http://www.sportingnews.com/nba/story/2010-09-16/grizzlies-finally-sign-first-round-picks The Memphis Grizzlies successfully ended a long series of contract negotiations when it signed both of its first round picks, the Memphis Commercial Appeal reports. No. 12 overall pick Xavier Henry and No. 28 overall pick Greivis Vasquez each agreed to deals in principle, according to the report. The main cause for the delay was Memphis' insistence that the players sign incentive-heavy contracts. In most cases, teams sign rookies to 120 percent of a draft position's salary scale. In the case of the Grizzlies, the team was offering 100 percent with the final 20 percent being performance based. In August, Grizzlies owner Michael Heisley was adamant about those performance clauses. “I guess the good question is why doesn’t the rest of the league do it? They negotiated it. It’s part of the collective bargaining agreement. I assume it was put in there — I don’t know, I was not part of that negotiation — but normally you don’t put something like that into the wage scale thing unless you intend to have a performance criteria. Obviously other teams have chose not to use it. There have been teams that have used it. There are teams this year that are using it. But there’s absolutely no question the vast majority of teams have not used it.” On Wednesday, Henry's agent, Arn Tellem told the New York Times that he was willing to pay Henry's salary this season if the two sides couldn't reach an agreement.
