Bishop of the Devil

The team had just sent away Lao Sa, and Richard was considering whether to talk to Rasheed or Lao Curry about contract renewal.

As a result, Zhang Weiping hurriedly walked into Richard's office.

"Richard, guess what?"

"Jordan just announced his retirement..."

"Good news! Absolutely good news, our championship is gone this year!" Zhang Weiping said with a smile on his face.

In Zhang Weiping's view, this is undoubtedly good news. After Jordan retires, the Bulls are still a piece of cake...

And besides the Bulls, who else in this league can stop the Trail Blazers from winning the championship? !

No, absolutely not!

Originally, Zhang Weiping predicted that Richard would be like him and was overjoyed after hearing the news, but Richard was quite calm.

There is no expression of joy at all on his face...

He was not surprised at all when Jordan retired!

Jordan announced his retirement at this time. In Richard's view, part of the reason was that he was threatening the league.

At least 30% of the current glory of the league should be attributed to Jordan!

When Jordan retired for the first time, it was Stern who personally invited him back. In addition, he also formulated a rule specifically for Jordan, which is commonly known as the "Jordan Regulations"...

Each team can designate one player with the highest salary, and the salary does not count against the salary cap.

This gives Jordan a chance to get an annual salary of 30 million. Otherwise, the previous salary cap total was only more than 20 million, how could Jordan get an annual salary of 30 million.

Later, Reggie Miller also benefited from this regulation and signed a contract with an annual salary of tens of millions with the Pacers, becoming the highest-paid player in the league besides Jordan.

Now that the season is over, negotiations between the NBA Management Committee and the Players Association are about to officially begin.

Jordan jumped out to announce his retirement at this time. It is impossible not to threaten the league...

But this time it is obviously impossible for Stern to give up the bottom line because of Jordan, because more than half of the teams in the league are currently in a state of loss...

Jordan, Reggie Miller, O'Neal and Garnett got off to a rather bad start, especially Garnett, who was almost the trigger for Stern's determination to issue a maximum salary.

In October 1997, before the start of last season's regular season, the Timberwolves and Garnett renewed their six-year, $126 million super contract in advance without completing their rookie contract.

The huge contract with an average of 21 million per year directly made Stern unable to sit still.

Garnett, a newcomer, got such a terrifying contract, but what about the other newcomers? Can they still take a look at a multi-million contract?

There will definitely be price gouging, players will get higher and higher salaries, and the team's losses will become more and more serious!

If things continue like this, the NBA league will be completely finished...

After all, the team is at a loss, how can the bosses continue to support it? You must know that for many team owners, their only industry is the team. If the team loses money, they will not be able to make ends meet. It is not a problem to persist for a year or two. After a long time, they will become completely useless...

Therefore, Stern has made up his mind to introduce a maximum salary this time.

…

"Why do you seem to have known about this in advance?" Zhang Weiping asked doubtfully.

Richard smiled and waved his hand: "I don't know, but I can roughly guess it. By the way, Lao Zhang, help me contact Dell. I'm going to meet him in the afternoon to talk about the contract extension first."

…

Richard originally wanted to talk to Rasheed and Curry about contract renewal after Jordan announced his retirement.

After all, Jordan has retired, and the Trail Blazers are the number one seed in the league to win the championship. At least judging from the current situation in the West, no team will pose much of a threat to the Trail Blazers.

On the other side of the East, they are the New York Knicks at best, and they pose no threat to the Trail Blazers.

Under such circumstances, the Trail Blazers have a great chance of winning the championship, which is also very beneficial to the players' contract renewal.

Especially for a veteran like Curry who has never won a championship in his career, he will probably be happy to stay in the Trail Blazers...

In the afternoon, Richard met Old Curry in the office.

"Old man, now it's time for us to talk about contract renewal." Richard said with a smile.

"I thought the Trail Blazers were going to give up on me and were looking for a new home in the free market..." Old Curry also laughed.

He really didn't expect that Richard would take the initiative to talk to him about contract renewal.

Last season, Curry played a lot of playing time, but in the season that just ended, due to the addition of Warrior Jackson, Curry's playing time further declined, and he was the player with the least playing time among the five Trail Blazers backcourts.

It can be said that whether there is old Curry or not does not have much impact on the strength of the Trail Blazers' backcourt. After all, the defense of old Curry is not very good. Compared with the defensive strength of the other four backcourts, it is at least inferior. A grade.

In this case, he felt that the Blazers should give up on him. After all, the Blazers have five draft picks in their hands. In the next draft, they can easily replace the old Curry by choosing any backcourt player. Location.

But now Richard actually took the initiative to talk to him about contract renewal, which made the old Curry feel a little excited.

If he can stay in the Trail Blazers, he naturally doesn't want to switch to other teams. Not to mention that staying in the Trail Blazers will have a high chance of winning the championship this season. Even the matter of moving has given Old Curry a headache...

If he changes a team, he has to move once. He is a family man and hopes that he can always be with his wife and children.

"You are the oldest player in our backcourt. Those young people still need your guidance, so we naturally have to find a way to keep you." Richard said with a smile.

"We won't talk about the contract amount today. You can talk to Orsi about it then."

Old Curry nodded, he was well aware of the Blazers' current predicament.

The dilemma of the Trail Blazers is different from other teams. Other teams are worried about not having good players in the team, while the Trail Blazers are worried about having too many strong players, and they will renew their contracts next year...

Even if Lao Sa leaves and frees up a lot of salary space for the Trail Blazers, they will still be stretched thin when it comes time to renew his contract next year.

At least Ben, O'Brien and Kobe have to renew their contracts. It is impossible for the Trail Blazers to swallow up all three of them.

Therefore, the Blazers can only be cautious this season and try not to sign long-term large contracts to prepare for next season.

Old Curry is well aware of these situations, and he knows very well that the Trail Blazers are unlikely to provide himself with too high a salary.

However, he didn't expect the salary to be too high. Looking at the veteran who was almost thirty-five years old and had always been a substitute, it was unrealistic to expect a high salary.