Official: Monta Ellis signs reported 6-year $66 million contract

According to Kawakami, Monta's deal is a flat rate of 11 million a year:

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'>* They could also do a similar flat-rate deal they just gave to Monta Ellis–Ellis got $11M a year flat for six years, no annual increases, just the same salary every year.

That’s very rare to do and it’s only done by teams who are VERY sure of their current salary status (another reason I believe the Warriors know that they’re getting Biedrins back and have a fairly specific idea of what the salary will be) and want to position themselves for a cap room in later seasons.

You can only do that if:

1) You have young good players who are tied up long-term. (Once the Warriors sign Biedrins, they’ll have zero major players coming up as free agents until Stephen Jackson in the Summer of 2010, and he may or may not be considered a major player at that point.

(This summer, as you know, the Warriors had Baron’s opt-out, Matt Barnes, Azubuike, Pietrus, O’Bryant and Ellis and Biedrins as RFAs all on the market. Next summer will be VERY different. Uh oh, my blog numbers are going to suffer in July ‘09! Not good.)

Al Harrington can opt-out next summer, but at his rate ($9.2M this year/$10M for 2009-10 if he doesn’t opt-out ) and his age and with all the young players coming behind him, Al certainly does not qualify as a major player for the Warriors in the future.

2) You have eyes out for the trade/free-agent market either next summer (2009) or the next one (2010: When LeBron, Wade and Bosh can become free) or even the next two after that.

By taking the higher hit this year and spreading the number lower through the life of Ellis’ deal, the Warriors are maximizing the cap space they got when Baron opted out and took off.</div>
http://blogs.mercurynews.com/kawakami/2008...rins-next-week/
BTW pretty decent entry about how TK expects the Biedrins situation to pan out. Also brings up the possibilities of us being players in 2010. By giving the flat rate contract to Monta, the front-loaded one to Turiaf, perhaps a similarly structured deal to Beans, Adonal's buyout is gone, and Jack and Al expire in 2010 we could be left with a ton of cap space in that off season. Right now we have about 41 mils in committed salary in 2010, thats assuming Biedrins is making 9 million like TK projects here, add on 5 million as a rough estimate for how much two first round picks and two second round picks will cost and its up to 46 mils. The salary cap is 58.6 mils this season, lets just say its at 63 million in 2010. That would leave us with approximately 17 million, should be plenty to offer a nice fat first year salary to one of the big time players in that class. By then we could have a pretty damn good team if Monta, Randolph, Wright, Biedrins all pan out and still very young. Attractive situation plus the money is right for potential FAs. Probably a pipe dream but its fun to think about.