I think that isn't a bad place to start, but why offer him one at all until springtime? He's an RFA after his contract is up and PA is ahem loaded. Why not wait? We can still pay for batum etc by going majorly over the cap that's never stopped PA before. Also even if they have a hard cap they would have to grandfather in old contracts. Re-sign oden and batum next spring and lock up the core. We have Matthews and Camby as well. Our only real weak spot is PG.
There isn't necessarily going to be a "next Spring," if the lockout occurs. It's possible that RFA status will roll over to when the league resumes business but there is no guarantee.
This is an easy answer. You do nothing until you have to. Currently he is to much of a question mark to commit to anything that will make him and us happy. By waiting the worst case scenario is that you pay market value or let someone else over pay for him.
Too easy to talk about an opening offer. What's the highest you're willing to go if 1) he goes down this season or 2) he doesn't?
I think it's pretty cut-and-dry with Oden (thankfully) as far as the contract goes. You don't HAVE to commit to anything until you get a pretty good idea of whether the injuries were true flukes or if they are signs of something to the future. 95% of the risk is gone by the time you actually put a pen on a paper since his injuries weren't soft tissue injuries, so you know you have a bone issue if he re-injures something, otherwise if he is healthy you know it was a fluke and likely will not happen again. So then you pretty much know what you have with PER and other statistical indicators to place a value, that doesn't take a genius to know what you'll get as far as the productivity of the player while he is healthy and on the court. So what you're left with is: will he be 100% healthy and spending a lot of time on the court for that contract. If Oden has played nearly all of his possible games by the deadline to resign him, then you look at the updated productivity numbers and overpay as Paul Allen should accordingly (IE - if he's only putting up 11 and 9 throughout 10/11, then maybe he's only a 5 year/$50M player. If he's suddenly putting up 17 and 14 and 3 then he's closer to a max contract regardless of any past because now you know what you have for the next decade. If he does go down and miss even more time from now until the deadline to resign, then you hold off and just let the market value show what he is worth as a free agent and decide then if you want to match or not. It's really pretty simple, you don't lock up a guy that gets yet another bone injury after two previous bone injuries (and a third in high school). It's like renting a Corvette on a 1 month promotion for $10/month. You are asked to resign for the $300/month premium after the promotional period is through, but it had a dead battery in the first week, it then had a fuse blow out and you lost your turn signals in week 3. now you're about to begin week 4 and you're deciding if you want to resign after week 4 is done. Well you can still wait until week 4 finishes to make that choice, but at the end of the day you're not going to offer $200/month for a Corvette if it is fine now and looks like it will be good going forward. But if it has yet another issue and breaks down again, then you might just either turn it in or see if they'll offer you $200/month for a Vette that has "issues". But after just a dead battery and a fuse, don't be an idiot and think you're going to get some discount for the next couple years worth of rate for a smoking hot car.
Let's say the market value is high. It takes only one fool among 29 GMs. How high will we go? Edit: Whoa! You added a Sting Ray paragraph!
That's OK. The effort was made for those with the mental capacity to grasp it. Whether a sentence or thesis paper, I would expect a complex illustration of logic to communicate "zip" to a monkey sitting in the corner at the zoo masturbating while eating a banana. And with your history of posts showing a close second to said monkey, I don’t expect my effort to make much difference either – I’ll just smile and go on to the next cage as most of the educated appear to do to your posts.
HOF, if you ever stop posting at ESPN, their threads will be half as long. Make that a third, because the responding posts will be fewer. (I noticed that phenom when I left. Shorter threads now.) If you write your usual stripper analogies here, it'll entertain them more than a Corvette analogy.
I know, I know. It's the curse of being able to type like a hundred-something wpm. I have a random thought, sit down for 45 seconds and three paragraphs come tumbling out (of course too much to go proofread and spellcheck. So I have to put up with the occasional clowns that have no other skill other than to catch some typo and assume they have some superior knowledge of the English language. LOL). Oh well, let them have something to make their miserable lives a tiny bit better.
"masturbating while eating a banana?" Step One: Sign him to almost an LMA deal. Step Two: Look like geniuses in 18 months. Bynum got just about a max contract extension with a 4th-yr team option coming off a 32-game season and a more troubling injury history than Oden. Goodness, Darko's been a bust for 7 years and just got 4/20. The production of a healthy Oden will always be valuable in this league, and the promise of that kind of production (even for half a season) is more than enough for teams to take chances on. And his skillset is such that he can be productive without athleticism in the worst-case scenario.
I wish he was right about Oden's career averages over 82 games. Alas, he is wrong. Oden's stats are 9.4 ppg, 7.3 rpg, & 1.4 bpg.
