Wow thats a lot of money...but I read on this board a few days ago someone wanted an extension from some team next year and they would get either a 5 or 6 year 126 million dollar contract for the max. Probably was 6, but if it was 5.....
So if we get him 5 for 100 its a little better than that...If you sign him now its less over the long haul.
Even when he finishes the contract in early 09, he'll barely be 32. Maybe we'll get a discount then as even though pg's generally start slowing down then, not always.
Maybe he'll take a pay cut after this contract, maybe same with marion. Of course wishful thinking, but it does happen...see lakers. How many players AFTER getting 100+ million dollars in salaries ever take the money and run....I haven't seen one. At that point and at that age, winning matters.
Of course they want a championship, but if we give them all this money now when they are young, and they are still relatively young when the contracts expire, it is possible to sign these guys for a whole lot less when they are still pretty darn good at 31-32 years old and be able to add some good players then. Until then we have a GREAT shot to win any year they remain healthy.
They could chose to not spend some of the cap relief when googs and penny's contract comes off the books. Or they could to get an aging veteran center or whatnot to bridge the gap.
It is alot of money, but marbury is worth it.
With kidd on the floor you need three more scorers to be competitive, with marbury, just two more....and we have them, after then its defense defense, and injury depth. We have 7 years to find these guys just based on the contract, possibly 3-5 years more after that but odds go down.
We must not forget one thing, how many good teams win big when they have a premium pg, premium sf, and a premium PF...plenty...
Think shaq will be as good in 05-06 or 06-07? Probably not. Maybe even before then. This young team took san antonio deep and we could have won the series. With david gone, and the lakers aging, except kobe (who might not be around anyways), who out there has some great young talent that has been proving themselves to be great? The suns, and no one else. You could say clippers, but most of their high picks or whatnot turn out to be duds, but they are the closest, and I see a big gap between us and them.
I'm not forgetting dallas, but nash is making noise about max contract, and he will be 30 years old during the season, finley is 30 and will be 31 during the season, dirk is young so they have him to build around, but you catch my drift.
Our guys played almost to their level last year and are 5-7 years younger, with amare even younger than that.
Well we have them now at their age, and they're good, and at their age, they are ALL going to be better barring injury.
We don't have to worry about marbury bolting or marion hooking up with kidd now. We're locked in.
We have amare for at least another 3 years, and I bet he gets an extension like this too.
With these three all you need is roleplayers and a good center and young backups and they could become dominant for YEARS.
Yes the good center part is hard, but who knows what carbakapa does, or who else is out there. The rest is relatively easy when compared to getting the great players part. Even then who besides the suns have such a great track record at getting steals of the draft or at least great value picks...7-12 years to get 1 or 2 more good/great players. We might already have one in carbakapa, but I haven't seen him yet, but he is intriguing.
What I do know is young impact players don't grow on trees, most teams don't even have 1 okay maybe 1 on average when you consider marbury's age, but we have 3.
They are like the big 3 in dallas (from 90's kidd, jim jackson, and god someone else) except they are ALL good. NO all GREAT.
Sticker shock true, but I bet its worth it later. There will be no holdouts or bad locker room jealousy, because our big guys are all PAID IN FULL...
We were shackled by penny and googs contract. Well did anyone think we could keep our young core, get those guys off the books and be able to spend top dollar for more guys?
Its impossible, its the nature of the business. We invested wisely in our top players who are already near the top in the league. We were expecting too much. But instead of having kidd and a couple of cap albatrosses and trying to put out the fires w/o many draft picks, we got studs under contract and now have many years to build around. In fact we owe only one pick now, and have one as trade bait or finally get with cleveland sometime.
We are in the best position to win championships down the road that I have seen in a long time.
We have three guys who should be in the top 3-5 at their position for their best part of their careers...think rockets in mid-nineties but with about 7-8 years MORE time. Like drexler, hakeem, and barkley in '85-86 through '95-'96. Thats what we are in for. We ARE the future of the nba.
We will be good this year, and possibly great. I can't wait for this season to start.
