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Delonte guaranteed $500,000 in third year of deal

Published
by
Bob
on September 15, 2008
in Free Agency, Rookies and Trades
. 0 Comments

So Bob Finnan had a follow up to the Delonte West signing that included some concrete numbers, but more importantly, it included information about the all-important third year, which previously had been reported as one that included a team option. While that is by and large true, Delonte does have a portion of that third year guaranteed even if the Cavs waive him during the summer of 2010. Finnan reports:

West’s contract starts at $3,850,000 this season, a source said. It’s a three-year deal worth $12,705,000. He will be paid $4,235,000 in 2009-10 and $4,620,000 in 2010-11.

The third year might not be a club option, as once thought, but it’s conditional. West has $500,000 in salary protection in the third year. If he’s on the roster by a certain date — perhaps by July 1, 2010 — his contract will become guaranteed. But the Cavs can waive him and he would be owed $500,000.

Signing West puts the Cavaliers at somewhere between 90 and 91 million dollars of guaranteed salaries. That ranks behind only New York and Dallas for the league’s highest payroll. There’s a reason why the Cavaliers have so many potential trade packages. It’s because their roster is still loaded with highly paid, underachieving players. Ferry is doing all he can to fix that. So what else can we expect to see this year?

The next item we’ll likely see is the release of Lance Allred (who currently sits 7th on the depth chart of Cavalier big men). Billy Thomas was waived last week and has already signed overseas, and those moved together would leave the Cavs with 14 players on the roster. Eric Snow’s situation is still largely unresolved, but the one certainty is that he won’t be suiting up with the Cavs again. Finnan adds some details on his injury settlement situation:

Cavs guard Eric Snow’s knee is shot and he can no longer play in the NBA. He has one more year on his contract worth $7.3 million.

A source said he won’t be on the Cavs this year — as a player or coach. So what gives?

Let’s muddle through this. If he’s waived, his $7.3 million contract will remain on the books.

That’s not what the Cavs want. They can’t petition the league to remove his salary from their payroll until one year after Snow’s last game (last Feb. 22 against Washington) in an injured player exception.

Up until that time, Snow could theoretically be used in a trade. Remember, he still owns an expiring contract, which could come into play near the trade deadline of Feb. 19, 2009. If he’s traded, though, the team that acquires him can’t use the exception.

Let’s hope Gilbert and Ferry keep him around, if for no other reason then to add to their options come trade deadline.

Delonte West Resigns: Two years with third year option, $4-5 million per year

Published
by
Bob
on September 12, 2008
in Free Agency and Signings
. 0 Comments

Well just as I was thinking, “nothing is going on today”, Brian Windhorst has reported that Delonte West has resigned with the Cavs for the term of two years, at a per year salary of $4-5 million dollars.  From his article:

After a summer of intense negotiations, the team came to terms with restricted free agent guard Delonte West today.

West has agreed to a two-year contract with a team option for the 2011-12 season. According to league sources, the deal is worth between $4 million and $5 million per season.

The Cavs have scheduled a conference call later today to announce the news.

This is great news for Cavs fans. 

For Danny Ferry, he struck the perfect compromise.  I myself was skeptical to think West would settle for a two-year deal, but he’s essentially done just that, and even consented to an option year which will allow the Cavs to keep him around without fear of open market competition after the 2010 season should he exceed expectations. 

West’s contract, as so many other before him, lines up with the expiring contracts of 2010.  If the Cavs need his allotment of cap money, they can cut ties in a manner similar to how Robert “Tractor” Traylor’s run as a Cavalier ended.  And don’t shed a tear for West, because if that is in fact what happens to try to lure a second superstar to pair with James, West will still be in the prime of his career at the age of 26.

All the contractual length considerations aside, West proved to be a great fit for the Cavs last season, and considering there are role players on this roster making much more but contributing much less (Eric Snow, Wally Szczerbiak), this offseason’s modest contracts given out to Daniel Gibson and West are much more palatable. 

As opposed to the risks the Cavs took when spending $4-5 million per year on Donyell Marshall and Damon Jones, Ferry has made that type of monetary investment in proven commodities who have already flourished alongside James.  The previous years have seen the Cavs get burned by their fair share of external role player additions (Marshall, Newble, Damon Jones, David Wesley, Wally thus far).  Even marginally better luck with Maurice Williams would be met with rejoice by the fans.

Having touched on the money and years here, I think the other positive is that West seems to genuinely be happy to be here.  In Mary Schmitt Boyer’s story on the resigning, she had these quotes from West:

“This is the first time since I was offered a scholarship at St. Joes that I feel like I am valued as a person and a player,” West said in a release issued by the team. “Dan Gilbert and the Cavaliers have shown me that they value me as a person and a player and that was the most important thing to me.

“In that sense, this was not about a specific dollar amount. You can’t really put a dollar value on a person - their skills you can, but not their heart and what kind of person they are. My family is blessed and I feel a great relief to be able to concentrate on basketball now.”

Couple those comments with the recent press of what kind of character and class Darnell Jackson has shown in his dealings with his supporters in Kansas, and any Cavs fan can be happy with the personnel decisions this team has made in regards to their offseason dealings. 

Not that it’s relevant or prudent to link personal loss to character, but I find myself hoping that Lorenzen Wright enjoys success after being reminded of this story about the hardships he’s endured. 

I’ll follow up with more later as it develops.  Be sure to catch Dan Labbe’s write-up here.  And of course, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention WFNY, where RockKing has again done an excellent piece.

With this signing all but concluding the Cavs offseason activity, next week we’ll be shifting to looking around the league and getting ready for preseason.

 

The Lebron James Song: Watch out for the crossover

Published
by
Bob
on September 11, 2008
in Lebron
. 1 Comment

I was watching The Sarah Connor Chronicles the other night, and without even seeing the show, everybody reading this understands the premise of how the Terminator movies worked. Some guy developed this piece of technology. It got a mind of it’s own. It killed everyone.

Sometimes I wonder if people ever consider the future when they upload something to YouTube. Not the short term future. Not things like how many people will view their video. But more along the lines of “I can’t get this thing off of the internet”.

On that note, I’ll demonstrate my point. First these two Georgia Tech students with “The Perfect Option”….

And now this…. The Lebron James Song….

The Georgia Tech idiots have clearly taken this to a different level than the Cleveland fan. It’s not really a fair comparison to the Cleveland kid with the terrible crossover.

They somehow appear to have gotten access to the field, some players, and some assistance from the athletics department. I imagine down the line Georgia Tech (much like the Chicago Bears and the Los Angeles Lakers) will realize that this kind of asinine display does not live in a time capsule.

It just gets a find a mind of it’s own and ends up destroying those rappers office credibility when they enter the real world where they want to be taken seriously.

Someday one of these performers may be the boss, and instead of stories of how they drunkingly hooked up with an intern at the Christmas party being thrown around the office, the minions will just forward the above videos. That is unless our aforementioned rappers invent a robot to go back and kill the guy who invented YouTube.

Thanks to Ball Don’t Lie for bring “The Lebron James Song” to my attention.

Thanks to the kid in the Lebron video for ending it with “LBG” as opposed to “LBJ”.

Braylon Edwards chimes in on Lebron’s allegiances

Published
by
Bob
on September 10, 2008
in Lebron
. 8 Comments

Well Tom Withers of the AP asked Braylon Edwards about how he felt regarding Lebron’s allegiances to both the Cowboys and Yankees.  Braylon of all people is in an interesting position considering he went to Michigan and now plays in Buckeye country.  He had this to say:

“I give him credit for being loyal,” Edwards said Tuesday.

“It didn’t bother me,” Edwards said. “As I’ve gotten to know LeBron, LeBron isn’t a Cleveland guy. LeBron only plays for the Cavaliers, and who knows if he even likes the Cavaliers? He doesn’t like the Indians. He doesn’t like the Browns. He’s a guy from Akron who likes everybody but his hometown.

“I don’t know how that’s possible, but it is what it is, and he is who he is. You know, it’s LeBron.”

That quote about “liking everybody but his hometown” is comforting, at least this week.  After the ass kicking the Zips gave my beloved Syracuse Orange last weekend, I’m still reeling.  They’re so awful, they could lose a bye week. 

Lebron is not a Browns fans or an Indians fan. Get over it.

Published
by
Bob
on September 9, 2008
in Lebron
. 10 Comments

So I saw the Browns game, even though I myself am not a Browns fan.  It was on prime time, and with so many additions, I wanted to see what the Browns could do.  I have no real rooting interest, although my love of the Buffalo Bills has left with a strong distaste for the Dallas Cowboys over the years.  So I guess you could say I was pulling for Cleveland, but the loss didn’t really affect me on an emotional level.

I say this only to introduce the reason I’m writing this post.  It’s probably not that hard for you Cleveland diehards to come to terms with the fact that while this blog and it’s relative success are tied to the Cavs, that doesn’t mean that I root for other Cleveland teams.

Or then, maybe it is that difficult to accept.

Yes.  I saw Lebron at the game.  And I saw him fraternizing with T.O., Jerry Jones, and Pacman (photo below).

Yes.  That is a Cowboys shirt, and a Yankees baseball hat.  So I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised to see the outcry from protective Cleveland fans absolutely incredulous that Lebron could root for anyone outside of Cleveland.  And yet I am.

I haven’t yet spoke with Mike over at WFNY during their weekly podcasts, so I’m not sure whether the article he wrote on the subject was meant to serve as a satire or genuine outrage.  In either case, I think it’s a good example of an argument I just don’t get (from Waiting for Next Year):

I wonder how many people are still hoping that this guy is staying here after 2010 out of loyalty to our region? He doesn’t even care enough about us to pretend to root for the Browns when the Cowboys are in town. Hell, he won’t even take off his Yankees hat when the Indians are playing New York in a playoff series. Yesterday was just another open slap to the Cleveland sports fan base courtesy of flight number twenty-three.

Count me amongst those who don’t care if he roots for “the region”.  I don’t care if he even rooted for the Cavs as a kid.  Any solace I take in Lebron growing up in Ohio comes from the fact that his friends and family are here.  Not the Browns.  Not the Indians.  The personal connections are the more relevant ones as far as I’m concerned.  My love of the Bills didn’t keep me in Buffalo.  My family may have.

Can anyone imagine Lebron’s idol, Michael Jordan doing something like this in Chicago back in his prime? You wouldn’t see him wearing a Yankees hat while sitting at Comiskey Park and you would NEVER see MJ wearing a Cowboys shirt at a Bears game. Never would happen and the fans in Chicago wouldn’t let him get away with it.

Not to be difficult, but this example may be a little silly.  Dan Gilbert doesn’t own the Indians.  Jerry Reinsdorf, who would later give MJ over $30 million for one season of work with the Bulls owned the Chicago White Sox in addition to the Bulls.

You don’t walk up to your employer and tell him you want his stock options to shit the bed.  Even if you do.  There’s no point in going to a game and flaunting to the guy who pays you directly that you root against his business interests.  That being said, if MJ was that big of a fan of another team, he could have cheered with no real consequences because he was THAT good on the court.  He just didn’t.  Maybe being in a casino or the local OTB sucked up too much of his time to make it out to the ballpark.

MJ, unlike Lebron had aspirations at one point of being a baseball player, and the guy who could help facilitate that happened to also be his boss with the Bulls.  Maybe that factored in, although I doubt it.  Lebron doesn’t need Randy Lerner or Larry Dolan to achieve any of his ambitions. 

Mike continued:

There is a right way and a wrong way to represent yourself as a professional athlete in a city and I honestly can say that LeBron openly rooting against the other pro teams in Cleveland is wrong.

Getting busted selling drugs is wrong.  Hitting women with your SUV and driving away is wrong.  Rooting for your favorite teams is not wrong.  It’s the right of every red-blooded American.  Being an athlete doesn’t mean you’re a second class citizen.  Nobody is going to tell me who to cheer for.  So why would it be any different for Lebron?

I’ve read the argument elsewhere.  “Well he makes millions from Cleveland, so he owes it to the city”.

Wrong.

Lebron is not a mascot.  He’s a basketball player.  He makes millions from the Cavs and Cleveland fans who gobble up merchandise and tickets.  But he’s given more than a fair return on his salary given the market for a player of his skills.  If the NBA was a truly free market, he’d make even more money.  And a LOT more at that.

The only ones taking anything for granted here are fans who think they can suck more and more from Lebron just because he’s so greatly exceeded expectations.  It’s not enough to be an MVP candidate year in and out.  That’s old hat.  Now he’s unofficially been given the title of “Cleveland Ambassador in all things Cleveland”.

Many of the other NBA teams that would line up to pay him wouldn’t even care what he brought off the court.  That’s what the PR staff is for.  They’d be happy to have him solely for the results on the court.

Lebron is not obligated to play the role of ambassador or politician 365 days a year, as much as everyone expects everything he says and does to be the calculated, politically correct thing.  It’s asking too much.  If he’s trumpeting the virtues of Cleveland on a national or global stage even a fraction of the time, it’s above and beyond as far as I’m concerned.

You don’t see Michael Redd talking about the virtues of the Brewers during the Olympic medal ceremonies.  Fuck that guy for loving America!

It would certainly make it easier for those fans who find themselves being assaulted by friends/coworkers if Lebron never did things like wear Yankees or Cowboys gear.  I understand as well as anyone that the fallout is always the same.  Some jackass says,  “Lebron had a Yankees hat.  That’s why he’s leaving for New York”

Instead of just disregarding it though, half of Cleveland goes on the offensive when it happens.  It’s the reason why the term “inferiority complex” gets thrown about by outsiders.

It’s simply too much to ask of any person, let alone a 23-year old who grew up with 24-hour coverage of sports trumpeting the virtues of the Cowboys and the Yankees, to ignore what exists in the outside world in favor of living in a Cleveland-centric bubble.

Drew Gooden was friends with Deshawn Stevenson.  DESHAWN STEVENSON!!!  That guy is a dickbag who not only hates the Cavs, but he disrespected the one player Cleveland fans can turn to as being “better than their guys”.  Lebron’s game should be bulletproof from scrubs and yet Deshawn just fired away like the stupid cops in all the Terminator movies.  Yet, there was no outrage with Gooden maintaining his allegiance with Beardsly McKidTouch because, quite frankly, nobody cares about Drew Gooden enough to write on the matter.  Megan’s Law websites care about who Stevenson is befriending, but for totally different reasons.

I have even more devastating news for you all.  Lebron Jr. will probably end up a Patriots fan.  I guess Lebron should just give him up for adoption and concede that he’ll be part of the 2030 Celtics.

Let’s just get this out of the way now.  Rooting for teams in other cities as opposed to the home team means nothing.  And quite honestly, no fan, no matter how committed to the Cleveland cause, is entitled to have expectations on athletes rooting interests in sports independent of the ones they play.

Now if Lebron started wearing Knicks or Bulls hats in pregames, well then I’d be pissed…..

UPDATE: Philip Morris from the Plains Dealer wrote on the subject as well.  Give it a read here.  And Bill Livingston.  And Amar at Cavalier Attitude.

Who's the asshole here?

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