Halloween is the deadline for rookies from the draft class of 2009 to sign extensions. And there are some real questions out there. Would you offer an extension to Stephen Curry? What about Jrue Holiday? Or Ty Lawson? The Bulls are expected to reach a deal with Taj Gibson but it hasn’t happened yet. Tyreke Evans isn’t getting one.
But the big one remains James Harden and Oklahoma City.
The battle lines have been drawn there for a while — he wants a max deal, about $58 million over four years. The Thunder want him to take less and save them money on taxes.
Harden turned down four years, $52 million, according to Adrian Wojnarowki of Yahoo! Sports. The two sides are still negotiating.
If no deal is reached, Harden will become a restricted free agent next summer and other teams will step in with max offers and the Thunder will have the option to match.
The other, maybe more likely option if no deal is reached is the Thunder look to trade Harden at the deadline. (Frankly, even if they extend him they may try to trade him before the 2013-14 season because of the tax situation.) There has been some buzz that Harden would cave and take less not to break up the Thunder, but not from sources I fully trust. He may take a little less, but not a lot.
The tax situation is this — if the Thunder give Harden a max deal, or even $13 million, they could be on the hook for taxes in the neighborhood of $28 million in the summer of 2014. That tax would bring their total payroll into the $100 million range. You think they can afford that?
But the argument that this is all on the Harden extension is a mistake — the Thunder gave Kevin Durant a max extension and Russell Westbrook one right on the edge of max, then reached a four year, $50 million extension with Serge Ibaka this past summer. They traded for Kendrick Perkins and his nearly $9 million a year (and with Dwight Howard in Los Angeles it becomes hard to amnesty Perk). When they did all that, Thunder management knew full well what the price — and tax — for Harden would be. They made their bed long before the Harden extension came up.
This is the one big, mostly unpredictable extension deal out there. But for me, I bet they get it done. If not it gets really interesting.