My apologies for the lack of posts in the last couple of days, but it definitely has been a slow week for the Lakers. I guess Mitch has decided that this off season, “mum” will be the word as nary a peep has been heard from Lakerland. More importantly, no news has come in regards to our favorite shooter, not “Our Favorite Martian,” The Machine, aka Sasha Vujacic. As Mitch has stated before, the team’s priority this off season was to re-sign restricted free agents Ronny Turiaf and Sasha Vujacic.
Now as we all know, the team has already failed at 50% of this task, with Ronny heading off to Golden State with an unmatched offer sheet. This also leaves us with the remaining 50% of the task, which is re-signing Sasha or as I like to call him, Cic. Unfortunately for The Machine, no offer sheets have come from any of the other 30 teams in the NBA. Understandably, Sasha is upset that he and the Lakers have not come to terms in regards to offering him an extension (or so I’ve heard from sources close to members of the Lakers’ organization). Apparently, The Machine believes his value is much higher than the Lakers are prepared to offer, yet because he has no offers from other teams Sasha has no justification for asking for the kind of money he wants. Sasha has said before that the Lakers are his first choice in destination, but if push comes to shove he understands that basketball is a business and he will look out for his own best interests, leaving him in a quandary.
In comes Josh Childress.
Although he is not the first NBA player to jump ship and leave the NBA to play elsewhere internationally, he is the most high profile player to do so. For most people, Childress was simply a bench player that left for more money. However, what many people don’t know is that Childress is a total basketball stud. He was a McDonald’s All-American in 2001. In 2004, as a junior out of Stanford, he was the Pac-10 Player of the Year and college All-American. He was drafted 6th overall in 2004 and as the first man off the bench for the Atlanta Hawks, Childress averaged 11 ppg, 6 rpg, shot the ball at a respectable 52.2%, and played approximately 32 minutes a game for his career. Solid numbers for any player. Unlike many other highly touted players that held similar achievements out of college, played in the NBA and then moved overseas (e.g. Trajan Langdon, Ed O’Bannon, etc.), Childress was actually a successful NBA player with a bright future in the league. Yet, he still signed with Olympiacos B.C. and left the NBA to play in Greece. So what gives?
International players know that even though the NBA is the highest stage of basketball competition and fame, nowadays the same money and glory can be had at home or in other international markets. If you look back 20 years ago, to the days of Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, and Oscar Schmidt the same could not be said. The international game was far behind and the best basketball and the biggest money was in the U.S., playing in the NBA. Those days are long gone now and the parity in talent seen in the Olympics and argued by pundits frequently all over the world, since the U.S. started losing in international competitions, is that the U.S. isn’t the only place that competes at a high level and has athletes that get paid in the millions. This is why players like Juan Carlos Navarro, Jorge Garbajosa, and Tiago Splitter have spurned their contracts with the NBA and their respective teams and have either returned to their international teams or simply stayed put. In Asian countries such as China and especially in European countries such as Spain, Russia, and now Greece, teams have been successful at wooing “imports” to come play on their teams for big money. Childress has just reinforced these ideals by deciding to play internationally, which brings us full circle to the topic I mentioned earlier, re-signing Cic.
Childress signed a guaranteed contract with Olympiacos for three years and $20 M after taxes. He also has opt out eligibility at the end of each year of his contract, which is something that no other NBA team offers. Now if you were Sasha Vujacic with a minimum qualifying contract with the Lakers ($2.7 M for one year), no other offers from NBA teams, and four quality offers from European teams interested in your services what would you do? If you are like me you would seriously have to consider leaving the U.S. and playing overseas. Not to mention as a former European player Cic would feel right at home playing back in Europe. It seems the only thing to stop him would be the chance to win an NBA Championship, but with the Dollar weakening, the Euro strengthening and teams offering bigger money than the U.S. it may be the right thing to do. In any case, I just hope he figures out soon, so we aren’t left wondering what’s happening wth our team.
Let me know what you think by posting your thoughts below. Thanks for reading and Go LAKERS!
