How long was (Webber's) salary supposed to be?
The contract we signed him to would have ended this summer. The net result appears to have been that we avoided 3.5 years of Webber at $20M, and exchanged it for 5.5 years of KT, SAR, Skinner, Potapenko and Mikki at an average cost of about $16M a year. We end up paying about 15% more, but it's spread out over an extra couple of years. Since all of our signings since then have been using extentions to existing contracts or salary exceptions, it hasn't had any impact so far, although that arguably changes this summer, when we would have been under cap for the first time this century.
I agree that cap space in 2011 isn't going to do us much good, since major stars almost never become FAs, and when they do, are not usually interested in lottery teams. It's good for situations like when we were courting Przybilla, but couldn't get him because we couldn't offer any more than Portland could; i.e., cap space can get you role players or minor stars who are worth a little more than MLE. So few teams can offer anything more than MLE, that even a few million in cap space can be a major advantage at times like that. So $20M in cap space, all at once, could allow us to hire a couple of Przybilla-level roleplayers at the same time, but probably accomplishes no more than that. Still, it would be nice to be able to sign some folks who hadn't already been rejected by the competition.
As far as KT's concerned, I can't imagine him walking away from so much money. A buyout, maybe.
Even back at UNM, Kenny had a rep for being someone who was regularly told that he wouldn't make it, that he was too short and chubby, lacking in talent, or whatever, but then Kenny would defy his critics by getting into shape and overperforming. My worry is that Kenny may have silenced his critics for as long as he cares to, that his angry sort of pride may have weakened. Maybe he has come to terms with the fact that, by NBA standards, he just doesn't have the goods to be a top notch player. Maybe he's content to have simply started in the NBA for a while, knowing that he's financially set for life. If so, there's no reason for him to be interested in a buyout.
They say that he's working hard on getting his shot back, and, if he is really sincere and determined about it, that is a good sign, from any perspective. If it's more front office PR than truth, or if Kenny's just going through the motions because the coaching staff expects him to, then he will be an albatross until the end of his contract. More than one Bibby trade has supposedly been torpedoed because Petrie insisted on including Kenny, so GP's kind of playing with fire at this point. If we end up getting little or nothing for our expiring players, Kenny will have cost us far more than the wasted $7M a year.
