Ivan Carter answered one of my questions in the WaPo Wizards/NBA chat today regarding Arenas coming back next season:
1900 L St: Ivan, in a recent blog post you said Arenas wasn’t going anywhere, that the Wizards could offer the most money and the other teams with cap space sucked to begin with.
My question then is whats your best guess on how this plays out? Does he get max money from the Wizards and thats it? Or does Arenas have to settle for less thanks to the knee injuries.
Ivan Carter: My best guess is that Arenas is back here with a new contract next season but I have no idea whether Abe Pollin and Ernie Grunfeld are going to cough up the max. The market is thin but few teams have money and, Arenas is coming off of two knee injuries. The big question is this: if less than the max is offered, who will Gilbert react? My gut tells me: not well. He has a number in his head and he feels he’s worth that number. It’s going to be interesting to see how this plays out.
While I appreciate the answer, this just leads to more questions. Like what are the chances that Pollin and Grunfeld offer less then the max? If offered less then the max here, would Arenas be so angry/upset as to take even less money elsewhere? I wouldn’t want to be in Grunfeld’s shoes, thats for sure. The smart business (and maybe even basketball) decision would be to offer Arenas a fair, but probably less then max, deal. A guy coming off back to back knee surgeries that have caused him to miss a large portion of 2 seasons, even a guy as good as Arenas is at his best, is hard to invest max money in.
As Carter says, its going to be interesting to see how this plays out. My fear is that it could get pretty ugly but there is a surprisingly little amount of opinion on how this will all turn out, other then a general feeling that Arenas wants the max. Has Grunfeld spoken on the matter?
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