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Matthews: Jazz never made me an offer. I would have accepted less.

Borat said:
That's the whole point of negotiations. One party says one number, another party gives a counter offer, and you go back and fourth until you reach agreement (or impasse). In this case Wes asked 5-34 (i.e. midlevel MAX), and we never made ANY kind of counter offer, but told Wes to go elsewhere. What's in debate here?
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Well, if a guy starts at something double what you'd expect to pay, an impasse would happen immediately. I don't think any counter offers would be going anywhere, since I doubt KOC would do anything above 4/16 without seeing what the market would say. And there's no way Matthews would accept 4/16 if he believed he could get the MLE.
 
There is such a thing as being too far apart to negotiate. The Jazz obviously didn't think that max MLE was realistic and it was obviously substantially more than they were even going to consider offering. I mean, think about it. If you were interested in buying a car and after researching it and looking at your finances, you determined you wanted to pay around $15,000, but since you really like the car you may be willing to pay as much as $18,000. So you go in and start negotiating and the seller says that they really think it's worth $30,000. What room do you have to negotiate in that situation?
 
Why do you guys keep playing KOC's role in your imagination and keep thinking the best of his intentions and defending him? Maybe Matthews' agent had unofficially been contacted by Portland telling him they were going to make an offer in the neighborhood of MLE, maybe the 25 for 5 that was first reported. And the agent began postering with KOC. But instead of KOC making a reasonable offer, say 16-20 for 4 years / 15 for 3 years, which Matthews may have accepted, KOC just shuts the door and says okay, go get it. And what happens, same thing as with Millsap. But after signing AJ, no way we could match Matthews because we would have to pay double. That seems like the most reasonable scenario to me based on the stories we've heard.
 
write4u...

Do you really think a guy who does this for a living, and does it quite well mind you, had a free agent that he decided to sign last off season and opted to just treat him casually and hope he gets low balled elsewhere?

I am sure KOC had spoken ad nauseam with the Millers and had hammered out an absolute ceiling offer they would give him. When Matthews camp came in and said it's the full MLE or bust, KOC said go talk to some teams and then let us know.

What else is he supposed to do? Set a ceiling right away and tell Matthews to take it or leave it?
 
And the reason we think he had the best intentions is because we believe he probably wants to keep his job, and GM's do that by winning games with the most talent on the floor.
 
Making an offer is not setting a ceiling. It's what you call negotiating. KOC didn't do that. He shut the door and left himself vulnerable to the Blazers like he did with Millsap. I'm not so sure that is smart; that is taking a chance and getting burned, and doing it two years in a row. Fortunately, KOC has a lot of experience at this and was able to worm his way out of the pickle he created.
 
billyshelby said:
The Borat/aint War just took a new turn. Before it starts, I will say this: KOC should NOT have been negotiating with Wes prior to the FA period. There was no reason to bid against ourselves. The goal, as with every player, is to get them to sign for the least amount of money. You can't know what the least amount of money is if you don't subject yourself to the risk of the market. When the market came back with a number that was much higher than KOC valued Wes at, there wasn't anything to do.
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Yea too bad the Jazz didn't do this with Okur and AK. If Wes was the Jazz top priority, as KOC said, then they should have made him an offer. Sorry, but the Jazz screwed this up. Signing Raja doesn't make it all better either.
 
Easy to say this after the fact when it was reported they wanted the full MLE. And that is what they got.

The Jazz handled this correctly. Just like they are doing with Fess.
 
This is Matthews side of the story. KOC talks to Matthews agent about contracts and who knows what kind of info Matthews agent has been feeding him during this whole process.
 
Well, who do you believe then? Matthews said there was no offer. KOC never even tried to negotiate. He played hardball in an effort to get Matthews for the lowest possible price and he gets burned by Portland ... not once but twice (first with Millsap). Stubborn old coot, I'd say. Yeah, it sucks. I think it's bad all the way around. For Matthews and the Jazz. You need to think long term if you're a GM, in my opinion, if you want to build a championship team. Jazz have not been smart in the past -- the contracts of Tag and AK, for example -- and continue being dumb. Yeah, they made a good move with Deron, and so it SEEMED with Okur and Boozer, but then never thought what it would be like to play two big guys who can't play defense. That has been our achilles heal, and I blame on the FO's poor foresight.
 
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