Why Josh Childress signed with a Greek team
July 24, 2008 by James Edwards
Filed under Atlanta Hawks, NBA Basketball
NBA Obsessed takes you into the hit and run game of NBA Basketball.
Josh Childress will be taking his game to Greece
Hey, it is called free agency and Josh Childress took it to its extreme by signing with a Greek team. The team is called Olympiakos.
So did Josh just get Olympic fever and get confused?
No, he got 32.5 million bucks. Comparable to what the NBA was offering and for fewer years.
Read that again, comparable to what the NBA was offering and for fewer years.
Atlanta had offered him a five-year, $33 million contract. But the Hawks’ slow-paced negotiating tactics and the limits of restricted free agency, combined with what Childress called Wednesday the “opportunity of a lifetime,” resulted in his decision.
The luxury tax and slow U.S. economy are changing the landscape.
This year, it’s changing even more. Over the past couple of weeks, those NBA free agents with international roots seemed inclined to leap. Carlos Delfino has left the Toronto Raptors and opted for BC Khimki; Bostjan Nachbar is finished with the New Jersey Nets and is on his way to Russia to play for Dynamo Moscow; the Memphis Grizzlies were so excited about acquiring Juan Carlos Navarro last year only to find him heading home to Spain to play for Barcelona next season. And Nachbar’s teammate with the Nets, 7-footer Nenad Krstic, is reportedly mulling over an overture from Maccabi Tel Aviv in the Israeli league.
The reasons are obvious. A lot of young restricted free agents are getting nothing more than qualifying offers in the $2.5-million range, and the European teams are offering them twice that money with the much stronger Euro also trumping the dollar. Splitter, meanwhile, scoffed at the Spurs’ offer because — thanks to the rookie salary cap — a handcuffed San Antonio front office was only able to offer half of what he got to stay in Spain.
Seems bizarre doesn’t it. We just got used to Europeans coming over here to play.
David Stern has taken notice and you can bet he will step up his effort to create more NBA ties in Europe.
As always, any NBA Basketball related comments are welcome.
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