Goodbye, Juwan
Posted on October 27th, 2007 – 5:13 PMBy Jerry Zgoda
The Wolves worked Saturday to buy out the contract of veteran forward Juwan Howard, who did not attend the team’s public scrimmage at Target Center on Saturday evening.
Howard hugged his teammates goodbye after Friday’s exhibition finale at Target Center. The team chose to buy out the remaining two years of a $14.3 million contract rather than accept something back in a trade that it didn’t want.
His departure, barring any other transactions by Monday’s 5 p.m. roster deadline, seemingly gets the Wolves to the required 15-player limit, assuming they waive Wayne Simien as well. Simien was acquired in Wednesday’s trade with Miami, but was told not to come to Minnesota along with new Wolves Antoine Walker and Michael Doleac.
Once the buyout is finalized, Howard will be free to sign with any team. How long do you think it’ll take him to try to finally join Kevin Garnett in Boston?
15 Responses to "Goodbye, Juwan"
You got that right Jerry…Danny Ainge and Boston have used McHale and the T’Wolves like a Farm Team.
Couldn’t McHale get anything for Howard? Some Larry Bird signed Jerseys? Celtics play-off tickets? Anything? Maybe Ainge and the Celtic Brass are promising McHale a job in the front office when he finally leaves the Wolves.
Why are the Wolves not at least giving Wayne Simien a shot? Confusing
I would’ve liked to see Juwon packaged with one of the smaller-salary guys to get a contributing point guard like Earl Watson (who presumably would be available with both Luke Ridnour and Delonte West there), or even packaged with someone to get a Jason Terry (rumored as available with Devin Harris there and Barea coming on as legitimate).
It is confusing that Wayne Simien isn’t even being brought in, considering he’s a good player when healthy. I’d think he could be an acceptable backup PF.
Couldn’t Simien be shipped off to the D-league instead of just buying him out?
JMAN, no, Simien has already played two years in the NBA. And NBA teams can only send players down during their first two seasons. The Wolves actually asked the league to let them send Ndudi Ebi down a few years ago in his third season, and were denied.
But second, to keep him, we’d have to get rid of someone else. Even buying out Howard leaves us at 16 players, which is one over the limit. Sending someone to the D-League doesn’t remove them from your roster, and the limit is 15.
Within a couple days, Juwan will be wearing a Celtics jersey, unless he’ll be too upset that his pal KG beat him out for that #5 jersey.
I’m a bit sad to see Howard go. He clearly showed true class during his short stint as a Wolf. Not the Starbury “I showed a lot of class asking for a trade” kind either. I was at the London game against the Celtics when Juwan gave Mad Dog reason to worry for the title of best bench cheerleader. Juwan was standing up during half of the game cheering on his new puppy teammates while clapping his hands enthusiastically and smiling druing the whole game. Come to think of it, maybe he was just pulling for KG and auditioning for the Celts to sign him. Regardless, I was very impressed with how he conducted himself in his short stint with the team, and I wish him the best.
It’s interesting to note that despite their young age, this Wolves’ team is seemingly the most mature in terms of conduct. Can this off court maturity translate into faster growth on the floor? It will probably take a couple years at least, but it would serve as a major feel good story in this day and age of “me first” NBA player philosophy.
I’m hoping that the buyout was for a fraction of Howard’s salary. We could have approached him and said “We have a deal in place with a team that you don’t want to go to. If you don’t want us to send you there, accept this low buyout and you can go wherever you want.”
I think the Wolves should have bought out Doleac before they bought out Howard. Howard has some trade value. They should have waited a couple of weeks until a team has a major injury and then traded him for a guy on the last year of his salary and a 2nd round draft pick.
This would make too much sense though, which is probably why McHale didn’t do it.
jama, the issue is that there’s more to it than pure productivity. Of course Howard is still a better player than Doleac. But Howard was taking the classy route and not being the petulant, spoiled brat most players who want to be dealt are. And so the Wolves actually did a good thing and bought him out.
What contender–remember, he only wanted to go to a contender–has a player in the $7 million range in the last year of his deal who the contender wants to deal (and thus give up cap space for another season by taking Juwon) in order to get Juwon? And to give up a pick for the “favor”? I can think of one off-hand: Jason Williams. But even that is pushing it, leaving Miami very thin at lead guard (Smush and Chris Quinn?).
Being a GM is easy when you don’t actually have to live with the consequences, or even flesh out the realities.
Jama-I’m with you on that one…McHale buys out Howard, which is a favor to him and the Celtics, but does nothing good for the Wolves. If that is the way he wants to run it, why not buy out Walker and keep Howard? I know Walkers contract is huge, but, I’m just sick of the way McHale handled this with Howard.
I guess we can safely say “the dust has settled now”…YAWN!
LH
Why do the Wolves owe Howard anything? There are plenty of teams that have trade exemptions, look to one of them to reduce what comes back. I’m sick of hearing that the Wolves owe these players anything, what they owe them is a paycheck and they get one of those every week. What “veteran” leadership is left on this team? The Wolves keep saying that they need some veteran leadership to help with the young guys, well they just bought out the only veteran leadership that was worth anything.
If nothing else they could have just kept Juwan around for the next year and then trade him next off season when he would be on the last year of his contract. Like Slam-man said all they did was help Juwan and the Celtics or Cavs as I’m sure that is where Howard will end up. McHale needs to look out for what’s best for the Wolves not players or other teams.
What did they pay Howard? He was owed 14.3 million. That’s the crux of the story, and it was left out of the blog, and the article. Can someone try and act like a reporter and find out?
jama, the Wolves didn’t owe Howard anything. But there are still a few reasons to buy him out.
Remember, we need to deal with agents and players in the future, too. Some teams have the respect of most players and agents. Others don’t. And if buying out Howard means his agent is easier to deal with in the future, it’s not such a big price to pay. Especially–and this IS the biggest part–if we didn’t have a deal for him that we wanted. Which we obviously didn’t.
You’re right that we could have hung on to him for the season, and assuming his stance of “I’ll stay and be a good soldier if necessary” was true, I probably would have gone that route. But the buyout isn’t the worst move they ever made–not by far. At least it helps present our management as a reasonable (from agents’ and players’ points of view) front office.
MAC of the MIAC, all the stories so far have said they are working on finalizing a buyout. So while it will be the crux of the story, it probably hasn’t been finalized yet. It doesn’t have to be till tonight.
Frankly, it doesn’t really matter, though. It doesn’t affect the cap at all–the full amounts of buyouts remain on the cap for the duration of the contract. The money only matters in that Taylor has to cough it up, and I’m not terribly sympathetic about that.
It could effect the cap if they can agree to a significantly lower buyout than the contract he would have received. I doubt that happens but you never know since he didn’t play a game and asked to be traded. Buyouts are a win-win for the player because they get paid like a superstar for a couple years because they effectively have two veteran NBA salaries. Granted the second salary isn’t as lucrative as the first, but it’s extra money on top. Hudson will make 1.22 million with the Warriors on top of his buyout for two years. It’s amazing more agents of bench players/aging veterans don’t push for buyouts.
No, buyouts do not affect the cap at all. A contract is a contract, and remains on the cap as such. If you have a $14 million contract and buy it out for $10 million, the cap hit is $14 million.
