| 25 August 2010
In 1989, Jon Koncak signed a 6 year, $13 million dollar contract with the Atlanta Hawks and instantly assured himself a place in professional basketball history. Koncak was coming off a year where he averaged just under 5 points per game, around 6 rebs per, in just over 20 minutes a game. However, his contract made him a highly compensated professional basketball player and also a lightning rod for scrutiny from the media, fans and other players in the league. See, in 1989, Jon Koncak signed a deal paying him more per year than Michael Jordan, Larry Bird or Magic Johnson were making. His new contract earned him a new nickname: Jon Contract.
So to honor the NBA, the collective bargaining process, and to help us get through the month of August (Please, no more coverage of Dez Bryant NOT carrying Roy Williams shoulder pads): The Real Shaq teams up with other bloguin geniuses to compile a list of the WORST contracts the NBA has had since the last lockout in 1999. And boy, let me tell you there are some good ones on here. Here's how it works: every week day in August one of the fabulous bloggers from around the Bloguin network will write about a bad contract and make their case for why it's one of the worst contracts the NBA has ever had.
If you have been following the RealShaq's series on the worst contracts of the last 10 years, you have seen some real head scratcher. Moves that make you scratch your head and say, "How was that a good idea?"
You have your Vin Bakers, Eddy Currys, Raef LaFrentzs and even a convincing argument that Kevin Garnett had a horrible deal for the NBA. I already detailed Adonal Foyle and the deal he received from Golden State.
Absent from this list is the true superstar who had a truly bad contract. Garnett deserved the offer he accepted, even though it may have ruined basketball as Mike Reynolds of TWolves Blog argues.
Magic fans are far too used to seeing Hill wearing a suit on the sideline.
Streeter Lecka/Getty Images/PicApp
Grant Hill certainly deserved the contract John Gabriel offered to him in the summer of 2000. He was one of the most dynamic players in the NBA. A media darling and advertiser's dream. He was popular, leading the league in All-Star voting a few times and even earning starter's spots when he was not playing. His stats backed everything up. He averaged 21.6 points per game and shot 47.6 percent in his first six years in the NBA with Detroit. For such a high usage player -- he was always somewhere in the upper 20%s.
The season before he was to become a free agent, with all the LeBron-like hype that came with it, he averaged a career-best 25.8 points, shot 48.9 percent from the floor and grabbed 6.6 rebounds per game. Hill was a do-everything guy.
Even in six years, he did more than enough to be considered one the Pistons' greatest players.
More than that, Hill was willing to put life and limb on the line. In his final season in Detroit, he played on a severely injured ankle in the Playoffs to try and help his team win. Hill never made it out of the first round with Detroit despite his best efforts -- and never reached the second round until this year with Phoenix.
Is this not exactly the type of player you want to offer a max contract?
Young. Dynamic. Good teammate. Willing to do anything to win. Makes his team better. Ample marketing opportunities. Supreme popularity in the post-Michael Jordan league.
Hill was the definition of a safe bet for a maximum contract.
Except for that bum ankle.
When Hill came to Orlando to show off his jersey and officially sign his contract, he crutched off the plane. He did not walk, he crutched. He rehabbed and worked his butt off to be ready for opening day. Hill felt the weight of the responsibility upon him and he needed to get back because he owed it to the Magic to make good on the contract he signed.
That rushing -- and a tragedy that forced Hill to switch trainers in the middle of his rehabilitation -- would characterize Hill's six-year tenure in Orlando.
Hill played all of four games his first year in Orlando. He played 14 the next. In his six years, Hill played in only 200 games (never more than 70) for about 41 percent of the Magic's games.
Set back after set back kept him from getting on the court consistently. Things never felt right for Hill and he never could reach the level he could while he was in Detroit.
First he had the failure to recover from his first ankle surgery. His bone had healed, but not healed together properly. All the while he played through, limping on a broken ankle and trying to show his new team what he could do.
Then he had screws placed in his ankle to try and fuse the bones together. That did not work. Then a third surgery that almost took his life because of a staph infection came. Then more problems and more problems and more problems.
By the time Hill had been with Orlando for five years, he was hardly the player he was supposed to be. He was relegated to coming off the bench, his minutes watched carefully. any nick taken with the deepest breath. Hill never got to join (or assist) Tracy McGrady in the postseason. His only playoff appearance with the team came in his final year -- his first completely healthy season with the Magic -- when Orlando was unceremoniously swept out of the playoffs by Detroit.
Poetic.
There was no fault in giving the contract. But the performance of that contract made Hill's one of the most debilitating in the NBA's history.
What made it worse was the good quality Hill had in trying to come back. The NBA never granted the Magic an injury exception to the salary cap. The league -- and probably the team and Hill -- thought the two-time All Star starter with the Magic was close to recovering from his injury. It handicapped Orlando greatly.
While Tracy McGrady was blossoming into one of the league's premier superstars, Hill was the albatross around Orlando's neck. It forced Orlando to continually spend its mid-level exception on guys who were expected to perform much better than they could. Did anyone honestly think Juwan Howard would be a viable center -- even in the Eastern Conference? Did anyone believe an aging Shawn Kemp or Patrick Ewing or Horace Grant could solve Orlando's woes in the middle? How about giving up Mike Miller before he was due his payday for Drew Gooden and Gordan Giricek?
The Magic simply could not afford to re-sign their top players before free agency. And with one of their biggest contracts producing virtually nothing for them, it hurt even more.
Orlando was a playoff team almost every year of Hill's contract -- the team missed only two of Hill's potential six postseasons with the team -- and could never get out of the first round despite McGrady's presence.
McGrady soured on the franchise since it could not get him any help. And you can argue T-Mac's body would soon too break down because of the immense scoring load he had to carry to get the team to the postseason every year. Hill was a ruined franchise player and quite possibly ruined another franchise player.
Not to say Hill is a bad guy. He never asked for any of this. He just wanted to play basketball. And maybe that was the mistake. You don't play on a broken ankle no matter the stakes and take your time to let it heal. But Hill felt an obligation to live up to his contract and Orlando wanted to see him do it. We were all enablers in this horrible deal.
You would be hard pressed to find something that seemed so right and deserved go so terribly wrong.
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
