One Thousand Eight Hundred and Seventeen. The Curtain of the Free Market Opens

"My contract renewal next year may be too big. My salary will be higher than yours. If the team cannot reduce the salary below the luxury tax threshold next summer, our 16-17 season will be difficult. We need to pay super luxury tax, and it will be even more difficult in the future."

"..."

At 10 o'clock in the morning on the 25th, Sun Ce came to the FedEx Arena to attend the team meeting. Only Sun Ce, Klay Thompson, Randolph, Paul George, Aldridge, and Carter attended the meeting. There were only six of them.

Gobert, Tony Allen, and Yi Jianlian should have attended. The first two had long contracts. Yi Jianlian exercised the player option for next season, but Gobert went back to Europe to play in the European Championship. Yi Jianlian also returned to China with Yao Ming after the championship parade to prepare for the Asian Basketball Championships from the end of August to the beginning of September.

Tony Allen went to treat his old injury. He had to deal with it after the season ended and could not drag it out.

The time for this Asian Championship was set five years ago from the end of September to the beginning of October. With the coordination of Yao Ming, NBA officials and FIBA, it was adjusted to the end of August to the beginning of September. The time of the new Basketball Asia Cup will also be changed in the future, because in recent years, there are more and more outstanding basketball players with Asian nationality, such as Clarkson from the Philippines, and a black player from Japan has shown the talent to enter the NBA.

It is mainly because this Basketball Asian Championship was held in Changsha that the coordination was completed so smoothly.

The happiest domestic fan this year is Yao Ming. When watching the two finals at the Grizzlies' home court, his face was squeezed together with laughter, and he stole a lot of shots with his expression.

Fortunately, it was not Crawford who enforced the finals, otherwise there might be a famous scene where fans were ejected for just smiling.

It is normal for Yao Ming to be happy. The stronger Sun Ce is, the better for him. In the 2016 and 2018 World Championships, Sun Ce and Yi Jianlian are the only ones who can really count on them. Yi Jianlian has reached his peak and his progress is unlikely to be too obvious. What can be improved is experience and the use of his own strength. Sun Ce is the key to how far the national team can go in the world-class competitions.

Yao Ming has won the world championship and is a little proud. His goal is to build a championship team while Sun Ce is a player and win the world championship again.

In the team meeting, Sun Ce mainly listened and understood the team's current ideas.

Sun Ce will not affect the team in terms of trades. If the draft pick can be raised, it will naturally be good. The two talented inside players, Aaron Gordon and Myles Turner, are too suitable to play with Randolph or Yi Jianlian.

Larry Sanders cannot be retained,

and the team has already obtained permission to contact other teams in advance, so the only way is to start with the draft. Of course, trades are also possible. If Amir Johnson is re-acquired or traded to an inside player like Ed Davis, it will of course be excellent.

A combat force that can be used directly, and an experienced veteran. Although it may be a bit of a loss in the future, the current improvement is likely to be more obvious than that of a rookie.

As for the future, Gobert has grown up, and with their outside trio and Aldridge, that is the future!

However, the two inside players that Sun Ce likes are both top ten picks. It is difficult for the Grizzlies to trade them, and the goal of trading draft picks is too clear. If it is a future draft pick, other teams are willing to trade it, but the draft picks that are about to be drafted are so clear in the prediction list. The Grizzlies propose to trade which draft pick, and other teams probably know the range of people that the Grizzlies are going to choose.

This is a troublesome problem for the Grizzlies.

As for the free agents and players from other teams that they want, Sun Ce gave the inside players Amir Johnson and Ed Davis, two high-quality role players. For the outside players, Aaron Brooks, Jeremy Lin, Andre Miller... Sun Ce is not picky. What they need is a distinctive point guard to play as a substitute, and they don’t need to be very good at organizing offense. The main thing is to have characteristics, whether it is speed, strength or singles.

In the team meeting, it was also mentioned that Aldridge will renew his contract with a starting salary of 19.2 million US dollars and a total of 85 million US dollars in 4 years, and Klay Thompson will renew his contract with a starting salary of 15.62 million US dollars and a total of 86 million US dollars in 5 years, both of which have player options.

This is to stabilize the morale of the team and show the core players that the team is willing to pay super high luxury taxes for the second consecutive year to defend the title.

After the team meeting, Sun Ce couldn't help but ask Aldridge why he wanted to opt out of the contract and renew it now when he could obviously renew the contract next year and get a bigger contract. Aldridge gave such an answer, and Sun Ce didn't know what to say.

Indeed, Aldridge's opting out of the contract renewal now is a great thing for their Grizzlies' operations in 2016.

If Aldridge exercises the player option and renews his contract immediately after entering the free market next summer, his salary will increase by at least 20%, which means that he will occupy at least 5 million US dollars more space. This is also thanks to the Grizzlies' veteran designation clause used in advance on him, Sun.

If Aldridge does not renew his contract immediately next summer after exercising his player option, he can keep his Bird Rights at 150% of the previous year's contract, which will occupy more space.

Although Aldridge's current 4-year 88 million contract will increase Aldridge's original salary from 17.4 million to 19.2 million next season, he has been reducing his salary every season since the 16-17 season.

Klay Thompson's salary is the market price, the highest salary under the non-overlord clause and non-team maximum salary clauses, which is the same as Paul George's contract last season.

Klay Thompson's salary was also reduced because he renewed his contract according to this season's salary cap, instead of waiting for the salary cap for next season to be released next month. However, the reduction is definitely not as much as Aldridge's in the next three years. Even if Aldridge opts out of the contract after the third year, the total reduction in two years is more than 10 million US dollars.

Sun Ce also learned one thing in the team meeting. Pierce has notified the team to opt out of the player option. He was originally called for this team meeting, but he said he couldn't come because of something.

This surprised Sun Ce. He thought Carter wanted to leave, but he didn't expect Carter to stay. Pierce might leave.

But Pierce has promised Aldridge to train together in the summer... But this does not affect Pierce's stay or leave. They have spent the most dreamy and crazy season in history together. There will be more or less teammates, and Pierce is still the kind of person who values ​​feelings.

…

Since there is plenty of time, the Grizzlies have made sufficient preparations for the draft or trade. Sun Ce is waiting for the team to decide whether to choose a player or trade up. This is estimated to be decided on the day of the draft. We will talk about it then.

At this time, Sun Ce has almost rested. Although he did not resume training immediately, he has to start preparing. He will go to business activities in early July, which will end on July 13, and then go to Los Angeles to start a two-month training. He must first contact training partners, rent a stadium, trainers and nutritionists, etc.

And these things… Sun Ce only needs to notify Bill Duffy, and he will work with Tim Hardaway and Stockton to get it done.

On June 27, the day before the draft, something that has nothing to do with the draft but has attracted much attention happened!

The Nets and Larry Sanders reached a verbal agreement of an average of US$15 million per year for 4 years, totaling US$60 million, and announced the amnesty of Joe Johnson's last year of US$120,000 contract; and will try to trade Deron Williams' last two years of contract totaling US$39 million. If it doesn't work, they will try to agree to buy out the contract, with each year's contract divided into US$5 million per year for multiple years.

After all these operations are completed, the Nets will reduce their salary expenditure by at least US$36 million next season... The amnesty money will definitely not be counted in the salary expenditure, that is, the team's new space.

Originally, some contracts of the Nets expired at the end of this season. All of a sudden, the Nets' expected total salary will plummet to just over US$50 million, and they can directly sign Larry Sanders!

When Sun Ce saw this news, he felt bad at the first time and called Chris Wallace. Sure enough, the Nets didn't want to give anything and just wanted to sign Larry Sanders directly.

For the Nets, this offer is quite unethical and may affect the potential future transactions between the two teams, but Chris Wallace said that he can accept this situation because the Nets will not have any draft picks to choose until 2018, all of which were taken away by the Celtics. Now a second-round pick is extremely important for the Nets.

In addition, the Nets also revealed their intention to sell Anthony to the Grizzlies, asking whether they are willing to trade Anthony with Aldridge or Randolph + Yi Jianlian, which the Grizzlies directly refused.

Sun Ce had to admit that the Nets' operation was very good this time. They lost a lot of money, but the new owner of the Nets is not short of money. This operation definitely gives the Nets better operating space, at least it is not a mess.

Once Anthony is sold, Lopez will be left to build the team, Larry Sanders will be signed, and with Ballmer's rich and powerful posture, a bunch of one-year contracts will be sent out this summer... This is the most ideal operation that Sun Ce can think of.

But how did the Nets' operation suddenly become better? Sun Ce felt that his speculation would not be the best operation, but at least it was not an operation that the Nets could come up with in recent years.

Sun Ce turned on the computer to check keywords and searched for the latest news about the Nets. Sure enough, Nets owner Ballmer fired former general manager Billy King without attracting much attention during the hot stage of the playoffs after the end of this season, and signed Sean Marx, a 39-year-old former Spurs player who could hardly play, as the new general manager of the Nets...

In addition to this, there is another news that has not been responded to. Ballmer moved from the Warriors to the Lakers star Jerry West as the chief consultant of the Nets!