it's not about being defensive - it's about correcting the narrative. i don't care if people rag on his bbal skills or whatever, 'cause that's just opinion. but this narrative that he cared about the money first and foremost is too far from the truth to ignore. "He did not have to accept that deal, but he wanted to because he wanted to get that money." so what other deal was out there for him to accept? if he didn't accept that deal, he wouldn't have a contract to play in the nba. "He chose not to because no one else was going to offer him that salary" this logic doesn't make any sense at all. he chose not to because no one was going to offer him that money? so without any other offers, he didn't have a choice to whether to shop around, correct? how do you shop around when there are no options? there were some interest but no one made a real offer because everyone thought new york would match, and it would be a total waste of time to present an offer that would be matched anyway. the ONLY way for him to be 100% certain that he'd back in ny is 1) take ny at their words that they would match any offer, or 2) sign the qualifying offer of 1 mil. so yeah, technically he had a choice, if you consider the 1 mil qualifying offer to be an legitimate option.
LIN chose the deal that was clearly above market value. he probably thought my was gonna match bc the said all along they would.
and no, he cannot take an actual, unsigned offer from houston and go door to door and say "hey can you match this? can you come close to this?" that's not how it works. he also cannot call ny and say "hey i'm here sitting with morey and he's giving me an offer for $25mil. can you match it? 'cause if not i'm not gonna sign it".
he chose the only deal that was offered to him. he didn't have multiple deals, so he didn't really have a choice, unless you consider the 1 mil qualifying offer from new york to be a legitimate choice.
ok if you want to get exact. yea he chose the only deal available. at the time he only spoke to Houston and NYC maybe? anyhow morey offered 2 mil above (that was reported) I don't recall much of this. rockets were in rebuild mode before the harden trade so they probably were like lets up it 2 mil to increase the chance NYC won't match.
no doubt they definitely overpaid for him, buy about 2 mil, i'd say. but more times than not, to win restrictive free agency, you need to overpay, otherwise there's no point playing the game.
Actually his agent is perfectly able to tell the Knicks the parameters of a deal he'd accept based on what he's been offered.
I'm sorry, but this is not quite true. You are representing Lin's situation as one analogous to unrestricted free agency, when he was a restricted free agent. When he first went on the market, the Knicks tried to play poker by basically saying that they would match any other offer out there. This precluded every single team except the Rockets from even offering him a contract in the first place. Lin fully expected the Knicks to match but didn't mind the idea of playing Houston, so he signed the first contract. The original offer was for $19.5 million over three years, with a fourth year provided as a team option for another $9.3 million (for a total of $28.8 million over four years). Then Morey realized that the Knicks might actually follow through and match that offer, so he upped the ante and restructured it to include that heinous poison pill provision. The second offer was for $25 million over three years, restructured to be paid out as 5/5/15, even though the salary cap hit would be averaged out to 8.3/8.3/8.3 each year. (I swear to god I wish the previous sentence would be mandatory reading for people here.) At that point, Lin had two choices. He could either sign the second offer, or not sign anything at all and go back to the Knicks empty-handed. No other team had made him an offer because the Knicks made it clear they would match anything "up to a billion". So his choice was literally between league minimum and $25 million, unless the Knicks decided out of the goodness of their own hearts to pay him more money. He, like every other team in the league, had no reason to believe that the Knicks wouldn't match the offer, so he signed the contract. What I find kind of ridiculous is that this discussion is even being had. No one else here would even bat an eyelash at another player taking as much money as he possibly could. Why even try to make the false point that Lin somehow magically "could" have taken less money? So could James Harden. So could Kobe Bryant. So could Mike Dunleavy. So could every single other player in the league. In that sense, Lin's situation actually is no different from anyone else's, and yet somehow it is considered valid to bring up his pay as though it is some sort of "fact". Unless you are bringing it up for every other player in the league, then no, it isn't some sort of "fact" you are just throwing around. It serves to add to some sort of narrative you're building about who he is or what kind of money he is actually worth. Otherwise, there's no reason to talk about it.
And, to spell it out for people who might not be able to read between the lines, "who he is" meaning "the type of person who should be happy to make less money than he could get or that he might be worth". And what is it, exactly, about Jeremy Lin that makes it OK for him to get less than he deserves?
It was a great story two years ago. I'm talking about NOW. You know the end of the story though, he got paid because of that streak and the Houston Rockets are paying him based on that success. And it's New York, the big city that can over hype anything because it's the center of media. If Jeremy Lin doesn't progress and keeps playing inconsistently, that's all people will remember of him. If you want to watch Linsanity over again, his movie will come out someday. I already saw it (really i did).
Those are not his only two options. His agent could have gone back to the Knicks without signing the Rockets offer to re-engage them. The poster I responded to was making the point that Lin didn't care about the money. Obviously he did. All players do. I'm not saying it as a black mark on him.
Here's a question for you guys to ponder: If Lin was consistently average last year, would the Rockets would have made the playoffs? IMO, his really good games (e.g. 29/9 vs OKC) clearly helped the team win more than his awful games caused losses. Just my opinion...and don't care enough to look up stats.
Seeing as Linsanity happened on the Knicks, I couldn't give a **** about it. I doubt he will ever achieve that level again.
That level or that stretch of consistency? Two different things. There have been a decent number of games on the Rockets where he has played at that level.
no he can't. houston would never have made an offer if morey didn't think it would be received in good faith, meaning, he knows you won't and can't go back to new york with the offer before signing it. also, ny has stated that they wanted to match an actual contract, not some rumored number that's out there. the increased amount was only revealed after he arrived in houston. he (or his agent) can't pick up the phone and call new york to get their ok to sign it. he can't tell les and morey (wait a minute guys this is not what we had discussed... lemme call new york and get back to you tomorrow to make sure they'd match). he needed to go back to new york with an actual contract for them to match. and if i were morey and thought that lin would only sign a contract that he knew for certain that ny would match, i never would've offered one in the first place.
Heh, Ive said it before....if Jeremy got the kind of hate Rafer got here, there would be much more wailing and knashing of teeth than we already have. You guys think Lin gets hate? LAWL What you read here now is NOTHING like the heat Rafer got, and honestly, he was MUCH more consistent than Lin has been up to this point.
And Rafer was 4 year starter for the Rockets who did not have one season as good as the one Lin just had...
No he can't. re-engage them with what?? there's nothing for them to match. and no, if they'd done that they be in big trouble with nba and nbapa. that's not how things work. it's not like us interviewing and getting a new job offer and going back to our old job to ask for a raise. and do you think morey and les would sit there and say "yeah go back to new york and tell me what they think"?
And Rafer didn't have a thousand of non Rockets fans join the site to keep referencing the Knicks streak over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again you know as well as I know.. As Rockets fans, we've seen MUCH BETTER than Linsanity The actual ending for the Knicks Linsanity was that the streak phased out and he was hurt for the playoffs.
