Bulls Were Only Going To Offer Gordon $6-7 Million?

July 7th, 2009 by Andrew Wamboldt

There was an interesting piece of information in Mike McGraw’s latest column, and that was that the Bulls were looking to lock Ben Gordon up for $6-7 million.

Chances are, the Bulls would have tried to lock up Gordon for $6 million-$7 million per season, then made other moves to get below the luxury tax.

This would have been ridiculous for the Bulls to try to do. Imagine the contract offer, “Hey Ben, great job last season. To reward you for your good season, we’re going to offer you $2-3 million less than we did last year!”

If Ben didn’t get the offer from the Pistons, he still would have been leaving the Bulls if what McGraw is saying is accurate. Using the NBA’s estimated $57.3 million cap number, an MLE deal would have netted Gordon $33.234 million over 5 years. The first 5 years on a 6 year deal, worth $7 million a year, would have totaled $33.544 million.

The Bulls couldn’t have possibly of thought that Gordon would stay in Chicago for an extra 300k, after the Bulls disrespect him, by significantly slashing his contract offer, despite him having a better season than the previous.

In addition to this, if you factor in state income tax, Gordon would have been making more money in states lacking a state income tax, such as Florida and Texas. Teams in those state include the Miami Heat, Orlando Magic, San Antonio Spurs, Dallas Mavericks, and the Houston Rockets. The Heat, Magic, and Spurs all would have been good situations for Gordon, in which he could probably start, while competing for a championship. (In Miami, if not this year, definitely the next, as Miami would still have enough cap space to offer a 2010 free agent the max).

If this was the Bulls plan, they never had any shot at keeping Gordon. If this was their plan, then re-signing Gordon was never any type of priority, as there was zero chance that he would sign such a deal.