<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Dumpy)</div><div class='quotemain'></p>
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (ghoti)</div><div class='quotemain'></p>
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Dumpy)</div><div class='quotemain'></p>
You've lost it. While you could make an argument that the Nets should deal Carter (I'm not giving my opinion), his contract is NOT "bad." As I'm sure you recall, by opting out, Carter renegotiated a longer term contract at a much lower salary. This year, he's getting $13,000,000, down from last season, when he made about $15 million. If he hadn't opted uot, he would have made about $16 million this year. Next year, he'll be getting roughly $15M, then going up about a million a year for the legnth of the deal. To put that in perspective: That's $6M less than Kidd both this year and next year. His $13M salary ranks him somewhere around #40 league-wide. I think it is QUITE reasonable--especially when you consider that there are about a dozen players that are making $19 million or more.</p>
If Kidd was in the same position--that is, with the opportunity to opt out--do you think he'd accept a contract that would pay him less per year? If Kidd was paid $17 M instead of $20M, don't you think the team would be better?</p>
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Carter should be drawing that salary from another team, one that isn't trying to win.</p>
So this great contract for a guy who is a shell of what he used to be escalates and that's what makes it great??</p>
Who exactly were the Nets bidding against?</p>
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Well, the one good thing about it is the Nets finally have a crappy contract to trade with a young chip if they ever want to aquire an unhappy veteran.</p>
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I'm kind of ignoring the escalation bit. It's quite reasonable for the next few years, though. The last year of the deal is a bit much.</p>
Carter is playing like shit right now, but his salary is right in line with that of the first or second options onother teams that are not on their rookie deals. Among that class of player, he's at least average. Of course, a number of teams are relying heavily on young players to carry the offensive load, and they aren't comparable for that reason. If we take a team at random that (1) is not in complete rebuilding mode (Portland, Seattle, Minnesota,Philly, etc.) and (2) eliminate the teams with wildly disproportionate salaries (NY, Dallas, Denver) that don't seem to care about the salary cap, like, say, Houston, we find a guy like T-Mac getting $19 million. Against that backdrop, Vince's salary seems pretty reasonable to me.</p>
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