It was one of the stranger moves of the off-season — Sacramento made a very nice four-year, $52 million offer to Andre Iguodala then a few days later yanked the offer.
It all worked out, Iguodala took a little less money ($48 million over four years) to land in Golden State.
Now he’s telling his side of the story — he said he was seriously considering the Kings but wanted time to look at a number of teams, and the Kings wanted an answer fast and gave him a deadline. Iggy spoke to Scott Howard-Cooper about the entire process.Iguodala just didn’t want to be put on the clock. He was, he said, strongly considering the Kings, but was not ready to make a decision. The Kings wanted him to be ready and gave a quick deadline, soon followed by pulling the offer when they had at least a day and maybe longer before actually needing an answer….
“When you’re dealing with deadlines as a player, it’s not really a positive thing to say, ‘All right, they’re giving me a deadline,’ ” Iguodala said. “You don’t want to really get into deadlines. We had really good conversations and I was close. After the first day, they were in the top three teams, top two teams. I think with (new owner) Vivek (Ranadive) coming from (the Warriors) ownership group and going out on his own and getting a team, he has a really good vision of what he wants to build in Sacramento. That vision was really attractive. I was almost close to going there.”
Almost close.
The Kings have still had a nice offseason (they got Carl Landry, Luc Richard Mbah a Moute and Greivis Vasquez) as they start to rebuild what the Maloofs had done to the place before leaving. But Iggy would have been a big splash, a big sign of how serious they were.
The Kings thought if Iggy was really serious about them the decision would have been nearly instant. He wanted to be more deliberate. It may not have worked out, but would it have killed the Kings to be a little more patient here?