Kobe agrees to contact extension with Lakers

[LLcoleJ]

Would it be a success if Kobe made the NBA finals and lost with a pay cut?

It's more of a success than getting destroyed in the first round or missing the playoffs is it not?
Do you see the Lakers doing well in these last 3 years of Kobe's tenure?
They'll be lucky to even make the playoffs. Is that the way he wants to finish his career? Either getting run off the floor in the first round or not even seeing the postseason for 4 straight years?

I think there is more to winning then just Kobe. The Lakers made this deal with a plan in mind. They always have a plan. So, let's see...

[mopper8]

Would it be a success if Kobe made the NBA finals and lost with a pay cut?

Absolutely. You don't think so?

No. I am sorry but Kobe is only graded on winning. And when he does win it's ripped apart from every angle.

I've answered this three times already and Doc MJ has too, so I'll just shortly re-iterate: nobody can guarantee a title, but getting to the Finals is a clear indication the team has title-worthy talent.

Do you agree with the following?

"Unless I can guarantee a title, I will not take a paycut, even if that means my team is far less likely to even get past the second round."

[Alex Trevelyan]

None of us are. So when you mock people or Kobe for saying "5 rings" what do you have as a fan to better that?

Or are you just a fan that continually enjoys the self -pity party of your team not doing anything meaningful?

Saying stuff like "5 rings" is just a way of trying to deflect the substance of an argument. The fact that Kobe possesses 5 rings is completely inconsequential as to the merits or demerits of criticism directed his way. The substance of an argument is independent of the person making it, so when someone brandishes that "five rings" thing, it is worthy of mockery, if for no other reason then the person saying it doesn't realize how irrelevant it is.

NBA teams don't operate in secrecy. Every fan that can use Google knows exactly what the cap number is going to be going forward, they can extrapolate what various contracts and holds will cost 1, 2, 3 years from now, they can come to at least an approximation, they can check that against lists of pending free agents, or they can check it against players that the Lakers might conceivably target in trades, even though the Lakers have nothing to trade, and in just a couple of minutes you can get a pretty good vision of what Kobe's deal means for the team going forward, and it just isn't good. How could anyone spin it otherwise?

Why do some of you choose to delude yourself with hopes of a secret plan? Repeating stuff like "we don't know that they're up to" or "they've got a plan, just because we can't see it", what makes anyone think they've got a plan? Nothing the Lakers have done since Jerry Buss yielded control of the team to his children screams chessmaster.

[JMac1]

Thanks for guaranteeing the Suns a top pick via LAL in 2015 Kobe...We love ya guy!

[LLcoleJ]

That's the point. LeBron took a paycut at a time when he was many times the player Kobe is now and had earned far less money in his career.

Lebron shaved a couple buck off the top of his contract in an no sales tax state to play with 2 other guys who talk near max deals to play with Lebron. I am sorry but is this scenario possible this off season? What am I missing here.

He also took that deal in a time where he will get a couple more max deals left.

[MisterWestside]

Lebron shaved a couple buck off the top of his contract in an no sales tax state to play with 2 other guys who talk near max deals to play with Lebron. I am sorry but is this scenario possible this off season? What am I missing here.

The fact that James is worth way more money for his on-court production than he is currently being paid for.

[mopper8]

That's the point. LeBron took a paycut at a time when he was many times the player Kobe is now and had earned far less money in his career.

Lebron shaved a couple buck off the top of his contract in an no sales tax state to play with 2 other guys who talk near max deals to play with Lebron. I am sorry but is this scenario possible this off season? What am I missing here.

He also took that deal in a time where he will get a couple more max deals left.

We can debate how "real" Lebron's paycut is, but that last bit is exactly backwards. Lebron could've blown out his knee the day after he signed that deal and never played another game of professional basketball. He had and continues have considerable risk in his salary earnings because his healthy is not guaranteed. Kobe, in contrast, has already played 20 years and amassed an enormous amount of wealth; there is no question that he will earn obscene amounts of money because he already has, in fact, earned it.

[Apollo64]

It was a 100% business decision. Forget about winning, keep the revenue coming in.

[Doctor MJ]

If you take a pay cut so that your team can win a championship and then you do not with a championship then your taking a pay cut didn't work to win you a championship. I think a player if faced with the choice between losing in the finals and making 10 extra million dollars would take the 10 mill any day of the week.

Be reasonable.

All a player can ever ask for is to be on a serious contender. Players take pay cuts to make those contenders, work their ass off and hope for the best.

If Kobe's not willing to do that, well then that's called not really wanting to win.

Where do you draw the line though? Theoretically Kobe can sign with the Spurs for the minimum and that would give him the best chance to win another title, if both Lakers and Kobe feel like they can construct a championship roster with his contract then more power to them. Look at all the money Brooklyn has spent and they are in a terrible situation right now.

In general that's a great question to ask.

A player taking the minimum to leap on to some other contender clearly really wants to win, but no one serious criticizes a guy for preferring to stay with his long-time team.

There's a difference though between staying on your team while taking a more significant salary, and doing it while taking a mega-salary when your team desperately needs more talent on its roster.

Kobe's saying that he just agreed to the offer, and to some extent I understand him being unwilling to say "Oh, you're too kind, I'll only take half of that", but he should be thinking things through here. If he's being entirely rational, he should know that by agreeing to this contract, he's basically saying, "Yeah, I know we probably can't win very much, but I'm happy to keep doing my thing here if that's what you want".

And if he's doing that, well then he doesn't really care all that much about winning at this point in his career, right?

[inquisitive]

he got 48.5mil ,not 48mil....big difference, at least for me...that .5 could pay for my parents' mortgage and my own mortgage in full with some extra cash left for a new car!

[Free Rider]

When all else fails just say "5 titles"

Sounds good to me. What do you got?

I'm not a basketball player I can't win titles.

I'm glad somebody else realizes the fallacy of the "how many rings you got" argument.

[LLcoleJ]

Every ring Duncan has ever won he's done making less money than Kobe will be making in his 20th year in the NBA. Think about that for a second, and then ponder that Kobe's not getting anywhere with the Lakers without the Lakers acquiring guys who cost serious money.

Well good for Tim. He has less rings and less money. But he has won the hearts and minds of everyone!

[LLcoleJ]

Would it be a success if Kobe made the NBA finals and lost with a pay cut?

Now you're just being argumentative.

If the ball had bounced slightly differently last year, Duncan would have another ring right now.

haha now I am argumentative? man no love.......but wait I took less money to post here as opposed to other forums . doesn't that buy me anything?

I wasn't actually discussing some of the talking points that are flying around? Well how about this... if the ball bounced slightly differnetly than last year.. would Lebron James be the Lebron James we talk about so fondly today? I mean he took a pay cut and would have had a 1-3 finals record.

[MisterWestside]

Well good for Tim. He has less rings and less money. But he has won the hearts and minds of everyone!

Since when did a player's salary matter to you? You as the fan want your team to win as much as possible, right?

Does it make sense for you to brag about Bryant's contract when it is hindering your team's ability to compete? As opposed to a pay cut that would give the Lakers a better shot at a title?

[Blame Rasho]

That's the point. LeBron took a paycut at a time when he was many times the player Kobe is now and had earned far less money in his career.

Lebron shaved a couple buck off the top of his contract in an no sales tax state to play with 2 other guys who talk near max deals to play with Lebron. I am sorry but is this scenario possible this off season? What am I missing here.

He also took that deal in a time where he will get a couple more max deals left.

I am not sure what your angle is or why you are getting bent out of shape for going on and on about with DoctorMJ. I mean Kobe has made 279,738,062 million dollars over his career according to BR. He is making over 30 million this year. In all likelyhood... I think it is safe to assume that Kobe will have steaks in the freezer for quite a while. If it is a matter of principal that Kobe gets paid more than some of his fellow peers, fine we can all buy that but you have to acknowledge what DoctorMJ points out that it gets exponentially harder to get a title contending team with Kobe getting such a big chunk of the salary cap. It isn't rocket science, it is common sense.

[Free Rider]

Would it be a success if Kobe made the NBA finals and lost with a pay cut?

It's more of a success than getting destroyed in the first round or missing the playoffs is it not?
Do you see the Lakers doing well in these last 3 years of Kobe's tenure?
They'll be lucky to even make the playoffs. Is that the way he wants to finish his career? Either getting run off the floor in the first round or not even seeing the postseason for 4 straight years?

I think there is more to winning then just Kobe. The Lakers made this deal with a plan in mind. They always have a plan. So, let's see...

Having a plan doesn't necessarily make it a smart decision. They could very well have a plan, but it may just be a completely idiotic one. I completely understand that Lakes management might have looked at the landscape in 2014 and concluded that there wasn't much of a realistic free agent acquisition to make. LeBron ain't coming to the Lakers and Melo is still a very big question mark. But that doesn't mean you throw away your financial flexibility because you don't like what's available. You can still plan for the future without making harmful decisions in the shortrun because you never know what might happen in the interim.

[Alex Trevelyan]

That's the point. LeBron took a paycut at a time when he was many times the player Kobe is now and had earned far less money in his career.

Lebron shaved a couple buck off the top of his contract in an no sales tax state to play with 2 other guys who talk near max deals to play with Lebron. I am sorry but is this scenario possible this off season? What am I missing here.

He also took that deal in a time where he will get a couple more max deals left.

LeBron, Bosh and Wade left $56 mil. on the table to play together. If they all went after their max deals, they could of made approximately $18 mil. more per player, or $4.5 mil. per player per year over the course of a 4-year contract. And it's pretty much assured that at least a couple of them will take bigger cuts the second time around to keep their thing going.

Kobe insisted on being the top paid player in a league when he's not even close to the top player anymore. He's a $15 mil. per guy, at most. The guy who is the top player, is grossly underpaid, but was okay with that for the good of the team. This contract will put Kobe's lifetime earnings from basketball salary alone in excess of $325 mil.! You add up endorsements and he's probably getting close to half a billion in earnings lifetime. Kobe would of looked like a magnanimous idol had he done what Duncan did. Duncan went from earning $23 mil. per on his last contract to making $10 mil. per on his new deal. That's a guy that wants to help the team win. Kobe's deal is absolutely insane, it has no logic to it other than pure unadulterated ego and greed.

[Free Rider]

Every ring Duncan has ever won he's done making less money than Kobe will be making in his 20th year in the NBA. Think about that for a second, and then ponder that Kobe's not getting anywhere with the Lakers without the Lakers acquiring guys who cost serious money.

Well good for Tim. He has less rings and less money. But he has won the hearts and minds of everyone!

Duncan at least gave himself the chance to be on a incredibly competitive team year after year. Let's not forget how close he and the Spurs came to winning his 5th ring just a few months ago. No one is saying that Kobe taking a paycut will automatically guarantee the Lakers another title, but it at least gives them the financial flexibility to be in the hunt for another championship. Up until today I thought Kobe might have had the same concerns but it seems that he's more concerned about being the highest paid player in the league.

[LLcoleJ]

I've answered this three times already and Doc MJ has too, so I'll just shortly re-iterate: nobody can guarantee a title, but getting to the Finals is a clear indication the team has title-worthy talent.

You asked me the question I replied. Not sure what you 'answering' it 3 times or my discussions with Doc have to do with that.

and yes getting to the finals is a great indication of being title worthy. Where did I say different? However, for players like Kobe, TD and the like are not graded on title-worthy teams they are graded on winning. But teams get to the finals in different ways. The Lakers know how to get to the finals and I am 99.99999% positive they didn't do this thinking...." well there goes the finals"

Do you agree with the following?

"Unless I can guarantee a title, I will not take a paycut, even if that means my team is far less likely to even get past the second round."

I don't agree with you asking me a loaded question.

[Doctor MJ]

I think for the most part you're making this more mysterious than it really is. I mean sure, they have to factor in the money situation in a way we as fans don't have to care about, but if that's what they are doing, that only confirms that it doesn't necessarily make basketball sense.

Mysterious? We are talking about multi-million/billion dollar companies involved here. This is not a small business or some rec league. There is far more information and due diligence that must be done for deals like this.
Basketball or Business sense. When you are the Lakers they are hand in hand.

Again, if the Lakers are making decisions for non-basketball reasons, then that's not good for the basketball. 'sall I'm saying.

Now when you talk about agents, etc, you're quite right this is dark matter. Realistically though, can you even imagine that any star would give his word years out that he was planning to go to a team when he hits free agency? I'm sure Kevin Love would love to hear the Lakers pitch, but none of these guys are homer enough to be dead set on moving to another team simply because they like the franchise's history and colors.

The agents component was really more of a general add to the goings on of the business that us as fans don't know much about.

It wasn't about what 1 agent said to another and they did this deal based on that... it was more about there is a lot of stuff that goes on behind the scenes that we as fan don't know about.

Like what though? And don't just say "We can't possibly know." I get it, we can't know all that's going on, but can you at least give a plausible thing that could happen here?

In the end, I just don't see that many types of possibilities. If you're acquiring a star, it's either because the star wants to come to you, or the team he's on decides they're better off giving them to you.

And in the case of the latter, that seems clearly to be a case of something that just comes up. Maybe something like that is happening as we speak on some team sure, but the odds of that are very remote.

Similarly, odds are very remote that a future free agent has basically given a guarantee.

Want to take issue that I post on a message board only having very-likely understanding of what's going on? Okay, but them's some high standards for the innernetz.

If they pull of a big deal tomorrow, I'll eat crow and give praise unto teh Busses, but in the mean time, I'm going to go with how it looks.

Well, I've said this might be the best plan the Lakers have, I just still don't like it.

Fair enough. I am not trying to talk you in to liking it. Merely stating that the Lakers did this deal with a plan in mind.

Eminently reasonable that. The context of the thread pits us against one another and makes us speak with a vehemence that sometimes lacks courtesy. I apologize if I'm being a jerk.

I've got a lot of sympathy for Laker management. They deserve a ton of credit for both the Paul and the Howard deals. The Lakers should be set for the next generation already given the quality of work they've put in to putting a team together, but they really, really aren't.

Well... sympathy? I don't know about that. But they do deserve some trust that they know what they are doing and will do what they can to get back to the top.

Totally sympathy. Lakers got so screwed over by Stern on the Paul deal.

Trust? In the sense that I'm not going to say they have bad management, certainly. In the sense that I'm going to assume that every move they make is a good one? Nah.

As far as what I would do, I would at least wait for Kobe to really prove he was right back where he'd been before the injury.

I probably would have done the same from my couch. But I suppose they have more info and put more time into this then you or I

Fair enough. I readily concede that there's a slight possibility that all would make sense basketball-wise if I just knew what they knew, but I think the explanation here of "more info" really just means they were afraid of things that as a fan I don't have to be afraid of. It makes their choice understandable, but not necessarily wiser.

They agreed to pay a 35 year old still unproven after a potential career ending injury more money than the best players in the game when they still had more than half a year before he hit free agency. This is not the behavior of a party knowing they have leverage and using it. It looks identical in fact to giving the other party everything they could possibly want before the other party could reasonably expect to even ask for it.

They don't pay players based on what better players on different teams are getting. They manage their players and payroll. They have options they know their options and they made their moves. If you don't like it.. again, I am not arguing you should. My point is they made this move with a plan in mind.... and they don't have a history of fielding bad teams in the long term.

They also don't have a history of paying big bucks to past-prime superstars. In fact, the definitive move of the Lakers in the past decade was them refusing to do that for Shaq when he was several years younger than Kobe and considered better at the time than Kobe is now.

But I'll readily admit context is different. Choosing against Shaq meant choosing in favor of a younger superstar. They'd do that again now if Howard had worked out and Kobe insisted on a contract like this, but if there had been no Kobe, who knows how long they would have put up with Shaq's soap opera.

If the Buss family is in worse financial shape now than they were before the TV deal and globalization boom of the NBA, doesn't that seem crazy?

I understand the temptation could be seen as all the stronger to maximize profits right now, but this is not a Fortune 500 company desperate to raise its stock price in the next year. The Buss family should be in a more robust financial position now, and thus more poised for long term thinking...

on the other hand of course, the Buss kids are probably not used to playing poker like this, which might be a part of the problem.

Worse Financial shape? how do you figure?

Huh? I said "robust financial position", meaning better financial shape.

I guess I don't panic and look at as such despair as you do. There are a lot of moving parts and things unknown. I do believe the Buss Family and all the other players that are working with them want 2 things. Make money and Win. or Win and Make money. How they do it is on them and we as fans have to let them do it. If not, then we are being selfish and talking about stuff we are not even remotely involved in.

We're fans, is that not what we do?