While it's widely been assumed that the Knicks would decline to match the Raptors' three-year, $19MM offer sheet for Landry Fields, that's not necessarily a given. Raptors president Bryan Colangelo told Toronto media today that there's a "50/50 chance" the Knicks match the Raps' offer to Fields (Twitter link via Ryan Wolstat of the Toronto Sun).
Colangelo may not be the most reliable source for information on the Knicks' free agent strategy, but Frank Isola of the New York Daily News tweets that the Knicks aren't concerned about the luxury tax, so "you can see them matching" Toronto's offer sheet. Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports agrees, noting that the Knicks have a three-year, "win-now" window (Twitter link). Marc Berman of the New York Post says the Knicks will likely take the full three-day window to make a decision (Twitter link).
If the Knicks were to match Toronto's offer sheet for Fields, New York's salary commitments for the 2014/15 season would become pretty alarming. If we assume a third-year salary of $8.5MM for Fields and $9.3MM for Jeremy Lin, the Knicks would be committing over $80MM to five players (Fields, Lin, Carmelo Anthony, Amare Stoudemire, and Tyson Chandler) that season.
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One can only hope.
As a raptor fan, I hope they match it…
He’s good, but not worth that much money
They most likely won’t but Dolan has to pay the Luxury Tax, not me. He wants to pay for fields then go ahead, can’t hurt a team already over the cap.
Probably a good idea to keep him around. He’s a younger player and the only way they can keep them around is by matching or resigning at the moment. Tough spot for NY.
why dont the raptors just withdraw their offer .
It will make them and Colangelo look bad.
it makes them look stupid by keeping it .. the suns withdrew their offer on brooks and lopez …
Those were qualifying offers not offer sheets. Two.Different.Things. Withdrawing offer sheets will give them a bad reputation with his agent and whoever else his agent represents
i would think they would rather look bad then be stuck with fields for 3 years .. just saying .. and besides everyone knew it was to try and get nash .. so they didnt get nash well here take him back lol
The fact that everyone knew the offer sheet was to block a Knicks-Nash deal makes it even worse. You can’t make it so apparent to everyone that you just think of Fields as a pawn. To ruin relations with an agent can be very damaging. Imagine a few years from now, the Raps want to sign some top free agent, but he is represented by Fields agent and he is not interested in negotiating with you. Then you look stupid. It’s one bad contract to absorb. It’s not the end of the world
Not only could you damage relationships with agents (others will take note too not just the one that you retract the contract offer on), but also keep in mind every year there is a time period where agreements can be come to but contracts cannot be signed, as a team if you don’t honor agreements made during that period you will never get players to negotiate with you during that time, which could be catastrophic if you consider the time frame is about the first week and a half of free agency.
I think that’s just wishful thinking on Colangelo’s part since he knows he screwed up badly.
LOL
Please don’t match this contract,let him go & pick up someone,Anyone besides him & save