The New Era of NBA Free Agency

When is $35 million greater than $36 million? Apparently, when there's a fifth season guaranteed to the $35 million dollar contract.

At least, that seems to be the message being sent from Lamar Odom's camp during the ongoing negotiations for his next NBA contract.

According to whichever report you want to believe, the Lakers reportedly offered Lamar Odom either a three-year deal in the neighborhood of $30 million dollars or a four-year deal worth a reported $36 million and then hastily pulled the offer off the table when Odom's camp refused to respond to the offer.

Now, reports say that the Miami Heat are the frontrunners in the Lamar Odom sweepstakes, offering their full mid-level exception, a five-year deal worth around $34 million, and that Odom is considering taking the Heat deal.

Welcome to the information age.

With 'round the clock updates on free agents available on ESPNEWS and rumors circulating the Internet at warp speed, NBA free agency as we once knew it is dead.

There's no way on earth a person like me should have any knowledge of NBA contract negotiations. I shouldn't know how many years Lamar Odom's agent wants on this next contract. I shouldn't know about two separate offers that the Lakers made, or that these offers are no longer on the table.

All I should know is the end result: "X" amount of dollars for "Y" amount of years. That's all the average sports fan should know about professional athletes salaries.

Unfortunately, I have an addiction to all things NBA, basic cable, and Internet access. Those three things have combined to make me feel like an expert when it comes to all things NBA free agency.

And it's because of fans like me, and everyone else who hangs on every free agent rumor or every give and take of the barter sessions between management and agents that finds its way into a newspaper, that free agency as we knew it is dead.

Sometime in the not so distant past, ESPN and other sports news outlets realized that they can cash in during the offseason by playing up the drama involved with players and teams trying to gain leverage during free agency. Sometime in the past few years what a player does in the offseason has become as important, if not more, than what he does between the lines.

Now each signing and re-signing has to play out like a mini soap opera, because letting private negotiations play out in private just doesn't make for good TV. The Lamar Odom fiasco is just the latest example.

The continual drama attached to trying to re-sign Lamar Odom is nothing new for the Lakers this offseason. Earlier in the free agency period the Lakers reportedly offered their full mid-level exception to swingman Trevor Ariza, but Ariza's agent was demanding a contract that would pay Ariza $7 million per season.

The Lakers didn't budge from their initial offer and Ariza signed with the Houston Rockets ... for the mid-level exception.

Essentially, Ariza passed on the opportunity to return and defend the NBA title with the team that gave him his first real opportunity to play in the league to play for a teamed destined for the lottery after losing Yao Ming to major foot surgery, all for the same exact amount of money.

Why would a player do this you ask? Because his agent told him to, that's why.

Ariza's agent, David Lee, was not happy that the Lakers offered fair market value for his client, so he took his client elsewhere.

What happened with Ariza has probably happened a hundred time times over the last ten years: a breakout star has a huge season and asks for an obscene amount of money initially; the team counters by offering fair market value; the agent shops his client around and realizes that no one is willing to offer what he is asking; the player re-signs with the original team for a reasonable price.

Only in the past every step of the negotiation process wasn't broadcast on special segments during ESPNEWS or scrolled across the BottomLine. The negotiations stayed where they belong, behind closed doors, and things eventually worked themselves out.

Now, thanks to nonstop coverage, every NBA free agency negotiation has become a very public game of he said/she said between agents and management.

Do you know whose side of the story is conspicuously missing from all these negotiations? The players. Don't they have any say in the matter when it comes to free agency?

Agents should be there to facilitate negotiations and hammer out the legal details of a contract with the team. Instead, I now know who David Lee and Jeff Schwartz are (Ariza and Odom's agents, respectively) because the players themselves are nowhere to be found during negotiations.

Lamar Odom said before free agency officially started that he loves the Laker organization and that they've been great to him even since he arrived in the Shaq deal. However, it's negotiation time, so that relationship with the team L.O. has spent five years cultivating means nothing because the Lakers aren't even dealing with L.O., they're dealing with Jeff Schwartz.

Jeff Schwartz doesn't care what kind of working relationship his client has with his next employer, just so long as said employer guarantees that fifth year.

Now, because of all the posturing for the media during this process, we have a potential lose-lose-lose situation on our hands. The Lakers as a team could lose out by having the third best player on their NBA title team leave town for South Beach. The fans of Los Angeles lose a folk hero in Lamar Odom. And Lamar himself could potentially lose out on a few million dollars.

And all this is happening not because the two sides reached a stalemate in negotiations, but because that stalemate went public.

Now, in order for Odom to return to the Lakers, either Dr. Buss will look soft by pulling his offer and then re-offering it to Odom down the road, or Jeff Schwartz looks like he was strong-armed by the Lakers into taking the initial offer when he wasn't able to make something better come along. Either way, if L.O. decides to play in L.A. next season, someone will have to lose this game of chicken.

Had this have all played out behind closed doors, I would say that there would be about an 80% chance that Odom will be in a Laker uniform on opening night next season getting his ring and watching that 15th banner get raised to the Staples Center rafters.

Now that one or both sides will have to swallow their pride and admit to John Q. Public that they didn't get what they wanted out of these negotiations, I'd put it at less than 50/50.

That's the reality of NBA free agency now. It's bad enough when money-hungry agents make outrageous contract demands, or conversely, when teams come out and low-ball a player initially. But it's even worse when the fans find out about it and start picking sides.

I hate that public perception of contract negotiations may play a role on where a key piece of a championship team plays next season. I hate that the media makes mountains out of molehills when it comes to this sort of stuff.

And most of all, I hate the fact that I got completely sucked into it.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go refresh the L.A. Times homepage and see if there are any new developments.

Check back at Sports Central every Monday for Scott Shepherd's weekly column. You can also follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/scottosports.