Minnesota Sports Forum

sjm34 wrote:If they give this guy that kind of money, we will be watching the start of another ten year rebuild.

while I don't think Pek is worth $15 mil a season, I also don't see how a contract like his would force this team into a 10 year rebuild.

If anything, if they're willing to shell out that kind of money, then I don't wanna hear about this team getting shy about the luxury tax, because a deal like this means they'll be willing to pay it.

If Pek doesn't live up to the contract (which he won't), it will be an anchor around the wolves neck. It will end up costing us Love because we will have no means to improve the team going forward. We are already overpaying a couple of guys in bud and brewer, and then add Pek and we have given away a mid level player.

I haven't read through this entire thread and this may have already been mentioned, but over at canis there was a comment suggesting that maybe Pek doesn't want to partake in a full training camp with his national team and is stalling the negotiations to delay his start time with them.

This Pek negotiation is laughable. This was a guy who, 2 years ago, was the last guy on the bench. Now he, allegedly, is asking for 15 million per year? He and his agent have been given too much control over this, and Flip should really make a decision, like, yesterday.

shahidi124 wrote:I haven't read through this entire thread and this may have already been mentioned, but over at canis there was a comment suggesting that maybe Pek doesn't want to partake in a full training camp with his national team and is stalling the negotiations to delay his start time with them.

How does when he signs with the Wolves affect his national team status? Does the QO contract not allow him to play on his national team?

ace wrote:

shahidi124 wrote:I haven't read through this entire thread and this may have already been mentioned, but over at canis there was a comment suggesting that maybe Pek doesn't want to partake in a full training camp with his national team and is stalling the negotiations to delay his start time with them.

How does when he signs with the Wolves affect his national team status? Does the QO contract not allow him to play on his national team?

I think that the idea is that he won't be held at fault for not reporting to camp if he is still in contract negotiations. However, if he signs a contract with the Wolves he has no legitimate reason to not show up to camp.

Jeez, 15 million? I knew we should've tried to get that guy locked up last offseason! It would have cost us a pretty penny, but not $15 million. That's as much as Love.

They're obviously angling for a compromise at about 13.5-14, but that's still a ton of money. He'd be overpaid, but it's one of those things where we have to wonder whether we'd be able to get more from the cap space that NOT signing him would get us. And given the fact that we've already got a pretty high payroll and we'll have to extend Ricky at some point soon (and hopefully Love), I really doubt we could get a player nearly as good as the cap space we'd get if we let him walk. Because given our payroll, we wouldn't actually get the whole 13 to 14 million in cap space because we'll be closer to the cap than that, right?

So the real question is, how much is Glen Taylor willing to pay for Pek? I really think we need to keep him, but it'll be a tough pill for Glen to swallow.

Just to clarify a couple of things...

The starting salary of a max contract for Pek (0 to 6 years in the league) is 13.7 mil. The 15 mil number we here is the average annual amount (I assume over 4 years), which includes the 7.5% annual increases. For four year contracts, you can use 4.45 as the multipler/divisor to go between first year and total salary amounts. For example:

A contract starting at 11 mil (which seems to be Flip's starting point) would total 48.95 mil (11 * 4.45) over 4 years. Schwartz seems to be targeting 60 mil, which would have a starting salary of 13.5 mil (60 / 4.45).

Sounds like we'll eventually wind up at 12 mil for the first year, doesn't it?

OK, Tim, thanks for clearing that up a bit. Still a lot of money, but not as bad as I thought.

The bottom line is that I think we're better off signing him for three reasons.

1) Not signing him will not give us the kind of cap space we'd need to get a free agent of his caliber (and position) since we're already near the cap anyway, if I'm correct, so we'd have less than 12-15 million to play with.

2) It IS hard to get good free agents to come to Minnesota.

3) It's crucial that we win now with Rubio looking like he's getting tired of losing and Love essentially in a contract year since he could tell us next offseason he won't extend and thus force a trade otherwise we'd lose him for nothing.

How about offering Pek and filler for Batum and Robin Lopez if Portland is willing to meet Pek's demands. I'd do that.