From The Detroit News Sunday, January 15th 2006:

BEN WALLACE

Quote:

"I don't need anybody to negotiate for me. I just need somebody who can look over the contract and make sure everything is right... We had agreed that he would start charging me an hourly rate. He agreed to that, but then I was looking over the contract and I saw where it said, if I don't sign an extension or a maximum deal, it would go back to me paying him four percent. I didn't know if he was trying to pull a fast one on me or not, but I know he knows me a whole lot better than that.... When I asked him about it, he said he saw that a couple weeks ago and had been meaning to call me. I told him 'All you've got to do is admit you've made a mistake.' And he said. "You know I would never try to do something like that to you'. But I wasn't falling for that one"

What does this mean? IMO, He plans on taking less his market value and cutting the agents 3 or 4 percent will help him make up a little of that. I would expect a contract similar to our 3 highest paid players.

He is a team player and will do what's best for the team.

it doesn't sound like bad news. ben will probably get another good agent,

Good for Ben. That is what any good business man would have done in a similar situation. That Agent got a little greedy and Ben boxed him out.

No, this is definately good news though. This means it's all going to be Ben and Joe D talking contracts. Not Joe, Ben, and his agent. The agent would be the guy that is going to try to demand more money because he'll get a bigger cut. Agents always try to get in the players head to make it seem like they're worth more than the offer. This way, he just deals with the money himself and his lawyer looks it over after the deal is set.

Sounds to me like Ben and Joe have already talked and have an idea how it's going to go down.

exactly. all ben needs -- and wants i think from the quotes -- is a lawyer who is billed hourly -- to cross the t's and dot the i's.

There are about 250 certified player agents in a league that service 450 players. At any given moment there are about 100 active. On average, the normal contract commission in the NBA is 4%.

The player that actually started the run away from agents to lawyers was Grant Hill when he signed Lon Babby as an attorney by the hour, then cut his deal with Detroit for $45 million back in 1994.

So Wallace would be saving roughly $40,000 per each $1M he gets on a new deal.

As long as the lawyer doesn't dot the T's and cross the I's, Ben should be in good shape.

Ben and Joe should be able to work out a deal that will benefit both parties. Not having an agent (assuming he doesn't hire one) should only speed the process along.

What qualifications does it take to become a 'certified' player agent? There's a gig I'd like to try!

http://www.nbpa.com/agentapp.php


(Great job Roscoe. I tried downloading those 3 pdf files but it turned out Detteam had their lines tied up doing the same thing. Det, we want 1% of all your future earnings for
helping you make the career change.. G-

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Nov 13 LW Milan Lucic had an active night. He scored his first goal in eight games since his Oct. 25 hat trick and also pounded Michael Komisarek in a third-period fight. Lucic cut his hand in a fight with Michael Komisarek. "I'll be fine," he said. "(X-rays are) negative, but there's so many broken bones in there from before you can't really tell."

Didn't BBen have this problem with his first contract? JDs got everybody eating out of his hand!