niremetal

I can't think of a single example in the entire history of all professional sports where a player left even half of $20M on the table simply because he was 'rich enough already' or because less fortunate people who weren't professional athletes were having a tough time. Guys who make less than Joe don't leave money on the table for those reasons. Those who make more than him don't either, unless I missed the headline where a superstar athlete gave up a portion of his salary because he thought pro athletes were already (over-)paid enough. So you're holding him to an absolutely absurd standard. You also are looking at it from a rather bizarre angle, considering that the owners are even richer (way richer, in fact) than JJ is. If "rich is rich," then aren't all owners greedy for setting salary caps and signing players for anything but the max they can offer and afford? Why aren't owners greedy for offering a player less than he could make elsewhere? As for Hedo - ask him whether he'd like to take a multimillion dollar paycut so that he no longer has to deal with the "headache" you're talking about. My guess is that he, like every other human being who isn't a devout Marxist, would rather deal with the label you gave him than give up $10M+.

If I'm not mistaken, the max they could offer was ~4yrs/$65M. I think that there was some weird aspect of Joe's original contract that meant that they weren't allowed to include annual raises in any extension at the frontend, so his annual salary would be limited to the max for the first season, which was ~$16.25M. Anyway, both JJ and management said they offered JJ the max they could, and that the issue was more that they couldn't offer him a 5th or 6th year at that point. Really? Someone is a fool for refusing to take a $60M contract when they know they could make $80M if they waited a year? Oooook...

No, winner of Orlando/Charlotte. Come on, man, get with the program! :slap1:

This guy must be running for office....

It really depends on what you mean by "intensity." Because I'm sure if you asked any of his teammates or opponents, they would say that John Stockton was one of the most - if not the most - "intense" player they played against. Gary Payton said something to that effect after Stockton retired, as I recall. But the conception of intensity that most people on this thread seem to have tends more to the chest-thumping variety rather than the relentless and hard-nosed variety.

Also bearing in mind these things called "salary cap rules" that prevent us from signing other team's free agents to contracts starting higher than ~$5.8M/yr.

:thumbsdownsmileyanim: Actually, I think sturt and most other people on this thread do watch most games. Just because someone disagrees with you doesn't mean they don't watch the games, just that they notice different things. I see Smoove be intense at times every game, but I also see him play lazy D and settle into jump-shooting far too often. Is he "intense" more often than Joe? Sure. But I wouldn't call him "Mr. Intensity." I would say Zaza is the closest we've got, but he's our 8th man. Horford shows flashes of it too, but he's no KG either. Not incidentally, I don't think the Lakers have that guy. Kobe is most definitely not Mr. Intensity (the cult surrounding him notwithstanding, he takes many defensive possessions off in non-clutch situations and slows it up more than any Hawks guard on potential fast breaks), and they don't really have anyone in their front 8 who really is.

My thought is that Josh Boone is one of the worst players in the NBA today. Frighteningly enough, I think he'd be a step down from all three guys you just mentioned because he 1) isn't nearly good enough to be a starter or top backup big; and 2) unlike RandMo (some decent post moves), Collins (huge body to bother Shaq/Howard/etc), and Joe Smith (crafty D and solid jumper), he doesn't have any particular skill that would make him a good situational role player. He also doesn't bring the locker room presence that a vet would. So really, I see zero benefit in signing him. There's a reason he was barely a rotation player for a 12-win team.

<channeling mrhonline> Your thoughts on...err... </channeling mrhonline> +1 :conversation:

You've gotta be impressed with someone who has made just 128 posts and already has a -69.

You're kidding, right? You think our 10th man would have won us 7 more games? And yes, since Stack would have been the 3rd wing off the bench behind Mo (familiarity breeds contempt, but Mo has been better than Stackhouse for at least 3 years now), he would have been at most our 9th man and likely our 10th (behind JoeS).

JJ was a great off-the-ball player in Phoenix. Both are great off-the-ball players when we use them that way here. But our coach is intent on letting SGs dominate the ball. As long as that happens, slashing PGs will be wasted here.

I also still think it's an open question what he could do offensively without guys like Allen, Pierce, and Garnett to take gargantuan amounts of pressure off of him. Rondo pretty much never sees a double-team until he's within 10 feet of the basket, which is a huge distinction between him and CP3/Deron/Rose. That being said, his all-world defense makes him easily one of the top 5 PGs in league, IMHO.

Why can't you just say "exactly" or "+1" like everyone else? :snowballfight:

:shake_puter:

That ignores the fact that the Hawks stand a much better chance of making it to the second round against Milwaukee, and the second round always is a bigger money than the first round. The Hawks chances of making it out of the first round are literally 2-3 times better with the Bucks than with the Heat, I'd say. So I think that ASG would prefer the easier first-round opponent. Anyway, I think we'll sell out the first round home games. Even mediocre teams from crappy fan cities (like Toronto) sell out their playoff games.

Personally, I don't think either of you will look foolish based on whether or not some team offers Rudy a big contract. I do think that you will foolish if you continue to use bandwidth continuing this argument :beathorse:

Andrew Bogut. Andrew Bynum. Emeka Okafor. Three players who did not get maximum contracts. :snowballfight: All three had contracts that AVERAGED $12M-$14M per year. That's still a damned sight less than the $16M/yr average that max players from the same draft years got. Okafor's started at $9.5M and averaged $12M over 6 years. Bogut's was $12M/yr flat for 5 years. Bynum's was a 3-year deal starting at $12.5M and averaging $13.7M - and bear in mind that Bynum was more than 3 years younger than Horford was at the same stage in their respective careers. Would I give Horford any of those contracts? Sure. But we can't pretend 3yr/$41M or 5yr/$60M is the same as 5yr/$80M, which is what a max extension would be.

If I'm not mistaken, some of the CBA provisions pertaining to RFA are required to be written into players' rookie scale contracts, which means simply amending the CBA wouldn't necessarily end RFA. At this point, I don't think it can be abolished outright with respect to players with still-active contracts as long as the team picks up the options after the second and third years. Rather, I would think that the soonest it could be abolished is when the rookie scale contracts of the 2011 draft class expire in 2015. I could be wrong about that, but I know that some CBA provisions are "grandfathered in" to the players' contracts so that future CBA amendments couldn't alter them as long as the contracts remain in force, and I think that key RFA provisions are among them.

Come on, now. I wasn't seriously suggesting that 18ppg was a magic number. I admit my "not unless he averages 18ppg" might have led you to think that I was fixating on that as a magic number, but if you took the time to read the rest of my points, I clearly was not. My main point was that in the NBA, only people who score significantly more than Al does get max extensions, and used 18ppg as a threshold because no one who had failed to crack 18ppg has ever gotten a max contract. Al has never averaged more than 14.2ppg or 9.9rpg in a season. Players with those stats don't get max extensions - or at least they never have before. The lowest I've seen in terms of PPG is Dwight Howard's 17.6ppg - which is still a pretty significant step up from 14.2ppg. And Dwight was averaging more than 12rpg at the same time. Not to mention that since Dwight came straight out of HS, he was 2.5 years younger than Horford was at the same stage in his career. To put it another way, if we signed Al Horford to a max extension, it would be unprecedented given his relatively modest statistics. Al's career high is 3.4ppg lower than the lowest player to have ever gotten a max extension, and that player was significantly younger and a significantly better rebounder than Al is. Of course - and I'm saying this for the third time now - I don't think that stats SHOULD be so dispositive in terms of salary, but a brief glance through the stat sheets indicates that they always have been.

The intersection of Horford's unusually low scoring numbers for an All-Star (and again, I'm not saying that SHOULD matter, but it does) and the upcoming end to the current CBA make past precedents seem questionable in relevance. I don't think anyone views Horford as in the same class as guys like LeBron/Dwight/CP3/Roy were viewed at the same stage in their careers. Add to that the fact that both cap amounts and player contracts are likely to take a huge hit under the new CBA, and it's really hard to see the harm in waiting until 2011. Really, there's almost no way we could end up paying MORE for Horford by waiting until after the inevitable lockout.

Except again - I've never seen someone with Al's stats get a max contract. I don't think that's the way it should be, but it's the way it is. 14 and 10 guys have never been max players. Anyway, the calculus under the new CBA is likely to be quite different than it is now. It's kind of pointless to speculate what Al's contract could look like, and it would be pretty stupid for the Hawks to sign Al this summer, given that the new CBA will likely drive down the market value for players across the league.

Not unless Al averages 18ppg for a full season next year. I think he deserves a max contract, but that has proven to be a threshold requirement. I think D-12 got a max after averaging 17.6 and 12.3, but that's the only semi-exception (I say "semi" because it rounds up to 18ppg).

Yup, exactly.