That's what I was talking with the risk of not signing him, the standard let him become a restricted FA would be an easy choice any other offseason, but with a new CBA on the way and talks of some pretty drastic changes it's a less clear than that. Greg doesn't become a restricted FA right after the season, it's when the new NBA year starts that his contract runs out, and that's at the same time the CBA runs out, so his free agency and what we can and can't offer him will fall under whatever rules are in the new CBA. What if restricted free agency is changed in a way that screws us(unlikely)? What if a hard cap is put in place and we're to close to it to match an offer? If there is a hard cap any current contracts are going to have to be grandfathered in, or else alot of the contending teams like the Lakers/Magic/Heat/Bulls aren't going to be able to field an entire/competitive rosters (and would Stern screw those markets? No), so a contract now could end up being more flexible for us in the future. Also overlooked in the 'what if he suffers another injury and is done forever' discussion is the Allan Houston provision included in the last CBA negotiation, the owners/management got the right to remove one current contract from their salary cap numbers last time (which the Knicks used on an injured Allan Houston to relieve 10+ million dollars from their cap, hence the nickname), so if we were to sign Oden for say 4yrs 40mil with a team option 4th yr and he suffered a career ending injury this year there very well may be a way to remove a salary like that from our cap once the new CBA comes into effect. I know I can see owners asking for something like that again as a little thing they can get that the Players Union has already given them once, and that could help some teams willing to pay a guy his full contract without playing. EDIT- I was wrong on the Allan Houston thing, it was to avoid the luxury tax, not the salary cap, and despite the fact they should have used it on Houston I guess the Knicks kept him and waived Jerome Williams instead (should have looked that up before I hit the post reply button, damnit) EDIT2- Actually if he suffered a career ending injury there's no reason we wouldn't just go the Darius Miles route, still removing the risk of a long term contract bogging us down for a guy who can't play.
I think the worry over him getting an extension is a lot of hand wringing about nothing. Restricted free agency isn't likely to die in the next CBA and I have no problem letting the market dictate what he's worth. If he has another injury plagued year, very few teams will risk tying up a large amount of money in him (or at least a lot of years) and even if he blows up I can't imagine him being offered much more then 3 years 10 million per year, maybe 4 at the outside, which is something I think the Blazers would be likely to match. Lastly, if you're Rich Cho wouldn't you rather take care of this under the next CBA than to tie yourself to a deal you may not like? Let it ride.
Not if there's a hard cap. In that case, RFA may just be the right to match any offer...if you have the cap space.
Assuming they adopt an NFL model, if a hard cap gets implemented then I have a suspicion that teams will also have the option of cutting players to free up space and in the Blazers particular case there it may not even be necessary since there are a few players that probably won't be in the team's plans after a lockout anyway; namely Camby, Miller and Joel which together represents about 25 million per year.
It's not that easy in the NFL. Contracts have signing bonuses, and those signing bonuses are accelerated as cap hits to the year you cut the player, to provide a disincentive to owners cutting players. While obviously any grandfathered NBA contracts won't have any signing bonuses to accelerate, I can't imagine the players union agreeing to their current contracts being torn up at owner whim. If they agree to an NFL style cap, then there will likely be NFL style signing bonuses in future and some kind of guarantee that current contracts cannot simply be cut. But they're over the cap by a significant amount (with Roy's and Aldridge's extensions kicking in) aren't they? Will that $25 million put them well under the (current) cap? And I guess it depends on where the new cap is set.
I could see a deal that phases in a hard cap, perhaps including the ability to waive fully guaranteed players without salary cap ramifications... the players still get their money (and, perhaps, get another contract, too!) but the owners get out from under cap-clogging deals... while being in a much stronger position with their RFAs (since so many teams will be at or above the hard cap, etc.) Ed O.
I don't have a crystal ball, so I have no idea how the next CBA is going to handle this. We'll see I have a feeling that the NBA's hard cap would be somewhere closer to the luxury tax line than the soft cap that currently exists. Just look at the bulk of NBA team salaries in two year's time and it becomes pretty clear that a budget of 55 million or so doesn't buy you a whole lot of talent. http://www.storytellerscontracts.info/resources/10-11salaries.htm
