WTH Spurs?!? (i.e. Ginobili 2 years $14 million)

[pr0wler]

Yeah of course he's not what he once was, but how does that mean he's done? He's still a productive and solid player in any rotation.

[sabonis]

to anyone and everyone saying that he's not done. Is he worth 7 million a year? Bear in mind he earned 13 and 14 million in the last 2 years. So his services and loyalty was already paid for. I really have no idea where this 7 million per year came from.

[[RCG]]

He was a turnover machine in the finals. He may be winding down so the short contract makes sense. I would've offered him $5-6 million so $7 million isn't that big of a stretch. But I don't care for it.

[neddamb]

Damn I hate this loyalty thing. Yeah sure Manu had great impact on 3 championships, yes he was a Spur for 11 years, yes Spurs fan loves him but why pay him 14 million for 2 years. We all watched him this year, especially agains the Heat, he's done, stick a fork in him....
Also, the man is rich as hell and then Buford comes out and says "Manu sacrificed a lot, he left a lot of money on the table". Well, how much were you willing to pay to him Mr. Buford, 12 million a year? Oh my god.

I have even harsher thoughts about Splitter's deal. He's a good big man but he doesn't have that much of a great talent that the Spurs should have been afraid to lose, in order to win a championship this year.

I thought the Spurs could have signed Manu for a year about 3 million, let Splitter go and then go after some of the big name free agents in the market. Well, I guess not. Buford, I'm disappoint.

Leaving alot of money on the table would have meant other teams were offering him more not Buford. I wouldn't criticize anything that Buford does if I were you. You will likely be proved wrong time and time again. 7mill for Manu is not bad at all considering he only had one off year. Needs to learn to play a little more within himself and he is worth that.

[neddamb]

But the Splitter thing I do not see. Why so much? Why any at all. He looked bad to me in the playoffs. I assume Buford knows something we don't but once again I trust Buford more then any GM in the league for obvious reasons.

[DWiz]

Should have re'd him for up 4 mil per, he's rarely a net positive anymore.

Nate Robinson would have been the 6th man they needed.

[Donald Kaufman]

Nate Robinson? No. Belinelli fills a need for us more than Nate.

[DWiz]

Nate Robinson? No. Belinelli fills a need for us more than Nate.

You could have took the Bull's reserve backcourt (both)

[Le Chef]

Overpaid.
He will still resign even if it was for a lesser amount. Unless he wants to ruin his career more signing with another team.

[Q00]

Aside from Lebron's greatness, Manu single-handedly cost the Spurs the championship.

Nope. Ray Allen's impossible, falling out of bounds, freakish 3 cost us the championship. That's it.

The missed FTs and offensive rebounds played a little part too lol

[Joe Berry]

The extra money is for appreciating Ginobilli's past years.

thats the reason for everyone who cant count 1 and 1 togehter, Joe Johnson for example will have made more than twice as much money as Ginobili, if Manu wasn't focused on winning and sacrificing money to stay with the Spurs he could have forced his way to another team who would have paid him way more money.

Over the next month, Harden and his advisors will have to grapple with one of the oldest dilemmas in free agency, between money and winning. In so doing, they should consider the career paths of Manu Ginobili and Joe Johnson, two of the best shooting guards of the previous generation who had to make a similar decision early in their NBA careers.

Ginobili, another 6’5+ left-handed shooting guard with a well-rounded game, is the player Harden most resembles on the court. Like Harden, he lucked into a great situation at the start of his career, playing with Tim Duncan and Tony Parker for one of the most well-run franchises in the NBA. Ginobili became an All-Star in his third season, but he was content to play a supporting role on three separate championship teams, agreeing to a series of below-market contract extensions while mainly coming off the bench.

Johnson entered the league as a raw 20-year-old out of Arkansas, emerging into his own with the Phoenix Suns in 2004. A massive 6’7, 240 guard with an excellent feel for the game, he was the fourth option on a team with three other All-Stars -- Steve Nash, Amare Stoudemire and Shawn Marion -- that won 62 games and made the Western Conference Finals. With Johnson hobbled due to an eye injury, the Suns lost to the Spurs 4-1, the beginning of a heated rivalry that would see the teams meet in the playoffs three more times in the next five years.

Johnson, however, would not be a part of it. That summer, he agreed to a blockbuster $70 million contract with the Hawks. The Suns, owned by legendary cheapskate Robert Sarver, had no intention of matching the offer, agreeing to a sign-and-trade with Atlanta that sent Boris Diaw and a few first-round picks back. Johnson went on to play in six straight All-Star games for the Hawks, but he hasn’t made it back to a Conference Finals series since.

There’s no way to know whether his presence would have guaranteed a championship with Phoenix, not when the Suns never had an answer for Duncan or Dirk Nowitzki, the two 7’0 who dominated the West for most of the last decade. However, it’s hard to imagine San Antonio racking up three titles if Ginobili had decided to look for greener pastures when his rookie contract was up.

At the same time, as great as he was for both the Spurs and the Argentinian national team, it’s hard to imagine Ginobili having more success than Johnson if he had played in Atlanta. For players viewed so differently in popular perception, it’s remarkable how similar their career statistics are -- 15/4/4 on 45% shooting for Ginobili, 18/4/4 on 44% shooting for Johnson. No shooting guard can single-handedly lift his team to title contention, as Kobe Bryant and Dwyane Wade found out in the middle of the last decade.

But when their careers are over, Ginobili’s late game heroics in the playoffs will be remembered long after Johnson’s machine-like consistency on good but not great Atlanta teams are forgotten. Neither player rates very high on Basketball Reference’s Hall of Fame probability scores, but Ginobili will likely be enshrined in Springfield while Johnson will not.

Which isn’t to say that Ginobili hasn’t paid a price for his decision to stay with the Spurs. In fact, it’s a mind-bogglingly high one: when Johnson’s latest contract runs out in 2016, he will have made approximately $200 million in his NBA career. Ginobili will have made $95 million when his contract expires at the end of this season, and at the age of 35, he doesn’t have any more big paydays coming up.

Ginobili will probably be financially comfortable for the rest of his life, but you never know, just ask Vince Young. Johnson, meanwhile, is in a far different financial class, what Chris Rock once called “the difference between being rich and being wealthy”. With hundreds of millions of dollars in the bank, he will have an innumerable amount of opportunities when his playing career is over to reinvest in his community and leave a legacy that goes far deeper than basketball.

Culture, more than even money, may have made the biggest difference in their decision-making processes. Johnson made the quintessentially American call: at the age of 24, he was eager to test the limits of his own game and prove that he could stand on his own. Ginobili, meanwhile, never left the proverbial nest, comfortable sharing the load with his friends, passing up individual accomplishments to pursue a greater communal goal.

http://basketball.realgm.com/article/22 ... mes_Harden

[Agenda42]

This doesn't even seem like an overpay to me. This is Jeff Green money, Wilson Chandler money.

The Spurs aren't jeopardizing anything by making this signing, and if they get lucky and he's healthy for the playoffs, we could be talking about the zombie Spurs again.

[Heat fan06]

Loyalty..

Sent from my Galaxy S4

[Narc]

Manu was complete and utter garbage in the finals. That being said, his regular season statistics (advanced and otherwise) were still quite good and they justify his current contract. As long as Manu doesn't transform into hot garbage in the playoffs for the remainder of his contract, the Spurs made the right decision.

[Joao Saraiva]

Manu is getting underrated cause he had bad moments against the Heat.

He's still a great player. He had difficulties against a defense with wings like LeBron and Wade? Then you will almost not like any wing.