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If you're interested, there's a little Marion conversation here:
http://www.spurstalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=124751
dont want to open a new thread...coz I dont want to get bashed for it...(I rather get bashed here):
lets throw in another name: The Matrix should be an option too...even if he excels in an open court game...RJ and Marion ware a nice couple at the F-spots IMO!...and he maybe could be had for the MLE!
If you're interested, there's a little Marion conversation here:
http://www.spurstalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=124751
Thx
Marion is a cancer. Lee is not coming.
Save the fantasy basketball talk for somewhere else.
You forgot to login with your TPark troll for that one...
The Knicks could do a whole lot better than expiring contracts and the rights to Tiago Splitter in return for David Lee. A whole lot better. Plus, they have no need for expiring contracts in return for Lee. They could just let him walk and accomplish the same thing. Never mind the fact that there's absolutely no chance of the Spurs adding another 8-figure annual contract to their payroll, let alone for a fifth wheel. Lee's agent is asking for 5/$60M.
Last edited by Steve-O-Matic; 07-02-2009 at 02:58 PM.
the same game as blair? not exactly
i think david lee gets the rebounds he does cause of good ball awareness. blair is sheer power. we need that strength in the post
plus, i doubt david lee will settle for a discounted offer
Blazers eyeing Knicks' Lee, agent says
By Chris Sheridan
ESPN.com
In the wake of losing Hedo Turkoglu, the Portland Trail Blazers have become engaged in serious discussions about making an offer to New York Knicks restricted free agent David Lee, ESPN.com learned Saturday.
The development came a day after Lee's agent said a dozen NBA teams are trying to find ways to acquire the power forward through sign-and-trade deals.
But like other interested teams, the Blazers are concerned that they would be placed in limbo until July 15 -- the date by which the Knicks would have to decide whether they'd match the offer -- and could lose out if other free agents take themselves off the market in the interim by rushing to get what they can of the league's dwindling amount of available dollars.
The upside of the Turkoglu turnaround for Portland was that it left them as one of the strongest remaining players in free agency, with $9 million worth of salary cap space they're clearly ready to spend.
Portland could offer all of its available cap space to Lee in the form of an offer sheet that would amount to roughly $50 million over five years. And as a disincentive to keep the Knicks from matching, they could structure the deal so that the highest salary of any of the five years would come in 2010-11 -- the season for which the Knicks will need as much salary cap space as possible to make a run at LeBron James and/or another of the marquee superstars that will be available.
But there also is the possibility that the Blazers and Knicks could agree to a sign-and-trade -- although Portland would be no shortage of compe ion.
"All the elite teams are working hard to get him, and I know something is going to happen," Lee's agent Mark Bartelstein said Friday, as the first 72 hours of free agency were passing without Lee getting any offers for what Bartelstein believes his market value to be. He also pointed out that over the past 10 years (when the luxury tax was not an annual certainty, making market conditions far different than they are today), players entering free agency after averaging a double-double the previous season have been lucratively rewarded.
According to ESPN Research, eight players have entered the free-agent market coming off a double-double average the previous season. Here is what they subsequently signed for:
• Emeka Okafor 2007-08: Six-year, $72 million contract with Charlotte as a restricted free agent.
• Carlos Boozer 2003-04: Six-year, $68 million deal with Jazz as a restricted free agent, with the Cavs not matching the offer and claiming Boozer reneged on a handshake agreement to stay in Cleveland.
• Erick Dampier 2003-04: Seven-year, $73 million contract with Dallas.
• Elton Brand 2002-03: Six-year, $82.2 million contract with the Clippers as a restricted free agent.
• Tim Duncan 2002-03: Seven-year, $122 million contract with San Antonio.
• Jermaine O'Neal 2002-03: Seven-year, $126.6 million contract with Indiana.
• Dikembe Mutombo 2000-01: Four-year, $65million contract with Philadelphia
• Chris Webber 2000-01: Seven-year, $122.7 million contract with Sacramento.
• Tim Duncan 1999-00: Four-year, $45.9 million contract with San Antonio.
The problem for Bartelstein and Lee has been the power of the unknown -- no one having a clear idea of whether the Knicks would match.
"Joe Dumars and I had a long talk, and he really liked David a lot. David would have been a major target for them but he said 'Mark, if the Knicks match, I've lost Ben Gordon and everybody else I'm trying to get.' So this is a very difficult situation to operate under," Bartelstein said. "Even Toronto, they would have had to renounce all their players to get David -- and then they're not even sure they could get him."
Lee averaged 16.0 points and 11.4 rebounds for New York last season and has been a fan favorite in New York despite the Knicks having had four straight dismal seasons.
And something the Blazers will have to consider: After losing Turkoglu because he preferred the more international flavor of Toronto, do they want to take a similar risk on a player who has been open about his desire to remain in New York long term?
"Our first goal has always been to get a deal done with the Knicks -- a fair-market deal based upon who David is in this league among his peers, to get a deal that's fair," Bartelstein said before the Turkoglu fiasco unraveled and Portland entered the picture.
"Because there's no ifs, ands or buts, David wants to be a Knick. But if we're not going to be able to do that, the reality I have is that the route I have to go is sign-and-trade, and that's even harder because he becomes a base-year compensation player, and it makes that trade an incredibly complicated event to get to happen, where you have to put in all kinds of players and teams."
Bartelstein refused to name any of the 12 teams he claims are interested in a sign-and-trade, though he did say "if you look at all the tams who feel they are one player away, they're all in there.
"Players who produce like David Lee rarely come onto the market," he said, adding that he had only talked "conceptually" about dollars with the Knicks, whose president, Donnie Walsh, tossed an interesting nugget out there Thursday when asked why the Knicks were suddenly willing to offer Jason Kidd a three-year guarantee when he had said just days earlier that he would not sign any player to a mid-level contract unless he could shed an equal amount of salary. "I have a little leeway that will leave me in good position for next year," Walsh told the Associated Press. "I know what it is, but do not talk much about it."
Bold prediction: David Lee will be the most overpaid player this offseason if he signs a offer sheet.
I am not really understanding why Portland would be interested. Is Lee playing backup center or pf with Aldridge, Oden, and Pryzbilla on the team??
Isn't there a slight possibility of landing this guy?
Put the crack pipe down.
Lee was one of the few bright spots on the Knicks and had a stellar season.
The Spurs won't be able to sign him!
Is somebody in here an ESPN insider?
http://insider.espn.go.com/nba/insid...tTrends-090706
My thought exactly... I don't get this at all. Lee will demand a long term contract, which will make it harder to sign all the young guys on this team when the time comes.
Three defining trends of free agency
LINK
David Lee is better than Jason Kidd, but you'd never know it from their contract talks this summer. Despite averaging a double-double while shooting 54.9 percent from the floor, Lee may be forced to take a qualifying offer to play for barely more than the biannual exception.
On the other hand, Kidd turned down a hefty offer from Lee's current employer because he got a better one from Dallas, one that would pay him about 12 times as much as Lee's qualifying offer -- which is still the only concrete one Lee is known to have received.
Those two examples sum up everything you need to know about the NBA free-agent market, illustrating the three defining trends of this offseason:
1. Rumors of tightening wallets around the league have been greatly exaggerated.
2. Contending teams in particular are locked in a massive arms race.
3. Despite all of this, restricted free agents still can't get squat.
Let's start at the top, because NBA owners are a funny lot.
All through the season they pleaded poverty and talked gloom and doom about the tight wallets in the upcoming offseason. Then the offseason came, and they started spending like drunken sailors on whatever wares Charlie Villanueva or Hedo Turkoglu flaunted in the window.
Of all summers, this was supposed to be the one in which teams began holding the line financially. Faced with declining attendance numbers and a recession so steep that it might produce the unprecedented result of a $6 million decline in the salary cap a year from now, we were warned that a looming financial Armageddon would restrict free agency to a shadow of its former self.
Guess again. Already, moves by San Antonio, Washington, Orlando and Houston -- none of which have been huge spenders in the past -- have put them over the luxury tax for the coming season, though the Rockets may still be able to work their way under. Meanwhile, maneuvers by Dallas, Boston, Cleveland, New York and the Lakers figure to keep them well over the line, too, and it's possible the Nuggets and Heat will be joining them.
On the other side of the coin, the only team that seems to be actively cutting salary is Milwaukee, which traded Richard Jefferson for spare parts and didn't make a qualifying offer to Villanueva. Phoenix, Utah and New Orleans could be in the same boat by the end of the summer, but at the moment those three teams also project to be well over the tax line for the coming season.
Put it all together, and Billy Hunter has to be doing a jig right now. It's hard for the league to plead poverty when potentially 14 of its 30 teams will be going over the luxury tax threshold, giving the Players Association some much-needed ammunition heading into the next collective bargaining negotiation -- one that should begin in earnest in the coming months, since the current CBA expires in 2011. (The league has an option to extend it a year but seems likely to decline.)
The spending stands out so much because this was supposed to be the year when teams would hold back. Given that only one current free agent played in either of the past two All-Star Games, and even that one player (Allen Iverson) comes with a massive asterisk since he was voted in by fans, this hardly seemed like the summer for a big spending spree -- especially given the potentially star-studded free-agent class available in 2010.
Instead, teams are falling over each other to give A-list contracts to B-list players. Villanueva, Turkoglu, Gordon and Kidd all agreed to deals for more than the midlevel exception. Even players with less extensive résumés (Trevor Ariza, Marcin Gortat) or more character flaws (Ron Artest, Rasheed Wallace) have been able to cash in for the full midlevel exception.
Which takes us to our second trend, because it's the contending teams that have been driving the bus on a lot of the spending we've seen. Sure, Detroit and Toronto have taken the lead in pursuing unrestricted free agents, but dig deeper into the trade and free-agent activity, and it's the prime contenders from last season that have done the most to add payroll.
The Spurs got it rolling by adding Jefferson in a move that put them over the luxury tax for the first time in eons, and things quickly escalated from there. The Cavs and Magic almost immediately followed with deals for Shaquille O'Neal and Vince Carter, respectively, and going into the luxury tax didn't slow their momentum one iota, either. San Antonio and Orlando both pursued Wallace, and the Cavs made a strong push for Artest; each has moved on to other targets with their midlevel exceptions.
Another team that was already looking at paying the tax -- Boston -- won the sweepstakes for Wallace, pushing them far beyond the mark even before the possibility of re-signing restricted free agent Glen Davis. As for the defending champion Lakers, they've been one of the few beacons of fiscal sanity this summer, cutting extraneous salary at the end of last season and using their midlevel exception on Artest -- but only after waving goodbye to Ariza. Alas, even they are going to be well over the tax thanks to Andrew Bynum's extension kicking in.
With the main players raising the ante so quickly, teams on the fringe of contention feel the need to splurge just to have a shot at contending. Detroit threw nearly $100 million at Gordon and Villanueva in hopes of regaining its perch at the top of the East, while Dallas made a similar push out West by offering a full midlevel deal to Gortat (he's expected to sign an offer sheet July 8) and re-signing Kidd to a $25 million deal. Even 19-win Washington got in the game, feeling it could threaten the East's elite with a couple more pieces and going deep into the tax to add Mike Miller and Randy Foye.
Of the main contenders, only Denver has been quiet thus far -- but like all the others, the Nuggets are already in tax territory and will likely go deeper if they re-sign big man Chris Andersen and use some of their midlevel exception. (Grant Hill and Channing Frye have already come up as targets.)
Which takes us to trend No. 3. Because as much as teams are spending in pursuit of unrestricted free agents, it stands in sharp contrast to those of the restricted free agents on the market. Gortat struck a deal for an offer sheet from Dallas, but desirable commodities like Lee, Paul Millsap, Marvin Williams, Josh Childress, Ramon Sessions and Nate Robinson have barely gotten a sniff.
Moreover, the market for those players to get anything above the midlevel exception is basically gone. Unless they can persuade one of the above teams to join in the bidding, somebody like Lee or Millsap could end up settling for the midlevel exception or playing on a one-year deal for a scandalously low qualifying offer -- $1.03 million for Millsap, $2.68 million for Lee.
It doesn't get better for the others. Childress will likely have to head back to Greece if he can't work out a sign-and-trade with Milwaukee (it's possible, as a contract starting at $5.1 million in a sign-and-trade for Bruce Bowen and a draft pick works under the cap; the total value of a five-year deal with 10 percent raises would be $30.6 million), while Williams seems likely to play for the $7.3 million qualifier in Atlanta and try again a year from now. Robinson will likely have to leave New York and play for the midlevel exception somewhere, unless he gambles on playing for the $2.9 million qualifier and doing better next summer.
In turn, this has to be chilling news if you're Rajon Rondo, Luis Scola, Rudy Gay, LaMarcus Aldridge, Andrea Bargnani, Ronnie Brewer or Foye, all of whom will be restricted free agents next summer if they don't sign extensions by opening day. (Brandon Roy, who is all but certain to get a maximum extension, needn't worry.) The restricted free agents in the class of '09 couldn't get a sniff of big money even in a very underwhelming free-agent market; what can they possibly expect a year from now when the likes of LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh, Dirk Nowitzki and Amare Stoudemire could be available unrestricted?
On the other hand, the unrestricted free agents could once again make out like bandits -- perhaps providing a carrot for the likes of Lee, Millsap and Williams to take the qualifier and play for a below-market-value price this season in hopes of recouping the difference next summer.
One thing is for certain: The spending spree of the last five days won't do the owners any favors in the next collective bargaining agreement. But with the remaining cap space essentially dried up and several productive restricted free agents still on the market, the rest of the summer could play out quite differently.
Thanks
IntriguingMoreover, the market for those players to get anything above the midlevel exception is basically gone. Unless they can persuade one of the above teams to join in the bidding, somebody like Lee or Millsap could end up settling for the midlevel exception or playing on a one-year deal for a scandalously low qualifying offer -- $1.03 million for Millsap, $2.68 million for Lee.
Last edited by DAF86; 07-06-2009 at 06:17 PM.
Is Lee a restricted free agent?
If we offer him the MLE then New York is likely to match that offer right? Or are they not so interested on spending money on him?
Oh how I wish.
They most likely match an MLE offer. A team like Portland who COULD offer a 5/50 deal could try and load the 2nd year of the deal so that in 2010 the Knicks have a bit higher salary.
Bottomline really is that Utah and New York would most likely match any MLE offering to Lee or Millsap.
I think the ESPN report was saying that Lee and/or Millsap have the option of settling for MLE money OR signing their tenders and being UFAs next offseason.
Sign and trade with NY? Perhaps NY was interested in shedding more cap room for LeBron or Wade in 2010.
Lee ‘frustrated’ by negotiations with Knicks
By Brian Mahoney
David Lee says he is frustrated by the lack of progress in negotiations for a new contract with the New York Knicks.
Lee became a restricted free agent on July 1 and the Knicks have said they’d like to keep him, but only at the right cost. New York is trying to save salary cap space for next summer and doesn’t want to spend too much on re-signing its power forward.
Lee understands the Knicks’ position, but said he expected easier negotiations after his strong season in 2008-09. He averaged 16 points and 11.7 rebounds while leading the NBA with 65 double-doubles and finishing third in rebounding.
Because he is unsigned, Lee was forced to sit out the USA Basketball minicamp this week.
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