James Harden rejects OKC Offer / *Traded* to Rockets

[Jack Brickman]

When your team needs another player who is better than you to be a title contender, I wouldn't consider you worth a max contract. IF your team needs another player on the same level, or a little worse, you're worth the max deal.

Now, situations lend themselves to people getting overpaid sometimes. I don't think Bosh is worth a max deal, but it wasn't a bad idea for Miami to sign him, but it would have been terrible if another team signed him as their top player. I actually don't think it would have been too bad of an idea for OKC to extend him(though I think their deal was too good to pass up), but Houston giving up the farm to pay him a max deal was, IMO, a really bad and desperate move by a normally analytic and objective guy in Morey.

I disagree with that logic because contracts are entirely determined by market value. Harden is one of the top two guards in the game, and pretty much any team that could afford him would pay him a max contract in a heartbeat because the NBA isn't exactly filled with guys who have skillsets like Harden's coupled with high efficiency numbers.

You also seem to be ignoring the idea that teams can have more than once max player. Miami, for example, has three. Oklahoma City has two, and could have had three if they would have amnestied Perkins' corpse and kept Harden.

I agree that, if Harden is your best player, you're probably not winning a title, but I also fail to see how that doesn't make him worth a max contract. He's still a top-30 player in the entire league and he's nowhere near his prime yet.

[Douglar]

Is it just me, or did Urkel become a Mulah when he grew up?