So, on this afternoon, Thomas shared a photo of Hansen signing a 5-year, 95 million supermax contract with the Grizzlies.
The supermax salary is linked to the league’s salary cap, which hadn’t changed much over the last few seasons, making the amount of this contract essentially consistent with the previous season.
Under the new collective bargaining agreement, this contract included a player option for the fourth year, which was in 2017.
Hansen, the biggest fish in free agency, settled his dust early, but the free-agent market was far from over that year.
Apart from him, there were two other big fish, Howard and Paul.
An interesting thing was that before this, Windhorst at ESPN had written about the idea of James playing together with the two.
Clearly, after a season that didn’t quite match the face of Nike’s leading man, James was desperately wanting to form his new Big Three.
Especially because Durant had put so much pressure on him.
Though the Heat hadn’t clinched the championship last season, Durant scooped the MVP award, and had an outstanding performance in the finals. Of course, more importantly, the Heat would always be competitive. If he didn’t do something soon, even his Nike renewal in 2014 could become a big problem.
However, his "dream" was soon interrupted.
Howard reached a 5-year, 112 million US Dollar renewal contract with the Brooklyn Nets.
Last season, the Brooklyn Nets had replaced Johnson with Hollins, significantly increasing Howard’s tactical status in the team.
Although the team lost to the Pacers in the semifinals, what mattered most to Howard was happiness, and happiness made him choose to stay.
Howard’s choice could actually be seen as expected.
After all, he and James didn’t have much of a relationship; if anything, they were both associated with the word "loyalty."
But what Paul did next left James speechless.
The Lakers first signed Paul to a 5-year, 107 million contract and then sent him along with Artest to the Rockets, obtaining Lin Shuhao, Chandler Parsons, two future second-round draft picks, and a 15 million trade exception from the Rockets.
It was reported that this trade was mainly due to Paul’s personal wishes.
The two years Paul spent in Los Angeles had been quite disappointing, and the pressure of playing alongside Kobe was intense; he was looking for a new environment.
Because Paul was an unrestricted free agent, the Lakers had no say in the matter.
In fact, Paul brought back so many assets for them, including young players and a trade exception; compared to what James had done in the past, he had been very fair to the Lakers.
Of course, this was a real pain for James.
Since Paul had decided to leave the Lakers, he didn’t even choose the Thunders!
It’s worth noting that, in terms of trade value alone, Paul was one of the few players who could entice the Thunders to be willing to give up Westbrook. Thıs content belongs to 𝓷𝓸𝓿𝓮𝓵※𝓯𝓲𝓻𝓮※𝓷𝓮𝓽
Moreover, Kobe had always praised Westbrook as the most similar to himself; a real swap would be a win-win.
Nevertheless, clearly, Paul and James were the ultimate "fair-weather friends." Paul, being such a smart guy, or rather, someone with a personality so similar to that of James, would only have considered teaming up with James again if his head was stuck in a door after seeing the reputations of Wade and Westbrook plummet.
Even though Paul might not have the obvious attributes of a ball-dominant star, he still needed to handle the ball a lot.
After going around in circles, James looked up to find that, suddenly, no one was willing to team up with him!