Everything about
Kobe Bryant is polarizing. Why should his contract extension be any different?
This is not to say that locking up the
Los Angeles Lakers' superstar was a bad move. The two-year, $48.5 million agreement ensures that the face and cornerstone of the franchise likely will retire a Laker, and also sends a message to potential free agents that the Lakers continue to take care of their own. Nor is there obvious blame, from Bryant's perspective.
"This wasn't a negotiation," Bryant told Yahoo! Sports. "The Lakers made their offer with cap and building a great team in mind while still taking care of me as a player. I simply agreed to the offer."
Bryant stays with the only team he has known as a professional while retaining his status as the league's highest-paid player. He also locks in his value before returning to the court, eliminating any possibility of an Achilles-related setback or loss of athleticism hurting his earning potential.
And in doing so, he willingly absorbed a 23 percent pay cut.
Still, the extension is not without adverse consequences. It is no secret that Bryant, 35, wants a sixth and even a seventh ring before he retires, but this extension takes him farther from that goal. While the Lakers will be able to afford one top-tier free agent next summer -- and that free agent must want to go to L.A. -- it will have little additional spending power to bring in the necessary pieces that would return the team to championship contention. Worse, signing a top-tier player means the Lakers likely will have to say goodbye to current mainstays like
Pau Gasol.
Scenario 1: Sign a tier-one free agent in 2014
Potential free agents in this category are LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony and Chris Bosh, all of whom must invoke options in order to become free agents.
Scenario 2: Sign multiple tier-two free agents in 2014
The next group of 2014 free agents includes Eric Bledsoe, Luol Deng, Gordon Hayward, and Greg Monroe.
Scenario 3: Sign one tier-two free agent in 2014
Build the team around the remaining players.
Scenario 4: Stand pat in 2014, aim for 2015 and 2016
This scenario then opens its checkbook in 2015 when players such as Kevin Love and Brook Lopez will hit the market.
Waiting for Kevin Love might be the Lakers' best option. But it doesn't get Kobe another ring.
This scenario would again leave Bryant out of title contention in 2014, and would simply push the team's rebuilding process back one year. However, with Bryant's extension set to expire in 2016, the team could conceivably sign a player such as Love in 2015, and if Bryant retires, use his freed-up salary in the 2016 free-agent market, which could be headlined by Kevin Durant.
While it might sound ludicrous to suggest that a player negotiate a lower salary, doing so would have brought Bryant closer to his stated goal of winning more rings.
As seen here, a strategic look at the cap implications shows that the media and fans were right -- that even though Bryant fully deserves every penny that the Lakers pay him, his extension distances him from winning more titles before he retires. He might not have realized when he signed his contract that he was forgoing further title contention, but that effectively was the choice he made.
After that