Spurs legend inks multiyear deal with Charlotte
Fans of the Spurs will find their pizza options limited Friday, as the Domino’s is falling for San Antonio.
No … wait … that’s “the dominoes are falling,” as a massive Woj Bomb from ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski just hit Twitter, saving pizza in the process:
Tony Parker has agreed to a two-year, $10M deal with Charlotte, league source tells ESPN
— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) July 6, 2018
That’s right, San Antonio legend Tony Parker just joined the Good Stars Cheap bandwagon that has defined 2018 free agency, as the four-time NBA champion point guard signed a two-year, $10 million deal with the Charlotte Hornets.
Parker has been the wild card in the Spurs’ drama with Kawhi Leonard recently; Sporting News reported last week that the two players had a beef over Parker’s comments about his own injury compared to Leonard’s, insinuating that Leonard’s work ethic was not up to scratch and allegedly precipitating the two-time Defensive Player of the Year’s demands to be shipped out of town.
Well, now the tables are turned; the Spurs are indisputably Kawhi’s team now as Parker is gone.
This also has a follow-on effect as the Hornets have a solid backup for Kemba Walker, a guy whose name has been floated in trade rumors stretching back to last season. While neither guy is likely to be a long-term solution (Walker has never quite panned out as a playoff-quality player, and Parker is a veteran of 17 seasons who just turned 36 in May), in the short term it improves Charlotte’s backcourt.
Parker, meanwhile, is coming off a season where he only played 55 games, starting 21 and playing a bench role for the first time in his career.
He averaged just 19.5 minutes and 7.7 points per game, and he was for the second consecutive season a net negative value over replacement player guy, the NBA’s rough equivalent to baseball’s wins above replacement stat.
The veteran also posted a 12.7 player efficiency rating, the lowest since his rookie season and the second straight sub-league-average (15, by definition in the way the stat is calculated) number in that stat.
Put another way, if this was a move where the Spurs had to choose between a washed-up point guard who is a shadow of his former championship-leader self and a troubled All-Star who is one of the best defenders in the league, letting Parker walk for peanuts was a fine first step toward getting Leonard back in their good graces.
After all, Leonard is a seven-year veteran, just turned 27 on June 29, put up a 26.0 PER in the nine games he actually played in last season, and is the best defender in the league.
Plus, in a downright weird twist, Kawhi now apparently doesn’t want to be on the Lakers anymore since he doesn’t want to share the spotlight with LeBron James.
Kawhi could be “more receptive" to being traded to Clippers since LeBron joined Lakers, per @ShamsCharania https://t.co/p5p16p7pSY pic.twitter.com/a6q2MZQbuV
— Bleacher Report (@BleacherReport) July 3, 2018
So the Spurs got rid of the old guy who was a thorn in the side of their true superstar.
The Hornets got a guy for $2 million less than Boban Marjanovic gets paid to look goofy on the court for the Clippers.
And absolutely none of this makes the faintest lick of sense in terms of predictive value for who’s going to play where when the games resume in October.
All because of a little two-year, $10 million signing of a 36-year-old point guard in one of the downright weirdest free agent signing periods in basketball history.
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