This from Lakersground: "lillard is the perfect player to be on the lakers. young, athletic, can shoot, great iq. i say he can be better than CP3 and Kyrie Irving combined..."
I think Lillard is great, but CP3 when he was healthy was unbelievable. The guy was a legit quadruple-double threat. That's unheard of. Lillard has a long way to go before he can reach that.
Luckily, the Blazers have some leverage with his contract. I'm honestly surprised I haven't seen more Blazers fans looking at this year's free agency in terms of restructuring Lillard's deal in 2014. Ya'll seem to treat your current cap room as a green light to go out and get a decent free agent this summer, but Lillard's going to want his contract restructured in 2014. I know that you can keep him two years longer under a team option clause, but I doubt he'd react well to that.
He had two. I thought you knew the game? 33 points, 11 assists, 10 rebounds, 7 steals http://www.basketball-reference.com/boxscores/200901140DAL.html 27 points, 15 assists, 10 rebounds, 7 steals http://www.basketball-reference.com/boxscores/200901260NOH.html
I actually thought he had gotten a quad-dub, but I guess he never has. He probably never will. He's not the same player he was.
That's not how NBA contracts, specifically rookie contracts, work. Lillard's salary is set for the next 3 years after this one as long as the team doesn't decide to let him go, the 2016/2017 season is the first year he'll have a salary he's actually negotiated.
Apparently, only four players have actually gotten quadruple double, Nate Thurmond, Alvin Robertson, Hakeem Olajuwon, and David Robinson (the most recent, 1994). The only one to pull it off with steals instead of blocks was Alvin Robertson. Clyde came close in '86 and then a decade later in '96, missing the first (as a Blazer) by a rebound, and missing the second (as a Rocket) by an assist. I could have sworn Jason Kidd has come close to the quadruple-double. I mean, he's one of the all-time leaders in assists and steals, and he also led a couple of his teams in rebounding. I still maintain to this day that Jason Kidd should have been the 2002 MVP over Tim Duncan. That's how it's structured currently, but if the Trail Blazers want to keep him long-term, then they'll have to restructure his deal after next season, or else they'll lose him. If a player worth $14+ mill a year is currently only offered a "team option" of $4 mill or so, any agent worth keeping will restructure that contract.
Except that's not allowed. The earliest they can even start negotiating is after his 3rd year, and that's just for an extension that if signed won't kick in until his 5th year the 2016/17 season. This isn't football, guaranteed contracts work differently than the unguaranteed signing bonus heavy NFL contracts.
I don't think this has ever happened. A team option is built into the contract of a rookie, if we don't pick the option up then he becomes a FA. If we extend his contract then its after the team option is picked up, you can't magically make that option disappear without letting him become a FA, and if we let him become a FA then we can't even talk to him about a new contract until the FA period begins. It hasn't happened with Durant/Rose/Westbrook/Griffin/Roy/LA or any of the players in the last 5 years who have gotten a max or big payday off there rookie contract.
I dunno how you can read that forum so often KS. I just read 5 different forums and spent about 30m on there and I can't believe the shit that comes out of those fans mouths. I thought some of us wore rose colored glasses but half those posters seem to know nothing about basketball other then lakers media talk.
In his third year, the team has an option. In these cases, most small market teams let the players out of their deals through implicit deals, to re-sign for a lot of money. If the Blazers decide to keep him on a $4 mill a year salary, they'll inevitably lose him after low-balling him for two straight years. The more likely scenario is that they'll decline the team option after next season and offer him MAX money.
That's never happened NoVoodoo, I don't know what your thinking about, or what examples you think there might be, but that's just not how the NBA works man. Lebron in Cleveland, Durant in Seattle and OKC, every guy that looked like a star early on even in a small market... they all still got paid exactly what their rookie scale contract said they would be paid for their 1st 4 years in the league and they didn't start making 10+ million until year 5.
The contracts are structured differently with team options than they used to be. We're a decade removed from LeBron, and a lot of the changes in the CBA were because of contracts like that. There used to be more guarantees in the early years, yet now rookies with "team options" in their third or fourth years not only grant the team's the freedom to admit mistakes and cut players loose but also allow for players to renegotiate in their third year for a real salary. And you don't remember Carlos Boozer getting out of Cleveland's deal that was less than a million for his next rookie option to sign with Utah? He made an "under the table agreement" to sign with Cleveland if they let him out of his shitty rookie deal, which they had an option on, and then he went and signed a ridiculous deal with Utah. This has been going on forever, with guys making implicit deals within their options, and the rookie contracts nowadays just have more leniency than they ever did before. If Lillard wants to restructure his deal next offseason, you best believe he'll do it.
Carlos Boozer was a second round player, their contracts work differently then first round players, but in this case it works because Cleveland declined his option making him a FA so they could sign him to a bigger contract, which is actually illegal to do because you cannot talk about contracts with FA players before Free agency starts. Contracts cannot do restructured like you can in the NFL, NBA first round rookie contracts are guaranteed contracts. They do have team options, which if declined make the player a FA and you cannot work out contracts in advance with a soon to be FA, its illegal under the union contract. You actually hit the nail on the head when you talked about Boozers contract and why teams do not decline options to then rework players contracts, because there is nothing stopping that player from then going where ever they want like Boozer did.
That's not true at all man,... a second round player is not guaranteed an NBA contract, but once signed, the players are signed. Boozer had the same options in his deal that Lillard does, and like I've edited in to my last post, most players have those same options, if not more, in the current era.
The rookie contracts are exactly the same in structure, the money is different but having two team options and a QO haven't changed.
