Most Overpaid Player? Wade and See
With all the maximum salaries, mid-level exceptions and Bird rights clauses being thrown around in NBA off-season discussions, it’s safe to say even the casual basketball fan is walking away from this summer with a little more knowledge about NBA bookkeeping and the Collective Bargaining Agreement. Over the past few months, a lot of statistics and numbers have been thrown out as to forecast how teams will perform, what kind of future roster flexibility will be available and even what players might be on the move come this time next year and the year after. But weeding through the entire matrix of formulas and figures, one very underpublicized and underreported stat shines through in the evaluation of the 2010 free agency period: Dwyane Wade is only 6 months younger than Joe Johnson.Granted, right now Dwyane Wade is a much more high impact player than JJ, and if you could guarantee the same continued output going forward, it would seem Wade’s value greatly exceeds that of Johnson. Johnson’s deal is actually larger than Wade’s, as Wade, LeBron and Bosh all accepted reduced contracts in order to play together, however in talks leading up to their signing, no one in the NBA, from analysts to GMs to even fans, seemed to bat an eye at signing Wade to a max deal. Johnson’s contract on the other hand was declared “the worst in the NBA” before the pen had even touched paper. Considering their two vastly different styles of play, in three years can you absolutely say you would rather have Wade than Johnson? Read the rest of this entry »
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