Free Agency Winners
By Jon Pastuszek
Wed, 07/14/2010 - 7:02pm
We’re American. We like winners. That’s why lots of people who don’t live in New York like the Yankees. That’s also why lots of people who have no connection to Miami are going to like Heat this decade.
And it’s also why lots of people are going to read this article. Here are the biggest winners of the 2010 NBA off-season so far.
Joe Johnson:
Joe Johnson
Worst contract ever? That’s what more than a few people have been calling J.J’s 6-year $123 million mega-extension that was announced shortly after free agency hit on July 1st.
Really, it was lose-lose proposition no matter what the Hawks decided. Trapped in the much anticipated Summer 2010 where multiple teams were well under the cap, the Hawks were faced with the prospect of either watching another team overpay for the services of their four-time All-Star and lose him for nothing, or overpay him themselves. Armed with the ability to add a sixth year of guaranteed money, the Hawks elected to keep Johnson at a monstrous price-tag and keep their 50-win core intact.
If you need any more proof why the financial model in the NBA is broken beyond repair, then let this deal register. Johnson, who has never been past the second round of Playoffs, will be getting paid an average of $20 million per year until he is 35 years old.
That’s not to say Johnson isn’t an important player for the Hawks. Whether it’s by necessity or by design, Iso-Joe holds the ball and dribbles out most possessions, opting most times for a mid-range pull-up jumper. However, despite having the ball so much, Johnson shoots free-throws at such an alarmingly low rate – 3.5 attempts per game last season, and 4.6 the previous two – that it makes you wonder why he gets so many touches in isolation. New head coach Larry Drew has hinted that he wants to get more guys involved, but other than Jamal Crawford, who besides Johnson can create offense?
The answer is nobody, and with no near-equal replacement available, the Hawks felt they had no choice but to pay superstar dollars for a player who simply isn’t a superstar.
Hawks fans will mind, as will teams like New York, New Jersey and Chicago, who lost out on an opportunity to bolster their team going forward.
But, trust us when we say Joe Johnson won’t mind one bit.
Pat Riley:
The NBA, like its professional sports relatives, the NFL, the MLB and the NHL, is a copy-cat league. Teams routinely hire away both front-office and coaching disciples of championship teams like the Spurs, Celtics and Lakers in an effort to construct a better version of the original championship formula. Most of the time those efforts fail – the students just aren’t as good as their teachers. The originators, with their system firmly in place, continue to reap the rewards of championships, until a new forward thinking front-office overtakes the old paradigm, and the process is repeated.
When Donnie Walsh announced to the entire League in 2008 that the Knicks would be clearing out the entire roster in order to lure LeBron James to the biggest sports market in America, he set the stakes for an unabashed disarmament race where teams cleared out their entire roster with the hope of landing the King.
As Walsh quickly found out, New York wouldn’t be the only desirable city able to throw multiple max contracts. Enter Riley, who correctly understood that the city of Miami and the chance to play with Dwyane Wade would be enough to trump any other team. All he had to do was build the cap space, and they would come.
And come they did. Bringing in LeBron James and Chris Bosh together to join Wade is undoubtedly the biggest off-season achievement in history. What’s more, all three took a $2 million pay-cut so that the team could bring in Mike Miller and Udonis Haslem, two quality rotation players who otherwise would have been unable to sign with the team if they sign at a discount.
What was previously thought as an impossibility – two of the three best players playing on the same team with an All-Star big man – is now a reality. And it was Riley who took Walsh’s formula and improved on it, offering the Trinity a better city, a better roster, a better front office, and a better chance to win both short-term and long-term.
What was that about copy-cats?
Kevin Durant:
While other free agents were posturing for headlines and manufacturing drama, Durant went the professional route: He signed a 5-year $85 million extension, sent out a short tweet, and got back into the gym to work on his game. In a sport that for at the moment is doing it the wrong way, Durant did it the right way – the humble way – and has in turn, further endeared himself to his already large cohort fans, while picking up some new ones in the process.
With LeBron James’ stunning reversal in popularity and Dwyane Wade’s guilty by association, Durant has emerged as the game’s most likeable star on the League’s most likeable young team. With Durant in the fold for the long-term, the Thunder are in excellent position both for the present and the future.
Anybody over 6-10:
Every summer, there’s always a seven-foot stiff, a Todd McCollough, Jerome James or an Erik Dampier, who is waiting by their phone, waiting to receive a big money long-term deal by some desperate GM who needs a big man.
Welcome to the club, Drew Gooden, Channing Frye, Darko Milicic, Amir Johnson, Tyrus Thomas, Johan Petro and Brendan Haywood, who were all signed to multiple year deals. The biggest head scratcher? Petro’s 3-year $10 million with the Nets is up there, but the Bucks’ inexplicable willingness to sign Gooden to his ninth team in nine years at 5-years $32 million should serve as to why John Hammond’s GM of the Year award should be rescinded immediately.
Los Angeles Lakers:
As the Eastern Conference power structure is being rearranged as we speak, things have remained status quo in the West. And that’s just how the Lakers like it.
While Dallas, Houston and the Clippers all went bust in their goal to bring a franchise altering player to their roster, and Denver, Utah and Portland all moving sideways or slightly backwards, the two-time defending champion Lakers have emerged as the West’s biggest winner.
With Kobe Bryant and three talented big-men, Pau Gasol, Andrew Bynum and Lamar Odom already in place, the Lakers focused on shoring up their backcourt, arguably their biggest weakness, bringing in former Blazer/Clipper Steve Blake to a 4-year $18 million contract and bringing back Derek Fisher to a 3-year $10 million.
The moves are both good ones for the Lakers. Blake’s size and three-point shooting at the guard position will fit much better in the triangle than Jordan Farmar, who needed the ball in his hands to be effective. Fisher rebounded from a terrible 82-game regular season last year and put in yet another indispensible contribution to a championship run. With Bryant openly demanding his return in the media, it was essentially a formality that he’d return.
Three years for a 35 year-old guard who struggled shooting the ball for much of last year may be a stretch, but with the very capable Blake coming off the bench, the Lakers can afford to give Fisher another contract. The Lakers didn’t make any huge splashes this offseason, but with the West staying relatively quiet so far, they didn’t have to. The road to a title still goes through Kobe.
Wes Matthews:
This time last summer, Matthews was an undrafted rookie playing summer ball hoping to get picked up by an NBA team on a one-year deal.
Now, not two months after starting in Utah’s Playoff lineup, the burly 6-5 shooting guard has a 5-year $34 million offer sheet from Portland. Strong, tough, defensive minded and accurate from the three-point line, Matthews is seen as the ideal player to match-up with the Kobe’s and Carmelo’s of the Western Conference. Utah is expected to match, but wherever he ends up, Matthews is this year’s best rags-to-riches story, and maybe the biggest winner of the offseason. Look for the Free Agent losers in the next couple days.
And it’s also why lots of people are going to read this article. Here are the biggest winners of the 2010 NBA off-season so far.
Joe Johnson:
Joe JohnsonWorst contract ever? That’s what more than a few people have been calling J.J’s 6-year $123 million mega-extension that was announced shortly after free agency hit on July 1st.
Really, it was lose-lose proposition no matter what the Hawks decided. Trapped in the much anticipated Summer 2010 where multiple teams were well under the cap, the Hawks were faced with the prospect of either watching another team overpay for the services of their four-time All-Star and lose him for nothing, or overpay him themselves. Armed with the ability to add a sixth year of guaranteed money, the Hawks elected to keep Johnson at a monstrous price-tag and keep their 50-win core intact.
If you need any more proof why the financial model in the NBA is broken beyond repair, then let this deal register. Johnson, who has never been past the second round of Playoffs, will be getting paid an average of $20 million per year until he is 35 years old.
That’s not to say Johnson isn’t an important player for the Hawks. Whether it’s by necessity or by design, Iso-Joe holds the ball and dribbles out most possessions, opting most times for a mid-range pull-up jumper. However, despite having the ball so much, Johnson shoots free-throws at such an alarmingly low rate – 3.5 attempts per game last season, and 4.6 the previous two – that it makes you wonder why he gets so many touches in isolation. New head coach Larry Drew has hinted that he wants to get more guys involved, but other than Jamal Crawford, who besides Johnson can create offense?
The answer is nobody, and with no near-equal replacement available, the Hawks felt they had no choice but to pay superstar dollars for a player who simply isn’t a superstar.
Hawks fans will mind, as will teams like New York, New Jersey and Chicago, who lost out on an opportunity to bolster their team going forward.
But, trust us when we say Joe Johnson won’t mind one bit.
Pat Riley:
The NBA, like its professional sports relatives, the NFL, the MLB and the NHL, is a copy-cat league. Teams routinely hire away both front-office and coaching disciples of championship teams like the Spurs, Celtics and Lakers in an effort to construct a better version of the original championship formula. Most of the time those efforts fail – the students just aren’t as good as their teachers. The originators, with their system firmly in place, continue to reap the rewards of championships, until a new forward thinking front-office overtakes the old paradigm, and the process is repeated.
When Donnie Walsh announced to the entire League in 2008 that the Knicks would be clearing out the entire roster in order to lure LeBron James to the biggest sports market in America, he set the stakes for an unabashed disarmament race where teams cleared out their entire roster with the hope of landing the King.
As Walsh quickly found out, New York wouldn’t be the only desirable city able to throw multiple max contracts. Enter Riley, who correctly understood that the city of Miami and the chance to play with Dwyane Wade would be enough to trump any other team. All he had to do was build the cap space, and they would come.
And come they did. Bringing in LeBron James and Chris Bosh together to join Wade is undoubtedly the biggest off-season achievement in history. What’s more, all three took a $2 million pay-cut so that the team could bring in Mike Miller and Udonis Haslem, two quality rotation players who otherwise would have been unable to sign with the team if they sign at a discount.
What was previously thought as an impossibility – two of the three best players playing on the same team with an All-Star big man – is now a reality. And it was Riley who took Walsh’s formula and improved on it, offering the Trinity a better city, a better roster, a better front office, and a better chance to win both short-term and long-term.
What was that about copy-cats?
Kevin Durant:
While other free agents were posturing for headlines and manufacturing drama, Durant went the professional route: He signed a 5-year $85 million extension, sent out a short tweet, and got back into the gym to work on his game. In a sport that for at the moment is doing it the wrong way, Durant did it the right way – the humble way – and has in turn, further endeared himself to his already large cohort fans, while picking up some new ones in the process.
With LeBron James’ stunning reversal in popularity and Dwyane Wade’s guilty by association, Durant has emerged as the game’s most likeable star on the League’s most likeable young team. With Durant in the fold for the long-term, the Thunder are in excellent position both for the present and the future.
Anybody over 6-10:
Every summer, there’s always a seven-foot stiff, a Todd McCollough, Jerome James or an Erik Dampier, who is waiting by their phone, waiting to receive a big money long-term deal by some desperate GM who needs a big man.
Welcome to the club, Drew Gooden, Channing Frye, Darko Milicic, Amir Johnson, Tyrus Thomas, Johan Petro and Brendan Haywood, who were all signed to multiple year deals. The biggest head scratcher? Petro’s 3-year $10 million with the Nets is up there, but the Bucks’ inexplicable willingness to sign Gooden to his ninth team in nine years at 5-years $32 million should serve as to why John Hammond’s GM of the Year award should be rescinded immediately.
Los Angeles Lakers:
As the Eastern Conference power structure is being rearranged as we speak, things have remained status quo in the West. And that’s just how the Lakers like it.
While Dallas, Houston and the Clippers all went bust in their goal to bring a franchise altering player to their roster, and Denver, Utah and Portland all moving sideways or slightly backwards, the two-time defending champion Lakers have emerged as the West’s biggest winner.
With Kobe Bryant and three talented big-men, Pau Gasol, Andrew Bynum and Lamar Odom already in place, the Lakers focused on shoring up their backcourt, arguably their biggest weakness, bringing in former Blazer/Clipper Steve Blake to a 4-year $18 million contract and bringing back Derek Fisher to a 3-year $10 million.
The moves are both good ones for the Lakers. Blake’s size and three-point shooting at the guard position will fit much better in the triangle than Jordan Farmar, who needed the ball in his hands to be effective. Fisher rebounded from a terrible 82-game regular season last year and put in yet another indispensible contribution to a championship run. With Bryant openly demanding his return in the media, it was essentially a formality that he’d return.
Three years for a 35 year-old guard who struggled shooting the ball for much of last year may be a stretch, but with the very capable Blake coming off the bench, the Lakers can afford to give Fisher another contract. The Lakers didn’t make any huge splashes this offseason, but with the West staying relatively quiet so far, they didn’t have to. The road to a title still goes through Kobe.
Wes Matthews:
This time last summer, Matthews was an undrafted rookie playing summer ball hoping to get picked up by an NBA team on a one-year deal.
Now, not two months after starting in Utah’s Playoff lineup, the burly 6-5 shooting guard has a 5-year $34 million offer sheet from Portland. Strong, tough, defensive minded and accurate from the three-point line, Matthews is seen as the ideal player to match-up with the Kobe’s and Carmelo’s of the Western Conference. Utah is expected to match, but wherever he ends up, Matthews is this year’s best rags-to-riches story, and maybe the biggest winner of the offseason. Look for the Free Agent losers in the next couple days.
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