Today's Times: <div class="quote_poster">Quoting AD:</div><div class="quote_post">"Seattle continues to say something to the effect like when and if you get a serious offer, then come back to us and tell us what it is. Well, that makes me feel very unappreciated. ... You never want to close any door, but I'm not the one closing the door."</div> http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/spor...648_soni15.html
That article also mentions that we're trying to resign Vitaly. I'm a little worried that the Sonics keep on making players unhappy. It's almost like the front office is scared to be aggressive in many cases.
AD hasn't been snubbed by the Supes. He is a 30 year old point guard who wants a 5 year deal. If you look at his career he hasn't shown the consistency to warrant the 30 million dollar deal that he wants, and it's not as if the Sonics have said he doesn't want him to return. Management is doing things right. They are offering the Sonics players a fair deal and if they don't want the deal they can go elsewhere. You can't appease every player. Jerome James is not going to be worth 6-7 million dollars a year 5 years from now. Brent Barry isn't worth 5 million a year right now let alone 3 years from now. You have to be patient. We have enough restricted free agents that we can decide what contract we want to match and which ones we don't. AD may think of himself as irreplaceable, but I honestly believe that he has peaked as a professional basketball player. We have options behind him and I'm sure that there are serviceable players that we can get for a lot less than AD is asking. We aren't in a position where we can spend a ton of money on free agents. It may seem that we aren't taking chances, but I'd take that before I made the mistake of signing Calvin Booth to a seven year 35 million dollar deal. The only case where I think that our patience can hurt us is with Vitaly Potapenko. Ray got his deal after he was "huffing and puffing" all season about his negotiations, and I'm sure that if AD really wanted to stay in Seattle he'd get an offer that was fair to his value. In his mind though fair means more money than any other team will give him. Rick Sund is too smart for that.
Kinda funny you mention being careful with money Shiek but yet you want to match a full midlevel exception for Flip Murray who didnt do anything for the Sonics last year and it was shown that Allen and Murray clearly did not bring out the best in 1 another.
They haven't offered AD anything. They said to come see them if anyone makes a serious offer. That is somewhat of a snub. They should at least say...we want to let you find out your market value and then we will work on a deal with you...just like we did with Ray.
<div class="quote_poster">Quoting Roland Hood:</div><div class="quote_post">Today's Times: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/spor...648_soni15.html</div> Seattle is killing me! They signed Ray in an effort to save face, and now are pissing off people like AD who contibuted to last years success. It's sucks.
<div class="quote_poster">Quoting Coolguy777:</div><div class="quote_post">Kinda funny you mention being careful with money Shiek but yet you want to match a full midlevel exception for Flip Murray who didnt do anything for the Sonics last year and it was shown that Allen and Murray clearly did not bring out the best in 1 another.</div> I don't think Murray will get a full mid level exception but what I did say if he did I think that we should consider matching it b/c of the need, his age, and his talents. The difference in these two situations is that AD is an unrestricted free agent and Flip is a restricted. AD wants the Supes to make him his biggest offer and Flip is hopeful that Seattle doesn't match his best offer. Rick Sund has done his homework and knows how high AD value is right now. He knows that in two years Luke's contract going to be up and he doesn't want to be paying his back up over 5 million dollars a year (w/ more years on his contract to be paid) when he is seven years older than Luke. If you are going to commit to Luke as the point guard of the future you have to give him an opportunity to man the spot exclusively. Last year he split time with AD and continuously watched the game in crunch time on the bench. If he is ever going to develop into one of the better points in the league you have to be willing to increase his minutes. Now I don't necessarily think that doing that is in the best interest of the Sonics, but I can see why management would want to go that route. Resigning Flip would be cheaper than AD and it would be more justifiable to keep Flip from getting extended playing time in order to give Luke more minutes (b/c of Flip's unrecognizable name). I don't think that it is in Flip's best interest at all to stay in Seattle. I don't think it is AD's best interest to stay in Seattle either. But one of these players will be on the roster next season. Luke isn't good enough to be a full time starting point guard who plays 38+ minutes a game. As much as management will want you to believe that he is a cornerstone to the nucleus of this franchise, I think that they are overestimating his potential.
