DocHolliday said:
Also another thing to consider. Last summer Peja becomes a daddy and now has a family. He sits out of the national team play. Plays a whole NBA season maybe is legitimately tired, but he probably wants to spend time with his kid and wife to. You can't let your work consume you and forget about the other part of your life.
Ok. BUT...quite frankly Peja being a good dad is useless to the Kings as a franchise. You certainly don't pay a guy $15mil per to be good daddy.
I've mentioned in the past that most of the great ones in whatever walk of life fundamentally lack perspective. They are often unnaturally and perhaps unhealthily focused on one thing. It is understandable if Peja wants to spend more time with his family. Laudable even in a different setting. But from the Kings view, not only is it a bad thing (assuming of course that he wants to spend time with the family rather than run his *** ragged practicing all summer), but it is once again one more reason that this franchise can NOT get caught paying maximum money to this guy so he can "feed his family".
The only good result possible this summer from a Kings perspective is for Peja Stojakovic to actually work on his game, religiously, constantly, for the whole summer, and come back a significantly better player than he left as. Anything else, whether it be playing for the NT, taking another summer off for the family, or whatever, indicates a set of priorities that is unhelpful to us, or to Peja's career.
Piksi up above raised Peja's "I don't take basketball home with me" comment form this spring. If that applies to summers as well now, that's a bad sign. Because many of his competitors do. There is not, and has never been, a player so gifted that he can country club the effort, work on his game only when he feels like it or its convenient, and then come out and dominate the competition (even Shaq, who takes a lot of heat, has developed perhaps the most impressive array of low post moves in the game today -- that takes a lot of work). Other guys all over the league are working out, developing moves, getting better. Playing in summer leagues, playing for the NT. If Peja does nothing but sit on his behind all summer playing dad and enjoying his beautiful wife, he is losing ground to the rest of the league, not gaining it. Life's been very very good to Peja. Many things have come his way, whether earned or not. Not everybody can maintain their hunger and desire in such a setting, and probably especially people who may not have been the most driven to greatness in the first place.