Wizards Sign Arenas….at a discount?

July 4, 2008

Gilbertology struck again yesterday as we hear that Gilbert Arenas will actually be signing with the Wizards for less than what he was offered. Agent Zero, apparently, will accept a 6-year deal for $111 million as opposed to the $124 million he was offered in order to give the Wizards more cap space.

“I’m basically giving back $16 million,” Arenas told the Washington Times. “This is in line with what I’ve been saying the whole time. You see players take max deals and they financially bind their teams. I don’t wanna be one of those players and three years down the road your team is strapped and can’t do anything about it.”

Just in case you don’t remember, Arenas said in his blog back in January, ” I want to get a six-year deal. I want to be a max player.” Well, he’s not going to be a max player if he’s signing at a discount, but what he’s doing makes a lot of sense and we wish more guys would do it.

Arenas also said in that same blog, “For me to look elsewhere, I want to go find a championship team who’s a championship contender. I’m going to have to take less money, but I’m willing to do that to win a ring.” So does Arenas think the Wizards are a championship contender? Well, they just re-signed Jamison and it looks like they’ll have pretty much the same team as last year which puts them in the playoffs but not much further. Thanks to Arenas Washington has some extra cash, but probably not enough to become a championship team. It’s more likely that Arenas decided he’d rather take a chance on being the star of a championship team rather than go play alongside Kobe or someone.

In any case, maybe some players will be willing to take less cash on occasion. It seems like it’ll work out for Arenas and the last we checked, Latrell Sprewell is still trying to feed his family.

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