SirStefan32
Krycek, Alex Krycek
This year's winners, losers of free agency
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By Marc Stein
ESPN.com
Another two weeks have passed. Nearly every marquee free agent is off the market. A couple of big trades popped, too.
It's time, thusly, to progress from progress reports to more of a summer scorecard.
Training camp is still two months away, and the roster tweaks will continue, but here's where we are so far with free agency:
The Winners
The Lakers set the curve for free agency with the signings of Gary Payton, left, and Karl Malone (who'll wear No. 11, not No. 32).
Los Angeles Lakers
Upon reflection, they can't claim to have aced the offseason, given the Kobe Bryant uncertainty that looms over the team, the city and the whole league. They had barely 24 hours, from the Gary Payton/Karl Malone press conference to Kobe's "I'm innocent" press conference, to worry about ego overload being the biggest problem this season. Yet for the purposes of this basketball discussion, we'll throw out all the doomsday scenarios and assume Bryant and his teammates, new and old, can function normally, even with that sizable legal cloud floating overhead. If you allow for that assumption, L.A. is still paying only $6.4 million to have Payton and Malone in its lineup for 2003-04. That's an even bigger coup than what the Colorado Avalanche pulled, after Paul Kariya and Teemu Selanne started this heretofore unseen practice of winter superstars taking massive pay cuts for a one-season hunt for glory. Want more positivity amid the gloom? Narrow-minded as it might seem to focus on the hoop implications of what's happening to No. 8, there is also the belief in Lakerland -- again assuming that Bryant will eventually extricate himself from his legal troubles -- that Kobe's personal turmoil will actually ease locker-room tensions. The theory supposes that Bryant wouldn't dare be a problem teammate after what his other problems have done to his image.
San Antonio Spurs
True dat: San Antonio didn't sign Jason Kidd or Alonzo Mourning or even P.J. Brown. True dat II: San Antonio has lost David Robinson and Speedy Claxton from its championship team and won't be bringing back Stephen Jackson, either. So why are the Spurs quietly satisfied? Truth is, their summer wasn't nearly as bleak as it reads. The Spurs knew they couldn't come back with the same team, in a tougher West, and they've managed to add four quality players without affecting next summer's financial options: Rasho Nesterovic, Robert Horry, Hedo Turkoglu and Ron Mercer. It's also fairly clear that the Spurs' new pieces will be easier to blend in quickly than the Lakers' newbies, which is why San Antonio is a virtual lock to start the season in the No. 1 slot in those larger-than-life ESPN.com NBA Power Rankings.
The Maloof Bros.
Joe and Gavin Maloof went into the summer vowing to cut payroll. They wound up agreeing to pay Brad Miller some $26 million more than Nesterovic got and a tidy $52 million more than Michael Olowokandi received. Apparently they don't subscribe to the contention that the Kings' window for title contention is narrowing.
Glen Taylor
Better known for giving Kevin Garnett the contract that begat the only work stoppage in NBA history, or his part in the under-the-table Joe Smith scandal, Taylor just took a Maloofian step in an attempt to keep Garnett in Minneapolis and give the West a full-fledged Fab Five. Instead of hanging onto Terrell Brandon's valuable contract and the cap relief it provides, Taylor sanctioned the acquisition of Latrell Sprewell. That'll take the Wolves' payroll into the $70 million range after they fill out the rest of the roster.
Gilbert Arenas has 65 million reasons to weather the snow in D.C.
Washington Wizards
So maybe they overpaid for Gilbert Arenas. Then again, bad teams with cap room (as we'll cover later) generally can't give their money away. Kudos to the Wiz for getting Arenas' signature after we heard all year that he'd never sign for a team on the snowy side of the country. Arenas, Jerry Stackhouse, Kwame Brown, Larry Hughes -- it's a base of talent to work with, with trades sure to follow if Arenas, Stack and Hughes all prove too similar.
Orlando Magic
Sorry. Not buying the notion that Juwan Howard and Drew Gooden can't play together. Orlando is still in the East. Most nights, one of them can play some center.
Miami Heat
Doubly sorry. Even if the Heat decides to withhold an offer sheet to Lamar Odom and sits on its cap room for now, the club is immeasurably better off than it was before Anthony Carter's $4.1 million clerical error. The Heat has roughly $12 million in cap space instead of $7-ish million. As long as it's not burned on mediocre talent, that's a good thing.
New Orleans Hornets
Since our last roundup, when a re-signed P.J. was added to the re-signed Baron Davis and Jamal Mashburn, the Hornets have signed Darrell Armstrong and Sean Rooks. Neither one is a major score, but again we ask glumly: Do we have to stop dissing George Shinn?
Kevin Ollie
After playing for nine teams in six seasons, one of our faves gets a five-year, $15 million deal from Cleveland. That's more guaranteed money than Payton and Malone got from the Lakers. Combined. Of course, there's a reason for the backup point guard's windfall. "If you were looking for a good character guy to put around LeBron (James), there isn't a better choice than Kevin Ollie," one former employer said.
Robert Horry
Big Shot Rob gets famously offended whenever his game-winning playoff triples are branded "lucky," but even Horry concedes that luck "fell on me this time" in the form of two-year, $9.45 million contract from the Spurs. There is little chance San Antonio will invoke the team option for Year 2 of that contract, but Horry will still earn $4.5 million next season from the Spurs. After shooting 0-for-18 on 3-pointers against the Spurs in the '03 playoffs.
Alonzo Mourning
Zo's contract is twice as long as Horry's, at more than double the money, with no one able to calculate how much his body will allow him to play. In a summer of umpteen surprises, the story about Mourning morphing into a he-goes-where-I-go package deal with J-Kidd is one of the biggies.
New Jersey Nets
Nothing has changed since the first progress report. Byron Scott is still no closer to a contract extension, Kenyon Martin still wants max money when he becomes eligible for a contract extension Aug. 1 and still none of that can dampen the Nets' enthusiasm because they hung onto Kidd.
To Be Determined
Brad Miller
As undeniably great as it is to get zillions more than the other centers on the open market, after going undrafted in 1998, now Miller has to live up to the price tag. That might not be so easy in the land of the giants out West. Nor will it be so simple replacing two of the most popular Kings, Turkoglu and Scot Pollard. The pressure is on Miller and Geoff Petrie here.
Indiana Pacers
Pacer People everywhere are furious that the likes of Jonathan Bender and Jeff Foster received contract extensions in October, only for Indy management to decide months later that it couldn't afford to pay Miller -- a center from Indiana and a reigning East All-Star. Sounds like a rare strike against Pacers president Donnie Walsh, but, again, Miller will have to prove worthy of those big dollars. The expectation here, incidentally, is that Pollard will surprise disappointed Pacers fans, because he'll be a legit center in the East with steady playing time, feeding off the attention Jermaine O'Neal draws.
Kevin McHale had his best offseason as Wolves GM.
Kevin McHale
After the interminable infatuation with Joe Smith ... and the ironic failure of letting future Sixth Man extraordinaire Bobby Jackson go ... and the loss of Chauncey Billups ... after all that you could say McHale needed a big score to spruce up his GM resume. The moves he made this summer -- trading for Sprewell and Sam Cassell and signing Olowokandi to replace Nesterovic -- were McHale's boldest strokes yet. "It'll be an interesting year," McHale said Friday. It'll be a redemption year if Flip Saunders can mold all the boldness into a unit.
Chicago Bulls
If Scottie Pippen can be a Zen-like influence in Portland, he figures to have a positive impact on the Baby Bulls. He's injury-prone, sure, and prone to lashing out when his team is losing, but Pippen brings undeniable playoff mojo back to Chicago -- in his 16 seasons, Pip has been to the postseason 16 times. Tyson Chandler and Eddy Curry, both finally making tangible progress and giving Pip's new/old team some of the East's most promising size, can stand to learn the good stuff he can teach. Nevertheless, it's tough to be too upbeat about the Bulls these days, no matter whom they sign. Scottie's return doesn't change the fact that a) the battle for playoff spots at the bottom of the East will be competitive no matter how much stronger the West is, and b) Jay Williams' motorcycle crash, which threatens Williams' ability to ever play again, is the story of Chicago's offseason.
Philadelphia 76ers
Allen Iverson will respect Glenn Robinson more than Keith Van Horn or Toni Kukoc or Larry Hughes -- the last three guys to try to be Philly's No. 2 scorer. That's not the issue. The issues are size and experience. Philly could be undersized at almost every position, even with Marc Jackson coming in to play center, and Randy Ayers is a rookie head coach at this level, with a challenging roster to manage.
Los Angeles Clippers
The Clippers could have paid Elton Brand more than $105 million over seven seasons, so matching Miami's six-year, $82 million offer to Brand is a bargain by comparison, even for owner Donald T. Sterling, a lifelong non-spender. That's one reason why reaction to the Brand signing, which figured to be trumpeted as a momentous occasion in the annals of Clipperdom, has been so muted. Another reason: Sterling's profits for last season have been estimated as high as $40-plus million. So even after L.A. paid more than it usually does for a coach -- $10 million over four seasons to Mike Dunleavy -- this is clearly a time you expect the Clippers to spend a little more, even allowing for the Sterling factor. It'll be a major disappointment if Odom and Corey Maggette aren't retained like Brand. If only one of those two small forwards comes back, it will be remembered as yet another sad summer in spite of the Brand/Dunleavy exacta.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Marc Stein
ESPN.com
Another two weeks have passed. Nearly every marquee free agent is off the market. A couple of big trades popped, too.
It's time, thusly, to progress from progress reports to more of a summer scorecard.
Training camp is still two months away, and the roster tweaks will continue, but here's where we are so far with free agency:
The Winners
The Lakers set the curve for free agency with the signings of Gary Payton, left, and Karl Malone (who'll wear No. 11, not No. 32).
Los Angeles Lakers
Upon reflection, they can't claim to have aced the offseason, given the Kobe Bryant uncertainty that looms over the team, the city and the whole league. They had barely 24 hours, from the Gary Payton/Karl Malone press conference to Kobe's "I'm innocent" press conference, to worry about ego overload being the biggest problem this season. Yet for the purposes of this basketball discussion, we'll throw out all the doomsday scenarios and assume Bryant and his teammates, new and old, can function normally, even with that sizable legal cloud floating overhead. If you allow for that assumption, L.A. is still paying only $6.4 million to have Payton and Malone in its lineup for 2003-04. That's an even bigger coup than what the Colorado Avalanche pulled, after Paul Kariya and Teemu Selanne started this heretofore unseen practice of winter superstars taking massive pay cuts for a one-season hunt for glory. Want more positivity amid the gloom? Narrow-minded as it might seem to focus on the hoop implications of what's happening to No. 8, there is also the belief in Lakerland -- again assuming that Bryant will eventually extricate himself from his legal troubles -- that Kobe's personal turmoil will actually ease locker-room tensions. The theory supposes that Bryant wouldn't dare be a problem teammate after what his other problems have done to his image.
San Antonio Spurs
True dat: San Antonio didn't sign Jason Kidd or Alonzo Mourning or even P.J. Brown. True dat II: San Antonio has lost David Robinson and Speedy Claxton from its championship team and won't be bringing back Stephen Jackson, either. So why are the Spurs quietly satisfied? Truth is, their summer wasn't nearly as bleak as it reads. The Spurs knew they couldn't come back with the same team, in a tougher West, and they've managed to add four quality players without affecting next summer's financial options: Rasho Nesterovic, Robert Horry, Hedo Turkoglu and Ron Mercer. It's also fairly clear that the Spurs' new pieces will be easier to blend in quickly than the Lakers' newbies, which is why San Antonio is a virtual lock to start the season in the No. 1 slot in those larger-than-life ESPN.com NBA Power Rankings.
The Maloof Bros.
Joe and Gavin Maloof went into the summer vowing to cut payroll. They wound up agreeing to pay Brad Miller some $26 million more than Nesterovic got and a tidy $52 million more than Michael Olowokandi received. Apparently they don't subscribe to the contention that the Kings' window for title contention is narrowing.
Glen Taylor
Better known for giving Kevin Garnett the contract that begat the only work stoppage in NBA history, or his part in the under-the-table Joe Smith scandal, Taylor just took a Maloofian step in an attempt to keep Garnett in Minneapolis and give the West a full-fledged Fab Five. Instead of hanging onto Terrell Brandon's valuable contract and the cap relief it provides, Taylor sanctioned the acquisition of Latrell Sprewell. That'll take the Wolves' payroll into the $70 million range after they fill out the rest of the roster.
Gilbert Arenas has 65 million reasons to weather the snow in D.C.
Washington Wizards
So maybe they overpaid for Gilbert Arenas. Then again, bad teams with cap room (as we'll cover later) generally can't give their money away. Kudos to the Wiz for getting Arenas' signature after we heard all year that he'd never sign for a team on the snowy side of the country. Arenas, Jerry Stackhouse, Kwame Brown, Larry Hughes -- it's a base of talent to work with, with trades sure to follow if Arenas, Stack and Hughes all prove too similar.
Orlando Magic
Sorry. Not buying the notion that Juwan Howard and Drew Gooden can't play together. Orlando is still in the East. Most nights, one of them can play some center.
Miami Heat
Doubly sorry. Even if the Heat decides to withhold an offer sheet to Lamar Odom and sits on its cap room for now, the club is immeasurably better off than it was before Anthony Carter's $4.1 million clerical error. The Heat has roughly $12 million in cap space instead of $7-ish million. As long as it's not burned on mediocre talent, that's a good thing.
New Orleans Hornets
Since our last roundup, when a re-signed P.J. was added to the re-signed Baron Davis and Jamal Mashburn, the Hornets have signed Darrell Armstrong and Sean Rooks. Neither one is a major score, but again we ask glumly: Do we have to stop dissing George Shinn?
Kevin Ollie
After playing for nine teams in six seasons, one of our faves gets a five-year, $15 million deal from Cleveland. That's more guaranteed money than Payton and Malone got from the Lakers. Combined. Of course, there's a reason for the backup point guard's windfall. "If you were looking for a good character guy to put around LeBron (James), there isn't a better choice than Kevin Ollie," one former employer said.
Robert Horry
Big Shot Rob gets famously offended whenever his game-winning playoff triples are branded "lucky," but even Horry concedes that luck "fell on me this time" in the form of two-year, $9.45 million contract from the Spurs. There is little chance San Antonio will invoke the team option for Year 2 of that contract, but Horry will still earn $4.5 million next season from the Spurs. After shooting 0-for-18 on 3-pointers against the Spurs in the '03 playoffs.
Alonzo Mourning
Zo's contract is twice as long as Horry's, at more than double the money, with no one able to calculate how much his body will allow him to play. In a summer of umpteen surprises, the story about Mourning morphing into a he-goes-where-I-go package deal with J-Kidd is one of the biggies.
New Jersey Nets
Nothing has changed since the first progress report. Byron Scott is still no closer to a contract extension, Kenyon Martin still wants max money when he becomes eligible for a contract extension Aug. 1 and still none of that can dampen the Nets' enthusiasm because they hung onto Kidd.
To Be Determined
Brad Miller
As undeniably great as it is to get zillions more than the other centers on the open market, after going undrafted in 1998, now Miller has to live up to the price tag. That might not be so easy in the land of the giants out West. Nor will it be so simple replacing two of the most popular Kings, Turkoglu and Scot Pollard. The pressure is on Miller and Geoff Petrie here.
Indiana Pacers
Pacer People everywhere are furious that the likes of Jonathan Bender and Jeff Foster received contract extensions in October, only for Indy management to decide months later that it couldn't afford to pay Miller -- a center from Indiana and a reigning East All-Star. Sounds like a rare strike against Pacers president Donnie Walsh, but, again, Miller will have to prove worthy of those big dollars. The expectation here, incidentally, is that Pollard will surprise disappointed Pacers fans, because he'll be a legit center in the East with steady playing time, feeding off the attention Jermaine O'Neal draws.
Kevin McHale had his best offseason as Wolves GM.
Kevin McHale
After the interminable infatuation with Joe Smith ... and the ironic failure of letting future Sixth Man extraordinaire Bobby Jackson go ... and the loss of Chauncey Billups ... after all that you could say McHale needed a big score to spruce up his GM resume. The moves he made this summer -- trading for Sprewell and Sam Cassell and signing Olowokandi to replace Nesterovic -- were McHale's boldest strokes yet. "It'll be an interesting year," McHale said Friday. It'll be a redemption year if Flip Saunders can mold all the boldness into a unit.
Chicago Bulls
If Scottie Pippen can be a Zen-like influence in Portland, he figures to have a positive impact on the Baby Bulls. He's injury-prone, sure, and prone to lashing out when his team is losing, but Pippen brings undeniable playoff mojo back to Chicago -- in his 16 seasons, Pip has been to the postseason 16 times. Tyson Chandler and Eddy Curry, both finally making tangible progress and giving Pip's new/old team some of the East's most promising size, can stand to learn the good stuff he can teach. Nevertheless, it's tough to be too upbeat about the Bulls these days, no matter whom they sign. Scottie's return doesn't change the fact that a) the battle for playoff spots at the bottom of the East will be competitive no matter how much stronger the West is, and b) Jay Williams' motorcycle crash, which threatens Williams' ability to ever play again, is the story of Chicago's offseason.
Philadelphia 76ers
Allen Iverson will respect Glenn Robinson more than Keith Van Horn or Toni Kukoc or Larry Hughes -- the last three guys to try to be Philly's No. 2 scorer. That's not the issue. The issues are size and experience. Philly could be undersized at almost every position, even with Marc Jackson coming in to play center, and Randy Ayers is a rookie head coach at this level, with a challenging roster to manage.
Los Angeles Clippers
The Clippers could have paid Elton Brand more than $105 million over seven seasons, so matching Miami's six-year, $82 million offer to Brand is a bargain by comparison, even for owner Donald T. Sterling, a lifelong non-spender. That's one reason why reaction to the Brand signing, which figured to be trumpeted as a momentous occasion in the annals of Clipperdom, has been so muted. Another reason: Sterling's profits for last season have been estimated as high as $40-plus million. So even after L.A. paid more than it usually does for a coach -- $10 million over four seasons to Mike Dunleavy -- this is clearly a time you expect the Clippers to spend a little more, even allowing for the Sterling factor. It'll be a major disappointment if Odom and Corey Maggette aren't retained like Brand. If only one of those two small forwards comes back, it will be remembered as yet another sad summer in spite of the Brand/Dunleavy exacta.
