Big Al Re-Signs

[Scott M]

Glad to hear on Friday that Big Al got signed up for 5 more years. The trade for KG would have been lopsided if they would have allowed Jefferson to leave after just a year.

Jefferson's agent wanted 80, and they settled on $65. And Al would have gotten $80 on the free agent market with the numbers he will put up this year. He's gonna get 32-38 minutes a night, and will average a double double at half Garnett's age. That puts Jefferson on a back loaded contract that tops out at $15 million, a bargain with much flexibility compared to Garnett's 20+ million a year.

I have to hand it to both Jefferson for telling his agent to take the deal and to the Minnesota Brass for getting it through before the 11 p.m. deadline last Friday. This is MN, nobody before KG ever wanted to play here. Al is showing a lot of maturity to say he wants the challenge of being the man, of replacing KG in sorts.

He will be a beast and this KG trade may end up being lopsided in favor of the Wolves.

[Scott K]

The wolves have a future, lots of young talent, and for once were collecting first round picks, and not giving them away. I wasnt heart broken as much as most people with the Garnet trade, I think the Wolves got a good deal for him. We had KG for many years and tried ( maybe not real hard ) to build a winning team around KG, and really never got it done, it was in the Wolves best interest in my opinion to try something new, get what they can out of trading KG, and rebuild. So far its looking good.

I dont think Al will replace KG himself, but he is real good, and can build apon that. We will come out a better team by trading KG, maybe not this year, but soon.

[maros91]

I seen parts of the wolves first 2 games and they were kind of fun to watch. Locking up big Al is key. I did see that Telfair turned down an extension.

[Scott M]

He had a nice quote last night regarding his recent contract extension after the Wolves' loss to Orlando.

[He signed a five year, $65 million extension last week. After signing that deal, Jefferson shocked the local media in attendance at the press conference when he said he didn't feel like he had proven himself to deserve the max contract just yet.

"I just felt like I had more work to do," Jefferson said again on Tuesday night. "Dwight Howard got max and I think he proved himself to get max because all three years he's been in the league, he's proved himself to be a max player. I just had a great year last year."

Jefferson is 22 and Howard will turn 22 in December.]

Howard had a 28/16 to Jefferson's 25/10. Jefferson needs to become a better rebounder to the degree that Howard is, but has shown large improvements in his post game. If he got to the free throw line like Howard did last night, he could have really distanced himself in points scored.

I was at this game last year and Howard had a 20/20 against KG.