mrKnickShot wrote:don't understand why they even signed billups - trade bait? That turned out to be reaaly dumb - then again, I guess they could not forcast this amnesty gift
Not really- if we didn't pick up Billups option, then we would have bought him out for about $3mill (I think that was the guaranteed amount), which in turn would have been stuck on our salary cap for this season and would have been unmovable. That would have meant we couldn't have signed Chandler unless he was willing to take 3 mil less in the first year (very unlikely).
It seems daft on the surface, but picking up Billups at the end of last season was the smart thing to do- it gave us a PG, it gave us an expiring contract to trade if any deal came up over the course of the season, plus we couldn't have replaced him with an equal player if we had bought him out. We didn't know they'd be an amnesty provision, plus our plan was to get CP3 after this season- circumstances changed and we reacted- but at the end of the day picking up Billups final year was the smart thing to do.
