Baron Davis contract situation

Just wondering.

I recall him wanting a big extension this past summer but nothing came from the club. Has anything been mentioned?

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (GM3 @ Jan 5 2008, 08:15 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}></div><div class='quotemain'>Just wondering.

I recall him wanting a big extension this past summer but nothing came from the club. Has anything been mentioned?</div>

Not really. Mullin is being hush hush about who is staying and who is going.

It's probably being put off until next season because of the draft, possible trades, and having time to forecast how much the owner can afford to spend given certain scenarios.



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If you want speculation:

My feeling is Mullin will not re-sign Baron Davis, mainly because of warriors owner Chris Cohan and because of not wanting to give up Monta Ellis. Personally, I've believed that Mullin is looking for a higher % young player, somebody that is efficient and will listen to his coach. I think Baron's falling out with coach Byron Scott and tuning out coach Mike Montgomery kinda displayed that Baron is only willing to work with a few coaches in particular. That might be trouble if one of the players is holding out because of the coach. Baron's a real nice gamer, but you have to worry about your supposed floor leader getting too emotional to the point where he's making bad decisions in an important game and then possibly getting tossed out. He also came up big in the playoffs last year, but he couldn't do the important job of hitting free throws in the 2nd round. That is embarrassing by guard standards to be the leader of the team and miss those in important games like that.

I probably don't think Ellis will be better than Baron Davis' playmaking ability or have great post-up strength, but Ellis will go to the hole a lot more rather than settle for outside jumpers. He's tall and can shoot over players and because he's one of the quickest, he can open up opportunities for others provided those other players move off the ball. Plus, he works well with another guy Mullin will almost definitely re-sign (Andris Biedrins). If Marco Belinelli turns out to be a gamer or Azubuike gets healthy and improves or we find a better two guard, the sum of the backcourt could be better than anything that Baron tries to do by himself going 1 on 1.

If too much is resting on Baron Davis and he's always in danger of being hurt again, it's not a good risk to re-sign the guy for 5-6 more years. Because he'll want that longer contract because he won't earn as much after he becomes 30 and possibly more injury prone. Then if he's having some Kobe like issues he'll probably want out when we need him most because of his desire to win a championship. In fact, Baron Davis reminds me of the most like Kobe. They are both awesome and have a never-back-down mentality, but it takes a team to win. We need a big man like Andrew Bynum first and the smart, complimentary players to go with them. I'd rather trade two for one by keeping Ellis, Biedrins and then finding out if Wright + shooting guard + Sjax can make a better team than the one we have now.

P.S: The reason why I still don't think much of Cohan is that while he's a great businessman who impressively increased the value of the Warriors since buying them, he doesn't care about winning that much and he doesn't know about winning in basketball. If we should ever get a guy like the 49ers Eddie DiBartolo who knew enough about the sport to hire the right guys in the first place, veto the bad moves, and take business losses for the sake of winning, maybe we'd have broken the playoff drought sooner.

 

I think there is a good chance the Warriors make a run at Kidd in two years when he hits the FA market. Kidd IMO will still be a good player and will not demand a high salary.

 

I just don't see how we can take it to the next level with Baron unless he changes his ways. And by that I don't mean putting up bigger stats because he is doing that in some areas, lots of points and rebounds and steals this year for instance. But he needs to realize that he is the lowest % shooter on the floor at pretty much all times, and channel his energies into setting up others on a team loaded with scoring options. Stop taking the "hero" 3-pointers. His 3-point % is actually up 11% from last year. But it's still a relatively low % shot (not to mention he usually takes them solo and kills offensive flow), and he's taking 45% more 3s this year over last! Then there is his abysmal 41% overall FG%, which is not a fluke because it's exactly the same as his career average. His FT% is up this year, but 75% from the freethrow line is still unacceptable for your star point guard and main player.

Certainly not everything is Baron's fault, but I just don't see him as a good long term option moving forward, especially with the injury-prone past and as CR2 mentions, his "diva" syndrome which surfaces from time to time.

Still don't get why Biedrins at 65.5% FG% and #7 in the NBA in R/48 is only playing 28 minutes a game. And yes, I am going to keep harping on that because it's ridiculous.