Portland Trail Blazers may enter LeBron sweepstakes

i'd die of being to excited that id never get to see them win a ring

 

wiow, i so shurre clevlnd wud jmp alz ova dat!!!! gr8 tr8de dood!

 

I think you have a very, very, very, very distorted view of how much Oden is worth to other teams.

 

Who cares what Cleveland wants? If Lebron is set on leaving, the Cavs will settle for anything of value; they literally have no power in this arrangement, other than giving Lebron 6 years max vs. 5 years at a slightly lower % for some other team. I see almost no scenario where Lebron would want to go from one small market, midwest team, to a smaller market northwest team (ie. edge of the known universe).

 

lol, very credible and knowledgable source.

 

It'll take nine Mark Cubans to equal one Paul Allen but this is such a long shot.

First thing that popped in my mind when I read this article was 'Fucking Sam Smith *shakes head*' he's basing this off of pure assumption.

 

But what if the offers coming in essentially strip a team of the talent Lebron would theoretically want to go play with? If Lebron doesn't believe Cleveland can surround him with the talent to make him a champion he'll come up with a short list of two or maybe three teams he's willing to play for and he'll give the Cavs a chance to get a little bit of value, but there's no way he'd allow his destination team to gut itself to get him. Lebron holds all of the cards here.

 

That part, IMO, is just plain wrong. LeBron can go to whatever team he chooses as long as it has cap space to sign him. If he does so, as you note, he'll take one year less and earn significantly less over the life of the contract. On the other hand, if he finds a team that he wants to go to that is willing to give the Cavs sufficient value in a sign-and-trade, he can get the longer term, higher dollar deal. From the Cavs' standpoint, they wiould weigh the value of whatever is offered back in the S&T deal vs. the prospect of becoming a FA player in this summer's bonanza season. They'd have enough cap space available if LBJ walks to sign a max dollar player of their own. They're not going to take somebody else's junk just to help give LeBron the extra dollars he wants.

As for LeBron coming here, I would agree with Sam Smith that the Blazers probably could make an offer that the Cavs would find very appealing, but I have a real hard time seeing LeBron putting Portland very high his list of potential landing spots. I still think the most likely thing is that he stays in Cleveland.

 

The Cavs are so far over the cap, that even if Lebron comes off their books, their available capspace is around 8 million; hardly the max money player you imply. Again, Lebron if he wants the full six years and slightly higher per year raises and wants to leave can ask for a sign and trade with his destination of choice, or he can leave the Cavs high and dry and make only slightly less money in salary and probably not feel too great of a pinch because of his vast and lucrative earnings from his endorsements.

 

I made a mistake in my previous post. I was looking at the Cavs' 2011-12 salary numbers instead of 2010-11. Depending upon what the cap is set at and how much of West's contract is guaranteed, the Cavs could have $10 to $11 million available if LeBron walks.

As far as the "slightly higher per year raises", when you're starting from a number around $17 million, the compound difference between 5 years with 8% raises vs. 6 years with 10.5% raises is a huge amount of money. Any of you math whiz's care to take a stab at it?

 

Same. I always read about the Nke connection and players coming here . . . I don´t remember one time a player has actually come to Ptd because of the ¨nike connection

 

The raises aren't "that" different. Effectively +1.36 and +1.79 million in year one (respectively) and compounded from there. The big money difference comes from the sixth guaranteed year vs. five years guaranteed, which all adds up to around 29 million difference over the life of the two contracts. But in Lebron's case is he really leaving that much on the table when it's almost guaranteed he'll get another max deal before his career is over?

 

Here's the math as I calculate it:

Five years starting at $17M with 8% raises: $17M + $18.36M + $19.82M + $21.41M + $23.12M = $99.71M Total Contract
Six years starting at $17M with 10.5% raises: $17M + $18.79M + $20.76M + $22.94M +$25.34M + $28M = $132.83M Total Contract

$33 mil is more than chump change.

 

Get rid of that sixth year and the difference is pretty much negated. You're overstating the year by year gap.

 

As far as LeBron being virtually guaranteed of another max contract after 5 years, I don't see that any player in the NBA can afford to look at it that way when an injury on any given night could end a career.

 

I don't think so. I'm just applying the maximum percent annual raise to the previous year's amount. If you think I'm computing it wrong, I'd be happy to take a look at your numbers.

 

If that was true, then why did Lebron's first extension run three years with a player option for a fourth year? Hell, he may not even want a six year contract this time around.

 

I'm just saying comparing a six year deal that pays roughly 30 million more than a 5 year deal isn't quite the same as comparing the two contracts on a year by year basis (which ends up being about a 4 million dollar gap).

 

Uhm...because the option is his. If he were to get injured, he doesn't opt out of the 4th year. Otherwise, if he's healthy and thinks he can get a better and longer deal, he goes looking for the new contract after 3 years. OTOH, if he takes a 5 year deal and is injured in year 2, he gets the rest of the money for the remaining years on the contract, but never gets another contract and loses out on that $28M he could have had with a six year deal.