Giving him the qualified offer turns him into a restricted free agent. Otherwise now he's an unrestricted free agent. So on the surface I guess I see this as one of two things. As a restricted free agent your kind of telling the player, hey we like you but we're not going to bid against ourselves to keep you, and if you don't like it you can sign the qualifying offer and become unrestricted next year. By not offering the qualifying offer and turning him immediately into you and unrestricted free agent you're saying one of two things. One, you're not really in our plans at the price point you're looking for. Best of luck. Or we feel pretty confident that both parties want the same thing and to return on a longer deal than could be agreed through the restricted free agency process.
Jeff recently said that they fully expect him to be back... but that could just be corporate speak and things could have changed since then, like The sexton trade, the draft etc...
If the plan was to let him become unrestricted in order to negotiate a deal for a longer time period. Couldn't we have just simply done that through signing him to an extension?
Is it possible the Hornets just weren't comfortable with the whole back injury situation? Is it possible that we're trying to move away from as many of the long-term injured players as possible? Or just a logjam at guard spots.
My gut says he won't be back.
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