RealGM Wiretap
Agents for potential 2010 free agents are starting to consider urging their clients to sign contract extensions this summer rather than taking a chance in free agency, Sam Smith writes on his blog on bulls.com.
The reason? The faltering economy. And the chance of change with the Collective Bargaining Agreement being re-opened.
"I'd think every prudent representative would be sitting down his guys and explaining there could be a lockout, a new CBA (collective bargaining agreement), and there's always the injury component," said former agent and Chicago based attorney George Andrews. "That maybe it's time to lock in security now. I don't see the CBA going up in any shape or form. You are unlikely to get more years than you can now and there's a pretty good chance the maximum salary would go down in a new CBA. You might even (with an extension this summer) get some language so you'd get paid if there is a lockout, something of a tradeoff for extending now. And from a team standpoint, you could tie up your best guy and he would not be any more difficult to trade if you wanted to go that way."
"If you can get the current (contract) rates and increases allowed, and then maybe you get a trade kicker, which might not be in a new CBA," offers Andrews. "The way things were going everyone thought the cap would be in the $60 million (range). Now maybe it's in the mid or low 50's. It will make it harder for teams to get cap room and sign (a second) guy because you won't (being under the salary cap) have your mid level exception. You'd be cannibalizing your team (to sign a big free agent)."
"And then if you are (as a player) going somewhere, you have to ask yourself, 'Is it better there than it is here?'" Andrews said. "You might be able to retool after a year or two, but how does that help a guy's legacy to go somewhere and not be able to compete. The next step for someone like LeBron for more endorsements is to win a championship. Then he'd be even more valuable. How would going somewhere and being mediocre for two years while you try to build around him help?"
"From a security standpoint and everything else, it makes a lot of sense to extend now," said Andrews. "You don't know what will happen if there's a new CBA. It wouldn't shock me to see Billy Hunter enter into something next season as he sees how bad things can get, maybe make a new deal before things bottom out. And his concern has to be not five or six guys, but the players as a whole. Who knows? Maybe the owners will want to get rid of the mid level and he can get a jump on that by giving them relief a year earlier and save some things.
"The maximum is correlated to the cap," Andrews noted. "And the cap is going down. Stern already has said that. How in the world would you expect to get more money with the cap going down, the numbers of years (likely) curtailed? Nobody could have anticipated this."