Sonic sharpshooter Ray Allen will be a free agent following this season and the Sonic management appears to be very reluctant to give the former Buck star a maximum contract.  Allen could command up to $100 million over five years.  Allen recently turned 29 and is one of the Sonics most veteran players.  

"It's always obvious when a team wants to keep a player and a player wants to be there," Allen said April 15, the day after the regular season ended. "Negotiations, we've talked about it on and off, but when you officially go into negotiations, they shouldn't take long."

Allen was part of the 1996 draft, one of the deepest in history, which also featured the likes of Kobe Bryant, Allen Iverson, Stephon Marbury, Antoine Walker and Shareef Abdur-Rahim.  The first three have been very successful financially, yet the other two were not given extensions and have been traded in the last year.

The Sonics will likely use the recent contract that was signed by Rasheed Wallace with the Pistons as a more appropiate model to Allen's value to the organization.

Also going against Allen is the fact that high end salaries have been dwindling as owners are more cautious about offering max contracts.  During this past summer, only Kobe Bryant and Kenyon Martin were given contracts that were as lucrative as those given to the likes of Tim Duncan, Kevin Garnett and Jermaine O'Neal in years past.