SacKingZZZ wrote:I really hope Artest wasn't thoroughly mislead in order to simply give the Kings more time to shop him. If true, that is pretty cutthroat on Petries part. Although I don't think there is any blame to be thrown around at this point I just hope it isn't true.
The longer Artest is here the uglier this will get. Artest has every right to be frustrated and I expect a trade demand sooner or later. Not because he would want to leave necessarily, but because it may be the best option for him in his effort to get a long term deal somewhere. That place is clearly not here.
If we trade him this summer can we sign him to an extension then trade him if the other team would prefer that?
Again, I doubt that was what happened. We'll never know for sure, but if you read that whole paragraph here it says that he apologizes for suggesting that the Kings mislead him.
My guess is that his agent knew what was going to happen and mislead Ron, because the fact of the matter is that the '09 summer will be much better with respect to possible suitors (and even though I think Ron will re-sign with whatever team he ends up with, more suitors will mean much more negotiating leverage). So his agent convinced him to stick around for a year.
And I really don't this this has much of any shot of getting ugly. Ron knows he'll have to be on his best behavior this year (and aside from that he has just generally grown up in a lot of ways), and it seems pretty clear that everyone involved knows that Geoff will be looking to trade him, so any kind of public trade request would be pointless.
And no, we can't sign him to an extension before hand in all likelihood. I mean I think it's possible, but it would make his contract a poison pill IIRC, which would make a trade very hard to pull off logistically. However, I do believe that an extension can potentially be agreed on before hand between the future team and the player. That's what happened with KG and Boston last summer.
