I find it a bit odd that we haven't heard any discussion this summer from the Blazers or Oden's agent about a contract extension for GO. By this time last season, we were starting to wring our hands around here over whether the Blazers were going to get Roy's and Aldridge's new contracts done before the start of the season. Unless I've missed something, there's nothing but crickets on GO's contract. I understand that his injury issues will impact the discussions, but it just seems strange that there's been no mention of this by anybody.
I agree. It is odd, but at the same time good. I would hope that Greg's camp wants to show he is good to go this year, and the Blazer camp wants to see the same. I said in previous posts that I hoped they would wait until September to make sure he is healthy (Or at least have a better guess) and then "lock him up". Hopefully that will happen.
The discussion was generated by the media. From what I know, the media hasn't asked the Blazers about GO's extension like they did about LMA and Roy's. That's probably because it was fairly obviously there would be an effort made to extend those two, while GO is way more a question mark.
There's about an $80 million swing in what Oden might be worth on his next contract. If he's 100% and dominating like we all thought he would on draft night, he's easily a max contract. If he's out of the league with injuries by this time next year, he's worth nothing. And he could be worth any amount between those extremes based on partial health. I don't think either the Blazers or Oden really want to roll the dice right now on which way things will go. Since neither side is motivated to get a deal done, nobody is bitching to the media. So there's no story.
There's been a lot of stuff going on in the front office this summer and GO is going to be a tough negotiation. Do you pay him for his potential (which will be his agent's argument) or do you pay him for his production so far? With Brandon and LaMarcus, you were negotiating in a fairly narrow band. With Greg, it's a wide window. I'm certain that there have been discussions in the Blazers' front office and perhaps even some initial discussions just to feel out initial positions. I'm sure Cho has spent some time calculating GO's value. I imagine it's not public right now because the two sides are so far apart that making the negotiation public will just be too much of a distraction. His agent knows that GO doesn't have the public support that Roy or Aldridge have because of the injuries. The Blazers know that lowballing GO publicly is going to just going to hurt the negotiations. Therefore going public doesn't benefit either side. Cho has commented on it in this article: http://blog.oregonlive.com/nba/2010/07/nba_high-5_30.html
One more issue is that it's quite likely that Oden will be one of the insurance company exclusions when he signs his next deal. It would make his value lower if we decided we needed to trade him.
I remember reading an interview with Oden were they asked him about his extension and if I recall correctly he said something like "if I took want a big contract i'm going to have to play out next season. I leave the extension stuff up to my agent".
