Re-Sign Hickson to a long-term contract?

Personally, I think he keeps playing in mini-Beast Mode until the trade deadline. I think the fact that all we can offer is 3/13.8M means he's not signing an extension with us, so when July 1 rolls around we either have a 7.6M cap hit on our books to retain his Bird rights, or we just cut him loose for absolutely nothing. That cap hit (assuming nothing else happens) means we'll have anywhere between about 3M and 6M left over, which doesn't get you a whole lot of "needle-moving" free agents.

But he has veto status b/c of his Bird Rights, right? Well, yeah...but Bird Rights aren't what they used to be.

JJ, no matter how great he plays, won't get a max deal. He's only 24, so it's not like taking a 4-year deal instead of a 5-year is going to cripple his career earning potential. At his level, the difference b/w 4.5% raises and 7.5% raises comes out to about 250k a year, or 1M over the course of a 4-year contract. I think that when trade deadline rolls around, we get his permission to trade him to a team that could use a bouncy big man for the playoffs in exchange for a couple of juicy assets (Euro rights, far-out draft picks, etc). If we end up with about 15M in cap space (if the cap goes up a couple of million) then I wouldn't be shocked if PLan B was to get a couple of guys like Hickson and Redick or Morrow or something to fill out a playoff-caliber rotation.