pharring wrote:I am starting to wonder if Masai's "selfish" comment was more off-court than on-court. And whether it was directed at Pascal's agent as opposed to Pascal.
Reporting seems to be that a deal with ATL at the 2023 draft was on the 1-yard line before the "leaked" comments about Pascal wanting to only extend with TOR. And now we have a further report out of SAC that Pascal said no to any possible extension with them, which torpedoed an active trade discussion.
If TOR put an extension on the table that is below the full max... while at the same time, Pascal's agent is telling the world he will not sign an extension anywhere else... it sounds like a strategy to try to box Masai in. Pay Pascal the max or watch his trade value diminish.
Masai is going to end up having to call his bluff, either by trading him for pennies on the dollar or by letting him try to find his max deal on the market after the season. I feel like after what happened with Fred, Masai will opt for the pennies.
If this is indeed what is happening, it is a bit of a minor miracle that (a) Pascal has played this well and (b) Masai hasn't given orders to Darko to freeze him out and tank his market value. I think in some other situations, this would become one of those "player and team have mutually agreed that player will stay away from the team while a deal is sought".
This wouldn't help either side. Trying to get Pascal's FA market to tank this way would just completely tank his trade value. Clearly Pascal's team thinks there are teams that will offer something close to max in FA (if he produces this year), so they will risk waiting until FA for a deal, to try and force the best possible number financially.
Again, as mentioned many times here, the team holding his bird rights can offer him the most. There is still value in that, and teams truly interested in him will trade for those rights, if they think signing him as a FA straight up is risky. For instance, if Indy has the cap space and is competing with the Sixers, would they be worried the Sixers would have a better chance at signing Pascal? They could then trade for Pascal, to acquire his bird rights, to be able to offer him a deal greater than what the Sixers can offer.
I think Pascal is different than Fred, because Pascal was already making max money, and so teams might be more willing to pay him his max. Other than Houston, I don't think any other teams wanted to max Fred.