nate33 wrote:J-Ves wrote:Dark Faze wrote:The John Wall situation is so heart breaking to me. I don't understand why he's willing to take another year off from the game. That money is guaranteed regardless. I don't see the incentive for him to not play, beyond laziness.
He’s done. The only thing he has left to do is collect his $90 million and go off into the sunset
That's just the thing. He is not "done". He is still a viable NBA player. Heck, he's probably good enough to start on a half-dozen teams. I'm sure a team like Dallas or New Orleans would have paid him $7-10M on a one-year deal this year if he was available. Boston could certainly have used him at a price like that.
The problem is, he is an MLE caliber player being paid $43M. But he is unable to negotiate a buyout because he has a player option year next year for $45M that he can't formerly opt in on until the summer. So at the moment, he has just $43M on his contract so the most Houston could buy him out for right now is $43M. If Wall waits until the summer to opt in on next year's money and then negotiate a buyout he'll get all $43M of this year's money, plus the majority of the $45M of next year's money.
So basically, the final years of his NBA career are being wasted because he gets paid more to sit and do nothing than he does if he negotiates a buyout and signs with a team that could use him. Frankly, I think it's pretty shady that Houston is willingly sitting a good player (who would earn minutes on that team) because they literally don't want to win games. It's one thing to sit a guy with 20 games to go in the season because you are worried about him getting hurt, but you can't sit out a guy for an entire year.
One thing... I think that Houston feels his trade value will be higher next year as an expiring (if he isn't injured). And I think that it isn't that they don't want to win games (all though that could very well be the case) but rather they want to play the youngsters (specifically Porter) and that Wall would be coming off the bench (note Augustin is getting the backup minutes at PG.
Is Porter playing well. No. Neither is Green thus far.
One thing I don't get at all - why they are holding onto Christian Wood. It makes no sense in my mind. If they were consistent, they would be playing Şengün and Garuba too. Maybe they will wait until the trade deadline.
