ESPN.com - Polynice heads list of those not thinking

ESPN.com: NBA

Tuesday, October 23, 2001
Polynice heads list of those not thinking

By Peter May
Special to ESPN.com

Dwight Manley has had some tough-sell clients over the years. We speak primarily of Dennis Rodman, who was as important to the three-peat Bulls of 1996-98 as he was potentially hazardous to almost everyone else.


	The Polynice era in Utah ended because Polynice thought he had more value.

In the end, Rodman found work and collected more championship jewelry. Manley's latest brush with the bizarre still has an uncertain ending with one qualifier: it won't be as good as it could have been or even should have been.

Manley represents Olden Polynice, who, in an act of equal parts insanity and naivete, decided to opt out of his contract with the Utah Jazz. Polynice would have been paid around $2.4 million this season, not big money by NBA standards, especially for starting centers. But it was guaranteed and Polynice threw it all away.

Olden isn't alone. Erick Strickland did the same thing. The Memphis Grizzlies owed him $2.6 million for the upcoming season, but got off the hook when Strickland decided he could do better on the open market. Like Polynice, he's still waiting for the phone to ring. Strickland's former teammate with the Grizzlies, Damon Jones, also opted out of a guaranteed deal of around $800,000, but managed to get a veteran's minimum deal (around $600,000) with the Rockets. He's not even assured of making the team, however.

All of which leads to the rather obvious question: what were these guys thinking when they chose to leave guaranteed money on the table with (a) no future employer lined up and (b) in an economic environment which has cramped the movement of even better players who simply had the misfortune of becoming free agents at the wrong time?

In the past, pre-luxury tax days, opting out of one's contract was done generally with the knowledge that the new deal would be sweeter and longer. Antonio Davis and Allan Houston both opted out of pretty lucrative arrangements -- and got even better ones from their own team. (In Houston's case, it was with no other serious pursuers.)


	Houston


	DeClrecq

Orlando's Andrew DeClercq opted out of the final year of his deal. He's not going to go to Springfield, Mass., anytime soon, but he played for a team which historically has taken care of its players (Bo Outlaw, Horace Grant) when they became free agents. The Magic re-signed DeClercq for three years at a substantial raise.

But Houston and Davis are All-Star level players and both knew they'd get lucrative deals. DeClercq is seen as an important cog in the Orlando wheel. Neither Utah nor Memphis had any such similar feelings for Polynice or Strickland. It would not be overstating things to envision both organizations hooping it up and high-fiving each other when they learned they'd have this unanticipated windfall.

One also would hope that an impressive resume would be necessary to take such a leap of faith in this brave, new NBA world. But Strickland has been in the league five years so he should know the drill. He's had one decent season in five. Polynice has been around since 1987, so he definitely should know the drill. Utah was his fifth NBA team. Then again, he's had some rather unpleasant civic experiences, which tend to go over poorly in any locale, but especially in Salt Lake City.

	“	He and Anthony Mason could be the poster children for this whole issue. Olden is a proven center in a league where there aren't many proven centers. He started 160 games the last two years. What more is he supposed to do? ”
		— Agent Dwight Manley on Polynice

Manley, however, sees this as a basketball issue (anyone and anything is probably tame compared to Rodman) and he wonders why Polynice is still unemployed.

"He and Anthony Mason could be the poster children for this whole issue," Manley said, referring to teams' reluctance to sign free agents for fear of passing over the as-yet-unknown luxury tax threshold. (This was said before the Bucks-Nuggets-Rockets deal which could land Mason in Milwaukee.) "Olden is a proven center in a league where there aren't many proven centers. He started 160 games the last two years. What more is he supposed to do?"

The Jazz, not surprisingly, were not heart-broken to see Polynice leave. They brought in the diplomatic alternative in John Amaechi and also had some money left over to pay John Stockton. Polynice did have a supporter in Karl Malone, but that was believed to be due to Malone's ongoing antipathy for Greg Ostertag.

But Polynice and Manley apparently made a critical error in judgment. They thought that since Polynice started ahead of Ostertag, played more minutes than Ostertag and scored more points than Ostertag, that maybe he should be paid as much as Ostertag. Or, even half as much as Ostertag, who makes close to $7 million. But the Jazz didn't see it that way. They saw a 36-year-old center who turns 37 next month and who had not made many allies on the team or coaching staff. Now, Polynice is looking at perhaps the veteran minimum of $1 million.

"The whole playing field has changed," Manley said. "Olden will get a job. He just wants to play."

So, too, does Strickland. He turns 28 next month and has had a serviceable NBA career until now. He played very well for the Mavericks in the 1999-2000 season, averaging 12.5 points and almost 30 minutes a game. But he was traded to the Knicks, already guard-heavy, who subsequently sent him to Grizzlies in the Othella Harrington deal.

With the Grizzlies, he appeared in just 22 games, shot 30 percent from the field, numbers that you wouldn't exactly want to have entering free agency. But he still had a decent wage to look forward to for the 2001-2002 season. At least he did until he decided he could do better. Now, like Polynice, he's probably looking at the veteran minimum as well. In his case, it would be a pay cut of almost $2 million.

Peter May, who covers the NBA for the Boston Globe, is a regular contributor to ESPN.com.