LeBron James, among others, along with Paul). We got on the phone and talked for two hours. There's no way a guy knows that much about our roster and what we were doing if he wasn't invested. Chris got off the phone saying, 'That's where I want to be.' "
Olshey had his own issues outside of the Paul talks, all centering on how to avoid exactly what Demps was now going through with Paul. Griffin, was entering his third season in Los Angeles, and in this new NBA era, that meant the Clippers were already on the clock. His options for 2012 and 2013 had already been picked up, but if Olshey didn't start surrounding him with more talent, Griffin would surely start looking around and the recruiting pitches would get harder to fight off. The Clippers needed a small forward that teams would defend more stoutly than they had last year's incumbent at the position, Ryan Gomes. The Clippers had three primary targets -- Tayshaun Prince, Grant Hill and Caron Butler -- and dealing Davis to Cleveland had created enough cap room to make a strong run at one of them.
Olshey knew someone would give an offer sheet to his young, improving center, DeAndre Jordan; he'd budgeted between $8 and $8.5 million per year for Jordan, but suspected the actual price would be higher, so a decision would have to be made on whether to match if the sheet came in higher. (He couldn't give Jordan a frontloaded deal like the Thunder had done with Nick Collison and Washington had with Andray Blatche, because that would have used up his cap room.) And the Clips would need a shooting guard if it had to put its own starter, Eric Gordon, in the deal for Paul.
When the lockout finally ended on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, the talks intensified. The Clippers' president, Andy Roeser, was in discussions with the league. The Rockets were available as a conduit, but they wanted a quality big man coming back, and Olshey certainly wasn't going to give them Griffin or Paul, and they weren't much interested in starting center Chris Kaman as the centerpiece of a deal. So Houston went to the Lakers, who were willing to move Pau Gasol if it brought them Paul. Demps spoke with or e-mailed his team president Hugh Weber four or five times a day, and was in constant communication with coach Monty Williams. It was a tricky, complicated dance for Demps; he not only was juggling three or four different deals, he had to gauge the trade value of the players he might get in the deal in case the Hornets decided to flip them for additional assets. And he had to communicate with the league office. Some days, the Hornets were ready to deal with the Clippers; other days, they leaned toward the Lakers.
The Lakers worked relentlessly toward a deal, and Demps told Olshey what he would need to send Paul to the Clippers -- Kaman, second-year forward Al-Farouq Aminu, Gordon, second-year point guard Eric Bledsoe and both of the Clippers' 2012 first-round picks, their own and Minnesota's, which was unprotected and a huge chip. Olshey said no; he wouldn't have much of a chance to entice Paul to stay past the season or make Griffin happy with a bunch of second-round picks. In addition, the Clippers still needed a three; Hill had narrowed his choices to San Antonio, New York or staying in Phoenix. And on Dec. 8, the Clippers were stunned when Prince decided to go back to Detroit; L.A. thought Prince would be able to handle being a third option, given his history playing off of Billups and Rip Hamilton in Detroit. L.A. had to move; Butler was the only three left on their board. They went above what they expected to get him -- three years for $24 million -- but they couldn't take the chance that he'd sign in New Jersey or Chicago or San Antonio.
On Dec. 8, the Board of Governors was meeting in New York to finalize the passage of the new collective bargaining agreement. The three-team deal between the Lakers, Rockets and Hornets was in place. Demps called Olshey, and told him: This is the last shot. This is what it's going to take. The "ask" was the same: all the Clippers' young players and picks. L.A. passed. Demps said he had another deal in place that he had to take -- the Lakers-Rockets deal, that would send Lamar Odom, Luis Scola, Kevin Martin, Goran Dragic and Houston's 2012 first-rounder for New York to New Orleans.
"I said 'I'm happy for you,' " Olshey recalled.
The Hornets had to move; they couldn't, in the words of one official involved in the talks, let Paul leave "and then the team goes to crap." The franchise had gotten commitments for 10,000 season tickets from the fan base -- a base that knew Paul wasn't likely to be around after this season. So the team had to put a representative product on the floor; a true rebuild would take three or four years. The bond between the team and the city is real; many of the team's employees lived through Hurricane Katrina like the rest of the city, and there is a genuine empathy for the people of the city and what they've endured.
But the league, while sympathetic, was evidently looking at a bigger picture; namely, would the Hornets be viable in three years with an aging and expensive core of Odom, Scola and Martin? And it would be naive to think the potential sale of the franchise wouldn't be positively affected -- that is, the team would go for a higher price -- if the roster were younger and cheaper? Stern stepped in. According to another source who was briefed on the talks, the parties waited for a call from the league on the night of Dec. 8 to finalize things, a call that never came. (This would jibe with the claim Stern made in his news conference last week that, while the Hornets thought a deal was imminent, there never was an "official" trade call between the parties and that a trade was never officially submitted. ) The source claims that Stern simply told the Hornets, "we're not doing that deal."
Stern insisted during his media availability last week that pressure from owners, including Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert and his now-infamous e-mail, who didn't want the Lakers to acquire Paul, did not factor in his decision to veto the initial trade.
"I assure all that, first, my decision was made long before I received that e-mail, and, second, I wouldn't have acted upon it even if I had received it, because my goal here was to determine what improved the Hornets,"
The next day, Dec. 9, the league informed the Lakers and Hornets that in order to approve the deal, the NBA wanted different, young pieces coming from Los Angeles than the 32-year-old Odom -- the only significant piece that fit that bill would have been center Andrew Bynum -- and at least one more first-round pick to go with the first-rounder that Houston had already committed. The Lakers tried to piece the deal together again, but wouldn't include Bynum, who had to be held back in case the Lakers could, down the road, make a deal with the Orlando Magic for Dwight Howard. The league insisted. (In addition, a source says the sides couldn't agree on financial considerations.) On the 10th, the Lakers pulled out of the talks with the Hornets for Paul and sent Odom to the Mavericks for Dallas' 2012 first-rounder.
Suddenly, the Clippers were all alone in their pursuit of Paul. The rag-tag, vagabond Clippers had no serious opponents for one of the NBA's true superstars. That was crucial, because Rose, the powerful CAA agent, was determined to get his client where he wanted. And the only one of the three teams left was the Clippers. Rose became an important ally for Olshey and the Clippers, determined not to let the deal die.
The Clippers and Hornets re-engaged in discussions Dec. 9 and on Dec. 10, the talks got very, very serious. The Clippers thought they had a deal. So did the Hornets. The problem was, they were talking about different deals.
L.A. thought it had agreed to a deal for Kaman, Aminu, Gordon and the pick. The Hornets thought they agreed to a deal for those four players, as well as the Clippers' other first-rounder and Bledsoe. That's the risk when a half-dozen people are involved and they're all talking to each other; the league kept holding out for more. The problem was, the Clippers had already told Sterling they had a deal for the four pieces, not six. But the Hornets were now saying it was six. The deal died again.
But this time, they left the talks a little more encouraged. If the NBA was going to insist on young players for Paul, there were only a couple of teams, like Oklahoma City and Minnesota, that had the requisite number of pieces. And Paul wasn't interested in a long-term deal with either team, even the up-and-coming Thunder, and even though he had enjoyed his two years in Oklahoma City when the Hornets were relocated there after Katrina.
First, though, the Clippers had to deal with Jordan.
He signed a four-year, $43 million offer sheet from the Warriors on Dec. 10. Olshey's wife had arranged a party at their house that afternoon at 5 p.m.. At 4:20 p.m., a messenger delivered Jordan's offer sheet. Olshey went back to the office. And here, the Clippers caught a huge break.
They knew the Warriors were planning to sign Jordan to a sheet, and there was never any doubt they would match -- Jordan is close with Griffin and his explosive talents at both ends of the court were too valuable to ever consider letting him go. But Golden State waited a couple of days -- a couple of important days -- before officially conveying the offer.
If the Warriors had given Jordan the offer sheet on the first day they were allowed (Dec.
Billups and his agent, Andy Miller, had made it clear they didn't want anybody to claim him out of the amnesty pool once he was cut by the Knicks. If Billups cleared waivers he'd be free to go wherever he wanted, and everyone in the NBA universe knew he wanted to go to the Heat. But Olshey saw an opportunity. He still had cap room -- he didn't have to match the sheet on Jordan until Wednesday. He would need a guard if Gordon was going to be in the deal for Paul. But if he got Paul, it would be easier to convince Billups that it was worth his while to come to L.A.
"The one positive in all of this is it's not like it's your father's Oldsmobile," Olshey said. "It's not like it's three years ago and we were hijacking a guy to a 19-win team. If we were the team from a year ago, I might have given in. But you can't tell me, coming in to play with the roster we have, and being a starter, and Chauncey can now play the ball more with the ball out of his hands, we might extend his career two or three years. It was not comfortable, sitting with Chauncey. It was not a comfortable thing. Moving Eric Gordon, our second best player, the confidence we could move him to get Chris had a lot to do with Chauncey being here."
Billups would clear waivers at 3 p.m. Los Angeles time. At 2:53, the Clippers claimed him with a winning bid of $2,000,032. (The 32, signfiying Griffin's uniform number, was Roeser's idea.)
On Tuesday afternoon, the Clippers gathered their players in the film room at the team's practice facility in Playa Del Rey. Management told them the team was moving on from Paul. They had to try, he told them; Paul was a Hall of Fame-caliber player. But the deal was dead. You are, he told them, the guys we're going to war with.
But Tuesday night, the Hornets (on behalf of themselves, or with the league's prompting; we'll probably never know) called back. They wanted to take one more pass at it. Roeser contnued talks with Litvin, but the Clippers made it clear: one first-round pick, not both, and either Gordon or Bledsoe, not both. They would have one opportunity to convince Sterling that this was worth doing; Sterling isn't interested in process. When they went to Sterling, it would be to set up a trade call, not to continue haggling. There couldn't be any more negotiating. If the Clippers had to start the season with Billups and Gordon in the backcourt, and Butler, Griffin and Kaman up front, with Williams and Jordan coming off the bench, they could live with that. And they could sell that to their fans.
It was yes or no time.
On Wednesday, New Orleans, with the league concurring, said yes.
The Clippers would send Gordon, Aminu, Kaman and Minnesota's number one to the Hornets for Paul and two second-round picks. In five days, Los Angeles had signed Butler, claimed Billups, matched Jordan's offer sheet and traded for Paul. It was a transformation, but proof positive that, again, if you draft the right guys (Jordan was a second-round pick in 2008), trade for the right guys and trade the right guys away (remember the Clippers cleared all that room by dealing Zach Randolph to Memphis in 2009. Now, that was done to clear room to try and sign James in 2010, but nonetheless, the room was there), sign the right guys and pay everyone the right amount of money, you can build a contending team.
Making a final judgment on this trade before we know what the Minnesota pick turns into, or what Aminu becomes, or whether the Hornets will keep all those assets or flip them for more assets, would be ridiculous.
The Hornets can sell their future to their fans and a streamlined payroll to an owner who will keep the team in New Orleans, and if stinking on the court for a couple of years is the price to ensure there will be games in New Orleans Arena a decade from now, the league obviously thought that was worth doing. (You hope that when and if the Hornets are sold, the Commish makes it clear he wants the current management and coaching staffs in New Orleans to be retained as a condition of sale.)
Even though the Clippers are just about sold out of season tickets after this glorious spasm of activity, and even though Williams vows he'll be Sixth Man of the Year, there is no guarantee that things will work out, at least immediately, for the Clippers the way they seem clear on paper. Paul does have knees that are a concern for others around the league, and he's only made a commitment through the 2012-13 season. And Butler's less than a year removed from a ruptured right patellar tendon. And Jordan is now a starter, expected to be consistent every night. And Billups is only under contract for this season. And ...
"Blake has an extension (available) six months from now," Olshey said Saturday, his new world, officially, seconds old. "And I'd like him to sign it."
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I hope he has a good season with the Wizards
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Thanks for that read PMatic
Man, it really shows you how behind the scenes NBA trades go down. One move can either make/break a franchise....crazy stuff. Also shows how you have to pretty much be a gambler (N.O), and possibly wait to reap the rewards.
Man, it really shows you how behind the scenes NBA trades go down. One move can either make/break a franchise....crazy stuff. Also shows how you have to pretty much be a gambler (N.O), and possibly wait to reap the rewards.
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Originally Posted by DoubleJs07
Originally Posted by Cyber Smoke
9 million peryea right
He'll get something close to that next year...just not w. the Wizards. Someone will overpay.
if he couldnt get anyone to pay him that this offseason why is it going to change next year?
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more teams have money to spend and wont be saving it for A Chance at CP,Deron, or Dwight
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Originally Posted by Bigmike23
Originally Posted by DoubleJs07
Originally Posted by Cyber Smoke
9 million peryea right
He'll get something close to that next year...just not w. the Wizards. Someone will overpay.
if he couldnt get anyone to pay him that this offseason why is it going to change next year?
