That's why rams butt heads, my friend...that's why rams butt heads.

Low, what $ amount would be considered overpaying for Ben in your opinion?

I disagree with you on this one. Joe D's focus is always on winning championships.

That is correct. And he doesn't want to do what Celtics just did to be competitive for a couple of years and then fall into the oblivion tied by the huge contracts and aging players way past their prime.

Yeah, but the thing is I don't think Detroit could have gone higher without compromising themselves. I think they came with what they could do (and arguably, more than they may have wanted to pay anyway), and didn't have room to negotiate.

It's important to note, that at the end of the day, Ben could have decided to stay. He's the one who made the decision. He was the free agent.

You know I side with you on a lot of this, but in my mind, there is no way in hell Ben Wallace is worth $16 million a year. And it's not just Ben. I don't think most of these guys deserve deals worth over $13 mill a year. The market has bottomed out for FAs.

The thing about the Celts is, those contracts will be valuable salary dumps in trade at one point. If the Celts draft and develop, they could keep this train a rollin' for a while yet.

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Momma was queen of the mambo, Poppa was king of the congo, deep down in the jungle, I start banging my first bongo
Every monkey like to be, in my place instead of me, cause I'm the king of bongo baby, I'm the king of bongo bong
-Manu Chao

Imagine negotiating with your employer about how valuable your salary dump will be for the company in 5 years if they grossly over pay you. The salary cap does weird things to the economics I guess.

If he would have taken the deal it would have been about the same that Davison is paying for Mohamed and Dyess. Right now we have a 6mil/yr hit to the cap that pretty much sat for the 2nd half and post-season.

Seems comical now how we were supposed to be better with Nazir and then later better with Webber. Maybe this year we will be better with Johnson so there is some hope and that should not be dismissed that easily.

I'm not saying it's a bottomless well. I'm just saying they should have been willing to bump up to 13 or 13.5...

I think that would have gone a long way toward convincing him to stay. Besides, if you're already committed to 12, then you should be game enough to bite the proverbial bullet and give a little. 1 or 1.5 Mil more wouldn't have killed Davidson OR turned the Pistons into the Knicks overnight.

I just find it amazing that if Ben had taken the 12 Mil, nobody here would be complaining that he's overpaid, but a penny more, and it's public revolt around this place.

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I misspoke, or mistyped as the case may be. I should have said 3 Mil of space to work with. I never intended to say Ben was worth 16 Mil. However, if Det is offering 12 and CHI offers 15...meet him in the middle @ 13/13.5 and tell Saunders to get his crap together. That's all I'm saying.

I haven't seen any comments on this thread about the conflict between Flip and Big Ben.

Not taking sides one way or the other, but I have to think that this had something to do with Joe's offer and the possibility that Joe purposely underbid his offer to Big Ben because .....

Just a thought