The Golden State Warriors and their starting center, Andrew Bogut, have officially begun contact negotiations. The 7-foot big man’s contract is due to expire after the 2013-2014 season and there are good chances Bogut gets re-signed by the Warriors. However, nothing is set yet.
As Bogut recently stated, he wants to stay with the team and he believes this is achievable. However, there are also other teams that have been trying to reach his agent, so this is far from a sealed deal.
Of course, the 28-year old veteran will have to agree on pay cut in order to stay at the team. He is currently earning $14.2 million and the last couple of seasons; he has been battling through injuries. In 2012-2013, his first season with the Golden State Warriors, Andrew Bogut appeared in just 32 games, all of them starts and played for 24.6 minutes on an average. He was no nearly as efficient and as productive as the Warriors expected. The 5.8 points, 7.7 rebounds and 1.7 blocks he averaged per game are way lower than his career averages. In the season before, he played only 12 games with the Milwaukee Bucks.
The Warriors of course would like to retain Bogut, however, they do have some requirements in order to offer him a tempting contract. One of the concessions Bogut will have to agree is to include some clauses based on the games he will play. This will secure in a way the team, as they fear Bogut will continue to experience health issues in the near future.
The veteran center said that he doesn’t have major objections about including game incentives in his new contract. However, there are some limits for him and he will not get past them, in regards to the terms of the contract he will sign.
An aspect of the relationship of the two sides, which could and most probably will affect the negotiation, is the Warriors’ efforts to sign Dwight Howard during the summer. In that scenario the team would have traded away Bogut and focus on achieving the perfect deal, so they could land the monster center. The deal eventually never happened, but Bogut hasn’t forgotten about it. He and his manager are expected to keep that as a strong secret weapon, in order to achieve a better deal with the Warriors.
The negotiations are expected to heat up during the next weeks, but the outcome should be come out rather soon, as neither side would like to get distracted as the 2013-2014 season starts. The Warriors will be contending for a championship this season and they will need every piece to work in perfect sync in order to achieve the best, Bogut included.
The latest word from both sides is that the negotiations are in a good level, with Bogut and the Warriors partially satisfied with what’s been thrown on the table as of now. The deal will most probably have three-year duration.
About The Author:
Ron Leyba is the lead editor of FantasyBasketballMoneyLeagues.com, and LastWordOnSports NBA Analyst. For more of his articles, follow his updates at Google+.
Follow our site @lastwordonsport and please take a moment to like our Facebook Page while you’re at it.
