If you’re a Seattle SuperSonics fan, you probably haven’t been this happy in nearly a decade.
The wins continue and the playoffs are all but assured. The team is already good and should get better. With up-and-coming youngsters like Rashard Lewis, Luke Ridnour, Vlade Radmanovic, Nick Collison and perhaps Robert Swift, it’s not hard to imagine the Sonics being an elite team over the next several seasons, just like they were for much of the 1990s.
Could anything mess up all this good karma?
Well, yes. This is the NBA, after all, which means trouble is never very far away. And for Seattle, stalled contract negotiations with five-time All-Star guard Ray Allen, a soon-to-be free agent, hover on the horizon like the dark clouds of an impending storm.
Allen and his agent, Lon Babby, had exploratory talks with the Sonics late last season and on through the past offseason. The discussions have continued in recent months, and by now the two sides have pretty well staked out their positions.
Though everyone is staying fairly tight-lipped, this much has emerged: Seattle has offered a five-year contract worth around $70 million, which is more generous than the six-year, $65.6 million deal All-Star guard Steve Nash accepted to sign with Phoenix last summer. Allen, though, wants five years and close to $90 million, which is more on a par with the seven-year, $136.4 million package All-Star guard Kobe Bryant coaxed out of the Los Angeles Lakers, also last summer.
And there it sits.
The two sides are some $18-20 million (or almost $4 million per season) apart. There has been no significant progress of late. There is no reason to expect real progress anytime soon.
More and more, it seems, this stalemate will continue into the summer, when Allen becomes an unrestricted free agent. He could sign with another team and the Sonics would get zip, although most other clubs are already over the league’s salary cap and could not give him the kind of contract he wants.
And therein lies Seattle’s one big advantage. Under the league’s current collective bargaining agreement, the Sonics can offer Allen more money than most other teams. Very few, in fact, could give him $70 million over five years, let alone a deal closer to $90 million.
That good news, though, is offset by the dilemma facing Seattle general manager Rick Sund. How does he get Allen and several other soon-to-be free agents re-signed while adhering to a franchise-mandated budget?
Here’s the math. First of all, Vitaly Potapenko almost certainly will not be re-signed, which means his approximately $6 million contract comes off the books. Lewis, Ridnour, Collison, Swift and Danny Fortson, meanwhile, are all due increases on contracts that go beyond this season, and those raises collectively total about $1.5 million.
If the Sonics accede to Allen’s request of five years and $90 million, his jump in salary (from $14.625 this season to about $18 million per year, depending on how the new deal is structured) would eat up much of the roughly $4.5 million leftover if Potapenko is not re-signed. That would make it virtually impossible to retain free agents Radmanovic, Reggie Evans and Flip Murray (all restricted), and Jerome James and Antonio Daniels (both unrestricted; the latter if he declines an option for 2005-06, as expected), without going significantly beyond the team’s current payroll of almost $53 million – something owner Howard Schultz and president Wally Walker would be loathe to do.
How, then, does all this play out?
Answer, no one knows. If Allen holds firm, which is his prerogative, he could be gone. Milwaukee, for example, might like to get him back to atone for its bone-headed trade of two years ago. To do that, though, the Bucks would have to part company with guard Michael Redd, himself a soon-to-be unrestricted agent and the man who replaced Allen after the trade. Redd, ironically, is one of the players Seattle would no doubt pursue if Allen, indeed, goes elsewhere.
Three years ago, the Sonics went through a similar scenario with Lewis. An unrestricted free agent, he was courted by a handful of teams – the Dallas Mavericks, remember, wanted him badly – but in the end no one could match Seattle’s offer of seven years and some $60 million (incentives could ultimately push the total closer to $70 million).
For Allen, it could unfold in much the same way. He might eventually realize his market value is closer to what the Sonics are offering. Seattle, too, might budge a little bit, and both parties might close the remaining gap with incentives.
In other words, all of this might work out.
But for now, Allen waits. And the Sonics wait.
And the storm clouds hang on the horizon of a season that should be nothing but bright.
Rich Myhre is The Herald’s NBA writer.
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