Michael Finley
Posted: Wed Jul 13, 2005 7:58 am
Rumour has it that Cuban is gonna let Finley go. Your thoughts Vonk? I thought he was a fan favourite down there.
He is...
it's tough. He has been our soul... our moral leader... the foundation of the organization for a decade. He's absolutely loved here. It might even be true that he's the most popular athlete in Dallas (no stand-out cowboys come to mind).
So... it'll be sad as hell to see him go. He deserved to retire with the team, after all he's done for us.
However... letting him go IS best for the team. He gets ALL of his remaining contract money up front... so it's, "see ya Mike, thanks a lot for all the help, good luck for the rest of your career... here is $51,000,000."
He had the worst year of his career (besides his rookie season) this year. A lot of that was due to injury... a lot was due to our 2/3 traffic jam. Simply put, we'll probably be better off by getting some young rebounder and starting Stackhouse.
There are already a bunch of teams lining up to snag him. Both the Denver and Phoenix newspapers have published articles praising Fin. D'antoni is supposed to be REALLY interested. I guess reuniting Nash and Finley would be appealing, not to mention a highly skilled veteran to come off the bench. PLUS, he'll come a lot cheaper now.
Anyway... it's rough. We'll hate to see him playing for anyone else. He deserves to retire here... but it's best for the team if we let him go. That's a LOT of salary cap savings... and you KNOW that Cuban isn't going to simply pocket the savings. He'll go right out and spend it on some new experiment.