Ben Gordon is playing with fire. In asking for as much as $13 million a season from the salary-cap-pressed Chicago Bulls, he's misconceiving his value, and after one more year with the Bulls he not only is unlikely to improve his value, but he probably won't even get the opportunity to prove he's a big money man in this league.
In providing Luol Deng with a contract comparable to other players of his age, talent, and experience, the Chicago Bulls proved that they are in fact willing to pay their players fair market value for their services. In talking to a variety of people around the league, HOOPSWORLD has heard the same thing over and over—that the negotiations with Deng were anything but hard-nosed. They were reportedly very professional and constantly moving forward. Things get done when both sides are on the same page.
Gordon and his camp, however, have not been on the same page as the Bulls all summer. They would like to see BG get more money than Deng since he is the highest scorer on the team. Unfortunately, looking at just that one statistic isn't going to get Gordon $80 million or more.
While he has been the team's highest scorer the last few years, he's put in his points inconsistently, and many would argue he's been most effective as a sixth man anyway. How many sixth men in the league make $13 million a season?
There's no question that Gordon is capable of dropping 30-35 points on any given night, but since his rookie season he's done the same thing: on the heels of a huge game he tends to disappear, often coming back with a 10 or 12-point performance to counter a previous night's scoring onslaught.
He might be the highest scorer on the team, but he was 39th in the league last year with 18.6 points a night. That's below Rudy Gay, Danny Granger, and Hedo Turkoglu. Guess how many of those guys even come close ten figure annual salaries... If he wants to see the kind of money that top scorers like Allen Iverson, Tracy McGrady, and Carmelo Anthony are getting, he's going to need to put up more points.
It's as simple as that—take the one-year offer from the Bulls, prove yourself, and then test unrestricted free agency next summer.
Sounds like a plan, right? The only problem is that it's not really as simple as that. To score more points Gordon is going to need to see more minutes. Last season Gordon played just under 32 minutes a game; compared to Iverson, Anthony, and McGrady, none of them averaged fewer than 36 a game.
One would assume that with another year of experience Gordon would have no problem getting minutes, but it's important to remember that the top pick in this year's draft is a guard who's going to get plenty of burn in Chicago's rotation this season. By the time you've satisfied Derrick Rose, Kirk Hinrich, Thabo Sefolosha, Larry Hughes, and Gordon, it's hard to see his minutes going up. If anything, he'll see his minutes—and therefore the rest of his numbers—decrease.
Just like anybody else on this planet, Gordon wants to feel appreciated at his job and he wants to make as much money as he possibly can. The only problem is that he doesn't seem to have the proper practical grasp on what his future brings if he doesn't concede a little bit of his demands in this negotiation process.
This extension is almost certainly not happening this summer, and Gordon likely will test the free agency waters again next summer after using this year to flaunt his talent. Will that come at the expense of the team? Will we see him taking more shots in fewer minutes? Or will he come out as a consummate professional and play whatever role the team asks of him?
Chicago will have a whole season to figure those things out, hopefully with better overall results than they had last season.
