Minnesota Sports Forum

Just curious as to how/why he is still holding out I haven't been paying too close attention but are there any other viable options for him right now?

His agent could always pursue sign & trade opportunities...

They are most likely bickering about money. Flip should hold firm, because not only does he hold all the cards, but Pek wants to be here.

Abe posted an interesting quandary awhile back: who would you rather have? Pek or Splitter. There were good arguments both ways. They have different strengths, but it's hard to argue that one is more valuable than the other. Splitter just signed a contract for 4 years, 36 mil (a declining contract starting at 10 mil). I've seen 4 years, 50 mil tossed around for Pek.

Is Pek really worth that much more than Splitter?!?

I'd say YES Tim but only because its Minnesota and we need him.

Pop in SA would never give PEK that money because he knows his reputation around the league and knows people want to come play for him. Splitter wanted to stay and took less to do it I believe.

Pop is the GM in SA? I'm not sure Pek is worth 12+M per year.. Can the wolves be contenders with the likes of Love>Ricky and Pek? Because if they pay all 3 of them the big bucks it's not going to leave any room to bring in other good players..

I personally think Pek is a better player than Splitter. They are totally different players in what they bring their respective teams though. Both guys are going to get paid when its all said and done.

At this point, it is on Pek and his agent. We offered him 4 years 50 million. That's not that far off from the max. Considering how much of his time has been spent on the bench, it is becoming extremely selfish of him to play hard ball to get the max when he isn't worth it even if he was healthy all year long. It is pretty ridiculous to me that he is doing this to us when his best season was 16 and 9 with 20 missed games because of BS injuries (are you kidding me with how long he was out with a thigh bruise?). He's not worth 12 million in the first place and he is the one playing hardball for the max. If he was worth the max, someone would have given it to him because that would have been a tough offer for us to match. Clearly nobody else thought he was worth it, so why is he being so selfish? I don't care if it is his only big contract. Take the huge raise and stay on the court. If you want to play for money, go back to Europe where they will pay you a lot more to play a worse brand of basketball.

I wonder if our 4 year $50 Million deal has a lot of incentives in it for amount of games played and that is what is holding this up. Or it could be that his agent is trying to get incentives that max him a player, but if he misses 20 games a year he gets paid 12M. It would be interesting to know the details.

The longer this drags out, the more I feel like this is a game of chicken. Pek's only leverage is taking a one year deal and while most think it would be stupid of Pek to turn down an estimated $12 mill a year, I could see this happening if the two sides get entrenched in a game of chicken. If Pek thinks he is max money material, we should trade his a$$.

I'm with Kahns, this is getting pretty ridiculous. I give Flip an F in dealing with this. If they're using Splitter's deal as a comp, than he should get 10 max per year. 12 is insane I can't believe they didn't grab this immediately if it was really the offfer. Flip should have pulled this offer by now. We can obtain a serviceable big via trade later this year.

I tend to think this is actually just a matter of both sides not having a sense of urgency. This was really a nice scenario for the Wolves in that no other teams put up a fight to sign Pek. Flip did a good enough job to scare teams off and it will save the Wolves some money. If there is heavy debate about his contract it probably has to do with some tricky language about benchmarks that change the money value. I honestly don't think this is a big deal at all.