former dunk champ Fred Jones leaps over the Salmon that refused to swim upstream
This time last week it looked like the versatile John Salmons was going to sign with the Phoenix Suns then changed his mind and committed to the Raptors who were about to add him to the list of new faces on the Toronto squad when he did a second about face aka double-Boozer (which is not new for the Raptors but new for Bryan Colangelo) and decided to sign with the Sacramento Kings. Now, I suspect he was told that the Kings would be using their MLE (mid-level-exception) on him-$25.5/5yr as opposed to Toronto's offer of $21/5yr (meaning that Bonzi wouldn't be coming back) so the roster spot would be for him to win over Fransico Garcia or Kevin Martin.
So while in Sacramento we will hear stuff like:
In Toronto and Phoenix its more along the lines of:
"So a guy who lied to two teams gets a richer deal than he ever imagined with a third.
I'm sure there are Raptor fans sticking pins in their
Salmons voodoo dolls right now"
Although one could argue that it is the inherent business of sport it raises more importantly however the player trend of disrespecting agreements/contracts/trades (recent situations for example: Boozer failure to re-sign in Cleveland in favor of Utah/Mourning never reporting to Toronto/Jim Jackson never reporting to Hornets) which make for increasingly hard pills to swallow for the fans, teammates and franchises. RaptorsHQ.com suggests that Stern should adopt a "Salmons rule":
Putting the rebuttal behind them the Raptors wasted little time (positive point) and jumped on the Fred Jones bandwagon claiming him from the Pacers who by bringing in Armstrong/Marshall/Powell from Dallas for Anthony Johnson so far have everything pointing towards a failure to match the $11/3yr offer on the table.
Scott Carefoot at Raptorblog.com is of the opinion that the "consolation prize is better than the trophy" and the overall consensus appears to be that the Raptors may have saved some money and some future cap flexibility after all by signing a player that will fit right into the fast paced up-tempo attack the dino's have planned for the upcoming season.
For the sake of argument the following is the tale of the tape for two veterans of four years that appear ready to break out with surprisingly similar stats (despite size difference):
per 48 min in 2006 here
over career here
John Salmons 6'6 207lb.
drafted #26 2002 by San Antonio (University of Miami)
coming off careeer year
offered $21/5yr
76% ft career
33% 3pt career
career highs: 23pts 10r 12a 5s
Fred Jones 6'2 220lb
drafted #14 2002 by Indiana Pacers (University of Oregon)
leading bench scorer for Pacers (9.2ppg 2005-06)
offered $11/3yr
81% ft career
32% 3pt career
career highs: 31pts 10r 8a 5s
(career highlight: dethroning 2 time defending Jason Richardson of slam championship in 2004)
Blogger is changing to beta-Blogger (they have some major additions to include) they plan on encompassing all google accounts too
i like typepad and wordpress for the categorization feature of posts but that is is in the works for the blogger beta
anyways blogger seems to be a step ahead of all other "portals" out there, is constantly updating on the fly (the advantage of being web 2.0) doesn't have too much downtime (for now) and is simple to use
but when u use blogger u always have that "blogspot" cliché attached to ur address
Posted by
"rem" |
8/31/2006 11:02 AM