I agree in that I think if you can get meyers to sign for 11 million per year you probably do it. But Olshey likes being flexible and probably sees that 4 million or so as valuable. Also, I'm not sure I'd sign it if I was meyers. If you're that young, you have big starry eyed dreams, and he probably thinks this year he could drop a 18/9 season, where next year someone pays him an outlandish sum. So Id be surprised if Leonard is in a hurry to get anything done.
He played more than 15 minutes a game when he played, and more than 10 minutes a game if we pretend he played all 82 games. He played enough to count as a backup at his position. Yeah he played less than 1000 minutes, but it's not like two seasons ago when he played less than 400 minutes. http://bkref.com/tiny/iSQDU On this list, he's ranked 13th in minutes played. If you sort by TS%, he's 12th which correlates well. Last season was a unicorn of a season for him, but he's closer to Steve Kerr's season IMHO than Scott Novak's season.
I guess I want to see Leonard earn a contract before lavishing him with big money. If he can hold up as a "featured" player this season in 30+ minutes a night then he'll either be worth every penny of a 12 million/year deal or he'll be inconsistent and show that he's still not quite ready for prime-time and he'll end up making something like 9-8 million a year.
If he holds up as a featured player this season, he's liable to be offered a max deal by a desperate team like Kanter was, which may well approach 20m/year with the cap increase.
Fine. If the Blazers want to match that kind of money theoretically he'd actually be worth it and the Blazers could do that and still have plenty of money to spend elsewhere. I just don't want to see the Blazers bidding against themselves and then potentially burdening themselves with an albatross if Meyers never pans out (which seems like a concern the brass have too, otherwise you'd think they could have come to some kind of agreement already).
