I’m actually in Houston and one of the sports talk radio guys thought that the Knicks would sign Lin at the last possible moment, just to spite the Rockets for inflating his value. I really cannot believe that NY would let him go. I don’t know the numbers but I have believe that he brings in much more revenue than he costs. I know the Knicks sell out every game but the amount of merchandise, overseas TV contracts, etc. Then again, the Knicks couldn’t be that dumb, could they?
Yes. It’s very weird because it looks like the Knicks might be making a smart basketball decision.
I hadn’t heard that. Would it really matter? The Knicks had already sworn up and down that they were going to match his contract offer “up to a billion dollars” - and that’s quoting their coach. The Rockets had a good idea what the Knicks’ position was going to be, and that’s why his salary balloons in the third year- it’s supposed to discourage the Knicks from matching, and evidently it did. On the one hand, I think Lin will outplay Felton, but it’s not a guarantee and he’s getting a lot of money considering how few games he’s played and the Knicks need other players. I still don’t think the team is even close to as good as the best teams in the East, and the Knicks’ post-D’Antoni offense does not maximize Lin’s talent the same way their previous offense did, and I’d think that decreases his value. Still, a point guard of Ray Felton and what’s left of Jason Kidd (assuming he doesn’t wind up in jail for that DUI this weekend - whoops!) is not impressive.
It’s also pretty funny to hear one pro athlete call another’s contract “ridiculous.” Carmelo Anthony’s career earnings will pass $100 million this year and this will be his sixth straight year earning at least $13 million. But he’s also not completely wrong. Someone pointed out that in that third year, Lin will be making about 83 or 84 percent as much as LeBron James. He could be very good, but it’s unlikely he will be that good.
Lin’s 3rd year is a nonsense number. The Rockets offered him $8.3M per year, guaranteed for 3 years, structured into a poison pill for the Knicks. Nobody actually thinks he’s worth $15M a year.
I think the Knicks could have gotten him for less than $8.3M/yr and had the opportunity to structure it for their own benefit, but they fouled it up by letting other teams dictate the terms. If they do sign him, they’ll be in cap/penalty hell in 3 years, and will have to gut the team or pay a ridiculous sum in penalties.
Even the Dolans don’t want to waste tens of millions of dollars, even though they frequently do.
That’s how the restricted free agent process works. They could have made him their own offer, but I think it’s unlikely he would have accepted before finding out what other teams were willing to pay.
Once Lin says no to the initial offer, then he only gets what other teams are willing to pay. If the Knicks offer $20M over 3 years, and he declines, they are under no obligation to pay him that if the next best offer is $16M. It’s a risk, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
Thing is, I don’t know what the Knicks expected to happen. The salary cap impact has got to be common knowledge, so any GM with a functioning brain is going to poison pill the offer sheet. So they practically guaranteed themselves a contract with lousy cap implications.
That would work if the Knicks had been able to convince Lin and the rest of the league they were making their final offer and would not match any other deal. I don’t think they would have been able to pull that off. Dealings with restricted free agents have been weird this year. I guess the bottom line is that the Rockets are willing to take that big cap hit in year three (or else they think they can trade him by then if necessary) and the Knicks probably aren’t. It’s hard to tell if this is good business for the Knicks or not. In basketball terms they may not need him with their Carmelo-centric offense and this is not a championship team whether they have Lin or someone like Felton running the point. They have their view on what he’s worth to them financially and this contract may exceed that value. Besides, they made a lot of money from Lin already - Linsanity helped them negotiate a new cable deal. So maybe they figure they’re quitting while they are ahead.
The Knicks have confirmed they won’t match the Rockets’ offer, so Lin is going to Houston. Some of tonight’s reporting has confirmed that after Mike Woodson vowed the Knicks would match any offer for Lin, his agent re-opened discussions with the Rockets and his 4-year/$28M contract became a 3-year/$25 million one. The Knicks were apparently upset about that, but the biggest consideration had to be financial because they would’ve had so much money committed to four or five guys three years from now - although of course in the NBA large expiring contracts can be valuable trade chips. I understand their reasoning but I don’t know if it’s the right decision. They’re saving a significant amount of money with Felton, but I expect they’re getting a significantly lesser player.
And with that, I guess the NBA is back to “As The Dwight Turns…”
Knicks probably made the right decision. The merchandising sales is split among the 30 teams and not all for the Knicks, so this did not make a lot of money for them directly. As **Marley **said, they already got the new cable contract. Most Basketball experts doubt Lin will ever be more then an average point guard and many think he won’t even be that. Knicks don’t need much help to sell tickets, unless the team sucks the Knicks’ Tix sell.
Lin is only 23, averaged 18 points and 8 assists when he got his chance, and was a worldwide phenomenon. For the Knicks to cheap out now, after throwing bad money after bad for the last 12 years, is a slap in the face to their fans. He’s certainly better than Ray Felton, and at worst they could have traded his expiring contract in his third year to reduce payroll, or any of the other expiring contracts they’ll have. The only basketball rationale there is for not signing him is that Carmelo doesn’t like giving up the ball.
I’m sure the basketball experts in the Knicks front office have convinced themselves of that, to get over what a terrible job they did negotiating with him.
Yeah, it sounds like they could’ve kept him for a three- or four-year deal for a similar amount and without the crazy jump in salary, but they never made him an actual offer. They wanted him to hit the market and either they didn’t think something like this would happen, which would be stupid, or they didn’t care much if they lost him this way, which is dicey. They supposedly told Lin specifically that they were also going to look at Felton and Kidd (along with Nash) and they did just that. If they’re really that offended that he took their “guarantee” back to the Rockets and got a better offer - well, he’d be stupid not to. In that case their problem is with Woodson, not Lin. If this was an emotional decision, they’d better hope they luck out with their other guys. Kidd’s DUI was not a promising start.
Fairly sure I read that the Knicks were unable under NBA rules to offer Lin a similar contract to the offer sheet from the Rockets. They could match the Rockets contract offer, but not offer that deal themselves. The Knicks were limited to offering Lin a deal where each year could only be raised by (IIRC)~108% that of the year before. Obviously this prohibits the crazy balloon payment Lin is getting in Year 3. IIRC, Lin would have needed to play 4 years (might have been 5) with the Knicks to make what he will make in 3 years from the Rockets.
Of course, now I can’t find where I read that… Maybe y’all can tease it out of the NBA CBA FAQ dealing with RFAs? Or the NBA’s own CBA 101? (PDF)
The funny thing, as a semi-Rockets fan, is that they let Dragic and Lowry get away, both of whom are better point guards than Lin, in order to give all of this money to Lin. I’d have been much happier dealing Lowry ASAP, and signing Dragic to this deal. Such is life.
Why would you even stop to think that that might be the case??
From the FAQ, I think I understand. The Rockets were restricted in their year 1&2 salaries based on the Mid Level Exception, to ensure that the Knicks would be able to use that Exception (or the Early Bird Exception) to re-sign Lin. Since the Rockets wanted to pay Lin more than that, year 3 is where the bump up occurs. The Rockets are forced to use the average annual salary as their cap number, so they can’t make a high deal on a RFA by using one of their Exceptions.
The Knicks, OTOH, need to use an Exception to sign Lin, which was part of the whole “Early Bird” ruling. Without that Exception, the Knicks can’t sign Lin, they’re not far enough under the cap. The EB Exception is only $5.something Million, so they couldn’t sign him with an $8.3M cap hit, it had to be structured like this.
James “Loyalty” Dolan was trying to cheap out on a kid who came from nowhere to breathe life into his comatose franchise. He had an easy play from his hand, here’s a 3 year Max Early Bird contract, day 1 of free agency. Instead, he wanted to save a bit of scratch, wait for Lin to come back with a $3M/yr offer sheet and match it.
That’s right. It’s the Gilbert Arenas provision. The Rockets had to make an offer that the Knicks were capable of matching. Because the first two years had to be restricted to the mid-level exception amount, the bulk of the money has to be slotted in year 3 (and 4, if applicable), with the cap figure based on the average salary per year. If the Knicks matched, they wouldn’t get to use the average as the cap figure.
I think this is not far off the mark.
I heard the term “Dwightmare” about a half dozen times in a 20 minute span on ESPN radio last night. I’m a Nuggets fan, but being in Ohio it’s nice when the Cavs are interesting, so I actually do hope they get Bynum.
Since this is technically a Jeremy Lin thread, I’ll add that I think he’s overrated. I would not have matched if I were the Knicks. All this “extra” revenue he was going to bring in with jersey sales and overseas interest would only marginally benefit the Knicks thanks to revenue sharing. As Mark Cuban says, there is very little incentive for an NBA owner to practice good business.
I like DwightMare. It should probably have its own thread, but the saga is so goddamn long and absurd I don’t feel I have the energy to start it right now. Anyway: I’ve gradually come to the conclusion that the Knicks screwed up. Is Lin overrated? Yeah, he might be. But the first two years of that contract are entirely reasonable, and while he might be overpaid in the third year, it’s one year - if he’s not good, he’ll be an expiring contract, and if he’s a significant contributor, the obvious solution to me is to trade Stoudemire, who is already declining fast and makes more money, which means his expiring contract would be even more valuable as a trade chip. I’m assuming there is no way they’ll trade Carmelo and probably wouldn’t want to trade Chandler since you do need to play some defense.
To those who think Lin is getting overpaid (and what do you care what an owner wants to spend?), his average salary of $8.4 million puts him at the level of Rodney Stuckey/Devin Harris/George Hill. I don’t know about you, but that seems just about right to me.
I was careful not to say Jeremy Lin was overpaid because I agree the contract is not outlandish. I do think he’s overrated, though, and I’m kind of sick of hearing about him so much. He had a nice run of, what, a dozen or 20 games? If he had done that in Portland or Washington, he’d have been a blip on the screen.
I do get the expiring contract side of the argument that the Knicks should have matched. That’s a fine argument, but I guess they made their bed when they got Ray Felton, who, by the way, is a decent NBA PG.
Ugh, dumbass Knicks. A decade of screwups and you suddenly decide to tighten the pursestrings for a guy who brought excitement back to your franchise again? And your players start taking shots at a guy’s money? There are dozens of overpaid guys in the NBA. I agree with what I heard on the morning radio show, probably Dan Patrick or Colin Cowherd, that this smacks of stereotypes and yes, racism
No matter how bad a contract is, you never hear guys talk about it and call it ridiculous. How many players called out Gilbert Arena or Rashard Lewis for their insane contracts? I have to think its a lot of posturing by Anthony and JR Smith about this new Asian kid who actually won a lot of games and showing them up, especially Anthony
Several of them on the Knicks!
I don’t think those contracts were seen as ridiculous at the time, but yeah, this is rare. I don’t think any players said anything public about the max contract Joe Johnson got a few years ago. But race is not the only possible explanation. Lin just got a $25 million contract based on 25 games - about a third of a season. That’s one of the reasons this whole thing was complicated: Lin was a D-League player or a benchwarmer until February, played like crazy for a few weeks (although he tailed off as time went on), and then got hurt. There’s reason to think he will still be really good, but it’s not as much of a sure thing as a guy with even one whole strong season. Guys like Smith and Anthony think they’ve earned their place in the league and Lin hasn’t, and certainly Smith is not happy that Lin’s contract is worth almost 10 times the one he got. Whether they also see him as an outsider because he’s Asian, I don’t know.