Matthews: Jazz never made me an offer. I would have accepted less.

[gregbroncs]

Well, who do you believe then? Matthews said there was no offer. KOC never even tried to negotiate. He played hardball in an effort to get Matthews for the lowest possible price and he gets burned by Portland ... not once but twice (first with Millsap). Stubborn old coot, I'd say. Yeah, it sucks. I think it's bad all the way around. For Matthews and the Jazz. You need to think long term if you're a GM, in my opinion, if you want to build a championship team. Jazz have not been smart in the past -- the contracts of Tag and AK, for example -- and continue being dumb. Yeah, they made a good move with Deron, and so it SEEMED with Okur and Boozer, but then never thought what it would be like to play two big guys who can't play defense. That has been our achilles heal, and I blame on the FO's poor foresight.

Okay. Serious question. Would you rather have a FO in a small market that just pays what these player's are asking for? Because they did that with Ak and that's the worst contract this franchise has ever been stuck with. They also did that with Tag and that's the 2nd worst contract this franchise has ever been stuck with.

I don't necessarily think that Mathews is lying. But his agent did the negotiating not Mathews. If his agent came out right away demanding full MLE as reported then the Jazz did the right thing 100%. Let them go find that offer then decide if he is really worth it to you if he does. It's not like the Jazz did not have the opportunity to match it if they wanted to.

It is a good idea to let the market set the value on these players. Let somebody else overpay. Millsap is worth his deal so they matched. Miles is worth his deal so they matched. Mathews is going to be seriously overpaid for the majority of this contract so they did not match. End of story. Put your feel good feelings for these players aside and you can see that they did this the way it should be. They made smart business decisions in every case.

 

[cowhide]

This is Matthews side of the story. KOC talks to Matthews agent about contracts and who knows what kind of info Matthews agent has been feeding him during this whole process.

Keep telling that to yourself if it makes you feel better, but this has happened two years in a row. Besides, when the Jazz have not wanted the market to decide the value of a player, they have extended the player. Have you forgotten AK and Okur? Sorry but the Jazz screwed this up. KOC thought they had the upper hand, thinking no one would offer that much. Remember KOC actually admitting it. The Jazz front office dropped the ball because they could have called Wes on July 1 and made a fair offer. Did you forget KOC saying, Wes was are top priority? Personally, saying that a player is your top priority isn't a good way to start negotiatiing. It gives the upper hand to Wes and other clubs. Nevertheless, if he was our top priority then why not make him a reasonable offer? Saying he would shop the offer isn't an excuse because he is entitled to shop his services regardless. Giving an offer shows that he is your top priority. Unfortunately, we will never know if Wes would have taken a lower offer because there was NO offer. Instead KOC quickly covered his tracks with the signing of Raja, because he knows he screwed this up. Ok maybe he doesn't but it sure looks like he did.

 

[slc]

Plus Matthews should be overjoyed to be a rich man. Matthews agent is great. He got Matthews double what anyone imagined.

 

[N. Jazzovic]

Looks like Matthews expected long, fat contract, starting position and 30+ minutes every night.After one year in league he is far from ''can't miss'' deal and proven player....

 

[gregbroncs]

Keep telling that to yourself if it makes you feel better, but this has happened two years in a row. Besides, when the Jazz have not wanted the market to decide the value of a player, they have extended the player. Have you forgotten AK and Okur? Sorry but the Jazz screwed this up. KOC thought they had the upper hand, thinking no one would offer that much. Remember KOC actually admitting it. The Jazz front office dropped the ball because they could have called Wes on July 1 and made a fair offer. Did you forget KOC saying, Wes was are top priority? Personally, saying that a player is your top priority isn't a good way to start negotiatiing. It gives the upper hand to Wes and other clubs. Nevertheless, if he was our top priority then why not make him a reasonable offer? Saying he would shop the offer isn't an excuse because he is entitled to shop his services regardless. Giving an offer shows that he is your top priority. Unfortunately, we will never know if Wes would have taken a lower offer because there was NO offer. Instead KOC quickly covered his tracks with the signing of Raja, because he knows he screwed this up. Ok maybe he doesn't but it sure looks like he did.

Okay come back from fantasy land. Why would Mathews' agent let him offer a lower deal without finding out his market value. Would you take a job for $8 an hour if you thought you could land a job for $16?

 

[JCribb]

I'm sorry if this was mentioned earlier, didn't have time to read all of the posts...

"tribjazz Wesley Matthews charges Jazz never made him an offer, but team was told from beginning it would take max midlevel to re-sign him."

Matthews camp clearly thought his value was a full MLE from the start. If his camp was firm on this why would the Jazz submit a contract offer without knowing really what his market value was? I don't think the FO played this wrong. And while I do like Matthews I also can't help to think that he may be another Jazz guard who is a product of the system. Shandon Anderson 2.0?

 

[write4u]

Still, KOC should made a reasonable offer to show good faith. And not be a hard ***, like he is. Might be good business, but not good human relations. I thought that's what the Jazz represented. Good character.

 

[gregbroncs]

Still, KOC should made a reasonable offer to show good faith. And not be a hard ***, like he is. Might be good business, but not good human relations. I thought that's what the Jazz represented. Good character.

It's not good character to not offer a player more than you want to pay? If they offered him the 3 and 9 it would have offended him after they asked for almost double that. Again this is business, and KOC did nothing wrong. I can tell your the type of fan who falls in love with the players. Frankly I just want a good team with good players at the best possible rate so they can get more good players down the line.

 

[Borat]

Well, if a guy starts at something double what you'd expect to pay, an impasse would happen immediately. I don't think any counter offers would be going anywhere, since I doubt KOC would do anything above 4/16 without seeing what the market would say. And there's no way Matthews would accept 4/16 if he believed he could get the MLE.

OK, so we are finally on the same page, and you now agree Jazz never negotiated. The only difference of opinion now is that you "don't think any counter offers would be going anywhere", and I feel just make a fair counter offer and actually see if it is going anywhere or not. Never assume when you have a chance to actually see.

With that said, I just think Portland's offer is too big for us to have had a chance to reach an agreement with Wes for close to fair value. I feel fair value is 4-16. That would be a good solid contract. I just have hard time seeing how a guy coming off 400K contract would leave 16 mil on the table. Yeah, there is a chance if KOC made this offer right away Wes would not even test the market (i.e. Portland), but I feel that chance is extremely small. I just like to know for sure, which is why I wanted KOC to negotiate right away, but at the end of the day, smart money is on Wes leaving regardless. We just don't know for sure.

 

[PrinceJL]

Someone said he was probably a product of the system & I now kinda agree, see Howard Eisley & Shandon Anderson....

If Portland hadn't front-loaded the contract, I'm sure he would've been retained but Portland had to use this tactic to give themself the upper hand.
I wish Wesley Matthews the best as he had grown into one of my favs but I'm very pleased w/ the Bell signing as signing Brewer would've been predictable but pointless.

 

[homeytennis]

If CJ and Korver don't get hurt during camp, Wes probably would have been waived and headed to Europe or the DLeague. To his credit he played hard and produced decent numbers when he had the chance. Also if the Jazz don't dump Ronnie for LT purposes he probably would not have the stats that produced his contract. To show the insanity, Wes annual salary triples what Fernadez and Battum combined make and his stats are not better than either of those two.

 

[beantastic]

Someone said he was probably a product of the system & I now kinda agree, see Howard Eisley & Shandon Anderson....

If Portland hadn't front-loaded the contract, I'm sure he would've been retained but Portland had to use this tactic to give themself the upper hand.
I wish Wesley Matthews the best as he had grown into one of my favs but I'm very pleased w/ the Bell signing as signing Brewer would've been predictable but pointless.

Maybe bringing Brewer back is not so predictable. Via Twitter

tribjazz

Text from agent Henry Thomas this morning that Raja Bell signing takes Jazz out of running to bring back Ronnie Brewer.