My philosophy works in every situation, good coaches adapt their systems to take advantage of the players they have, and don't try to simply mold players into a certain type of system. Coaches like Rudy T go from being an inside out team with dream to an Iso team with Steve and Cat, they adapt. There are always sacrifices for the team, but there are times when coaches get in the way of a players development, and if that player wants to move on, they should do whatever is best in their own interest. It is their life...they have the choice...... Now that being said, if Sloan has determined that Andre is not as good as Williams, Boozer, Harpring and Okur, and he is probably right, then again, Andre probably recognizes this and wants to go somewhere else, what is wrong with that? DD
IMO if a player doesn't give max effort, then the coach is absolved from the crap that happens when the player plays poorly. Williams just ripped AK a new one, but he probably deserved it with his trade demand.
I agree, but his work ethic has never been an issue before. Players are human, maybe he has just had enough of Sloan and wants out. I mean the guy is willing to walk from $60+ million, that says that he is committed to leaving, and IMHO...stupid. DD
He isn't walking away from $63 million though. If he actually took a zero buyout he would sign with CSKA Moscow probably, if nor them then probably Olmpiacos Piraeus Athens or Panathinaikos Athens or maybe Real Madrid (the "Glamour Team of Europe"). CSKA Moscow is owned by the Russian Army. Their current player pay role is something like $35 million. They already have the best PF in Europe in Smodis and one of the top 4 point guards in Europe in Papaloukas (Spanoulis, Jasekivicius, Diamantidis). I believe Papaloukas makes over $4 million a year. Not only that but in Euroleague the team also pays for your house and car. So you pick a home and a car you want and the team buys it. Also the per diem in the NBA I believe is about $600 cash for the players, whereas in the Euroleague it's based on the richness of the team you play for. CSKA can probably match that. CSKA probably has even more money than Panathinaikos and Panathinaikos spent about $25 million between Spanoulis' 3 year deal and buyout and Jasekivicius' 2 year deal and buyout. I believe Panathinaikos' current payroll is something like $41 million and they are rumored to have big offers out to Pavlovic and Varejao. I would guess between teams like Olympiacos, Panathinaikos, and CSKA, even Real Madrid that Kirilenko would get something like $8-10 million a year isn't out of the question. Think about this, Olympiacos and Panathinaikos are said to have offered Varejao around $6-7 million for one year. Dominque Wilkins got about $5.1 million from Panathinaikos in 1995 and if you inflate that to today's money that's about $6,900,000 now. He was offered a 3 year deal at the same money. And this team has way more money to spend now. So let's say Kirilenko got like $7 million (about the high end of the rumored Varejao deal or the Wilkins deal) for 5 years, which is what has been rumored a deal he would get in Europe for length. Then add in the team will buy him a house and car of his choosing and pay for it. Let's say another what $5 million maybe? In reality he's only probably losing about $20-23 million, not $63 million. We have seen previous examples of players taking around a 1/3 pay cut to play for a team of their choosing many times before once that player was a veteran and had already made a lot of money. This really isn't much of a surprise really. It's just that it seems a lot of people have failed to realize that the Euroleague has some rich clubs that will pay these guys a ton now. Yeah most of the teams are very poor and pay very little compared to the NBA. But teams like CSKA, Olympiacos, and Panathinaikos pay a lot. You have players like Spanoulis, Jasekivicius, Greer, and so forth getting substantially more money from these teams than they got in the NBA. And a team like Real isn't spending that much these days maybe like $25 million, but this is the team that is called "The Glamour of Europe." They have been known many times to spend any amount of money on the club.
