![]() ![]() In the far more likely event that Hardaway merely lived up to the value of the contract or underperformed relative to his salary, they’d be stuck with yet another bad contract that would not just weigh down their books, but also cut into the cap space they had for the 20 seasons, when they’d already planned to make a free agency splash.Īfter one season, those concerns about underperforming relative to the contract have already come to bear. In the absolutely best case scenario for the Knicks, the then-25-year-old Hardaway would produce at a high enough level over the first three years of the deal that he would make the easy decision opt out of the final season and hit the free agent market again at 27 years old, when he’d be eligible for a new deal with a starting salary equivalent to 30 percent of the salary cap - and then the Knicks would have to decide whether they wanted to pay him again. Even then, it was difficult to see how the contract would end up being a positive one for New York. The size of the deal was rationalized by team president Steve Mills as simply the going rate for a starting 2-guard. Per a league source, no team other than the Knicks offered Hardaway more than that amount last summer. (That the contract was offered while the Knicks had still yet to settle their front office transition after firing Phil Jackson just days before free agency opened made things all the stranger.) Before the Hawks even allowed the three-day matching period to expire, reports surfaced that the team had planned to offer him, at most, $48 million over four years. Teams generally have to overpay to ensure offer sheets do not get matched in restricted free agency, but rarely do they overpay by quite as much as New York. It had been just two years since the Knicks had successfully dumped Hardaway on the Atlanta Hawks and while Hardaway had turned himself back into an NBA-caliber player during his stint at Hawks University, it seemed fairly clear that he was merely a complementary piece - and one who has solely a one-way contributor at that. From all but the most die-hard of Knicks fans, the deal was met with swift and brutal criticism. to a four-year offer sheet with a maximum value of $71 million. A little more than a year ago, the New York Knicks signed Tim Hardaway Jr. ![]()
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