The fourth and probably final part of the Tim Duncan/Zach Randolph contract saga

June 24th, 2014

Further to this, this and most recently this.

In the last update, I explained how Tim Duncan had had his contract modified, but Zach Randolph had not. And yet what I could not explain was why Tim Duncan had had his contract modified, but Zach Randolph had not. Was it because simply no one had noticed, or because of some other technicality I could not otherwise foresee that made the otherwise identical situations different? Couldn’t say.

Can now, though. It certainly wasn’t the former.

Apparently the reason why Duncan’s contract (which he has opted into, thus transitioning this whole endeavour from being an interesting aside into something with a palpable if not exactly massive affect on the NBA landscape) was modified, but Randolph’s was not, is because Randolph’s was “too old”.

This does not however mean that the fact it was signed under the 2005 CBA (and not the 2011 CBA like Duncan) played a part in this differentiation. Instead, I am told it instead merely means they took that as a legitimate reason for looking the other way, through avoiding the issue altogether, rather than having a technical reason for addressing it in this way. So, yeah.

Zach, if you’re out there, and you’re planning on opting in and signing an extension…..start chasing this up. There could be a million dollars in it for you.

(The very full details of what is being discussed here can be found at the previous links. Especially the first one.)