Agent says Shannon Brown will opt out and be free agent

I'd love to get this kid. IMO, the Laker bench was 2 1/2 players long: Odom, Brown and Farmar. I'll give you one guess which player I think was the other player besides Odom. Here's a hint: it wasn't Jordan Farmar.

He got $2.2M last year. My guess is that he'll be getting closer to double that now. The Lakers have "Early Bird" rights on Brown, which means they could sign him for up to 5 years and for up to the MLE, which is about $5.8M. The Lakers are way-the-hell-and-gone over the salary cap which means that $4M to Brown would mean $8M to Buss and $5.8M would be $11.6M to Buss. Is Jerry Buss willing to pay $8M for Shannon Brown when he'll still want to use his MLE for a free agent, which will also cost him double? The Lakers didn't have a first round pick, so they won't be able to get out cheaply like that, and that makes the MLE even more valuable to them as far as filling out their bench which will be thinner with the possible losses of Farmar, Brown, Sasha and Morrison. Sasha and Morrison might not be big losses to the Lakers, but you still need a league minimum number of bodies, so you can't just aggregate the money from Sasha/Morrison/Farmar and spend it all on one player.

Let's ask the question: Would you rather have Tony Allen or Shannon Brown. To me, that's the choice, since they are similar players, filling similar roles.

If the Lakers have brain cell 1, they'll haul ass and sign this kid up on 7/1.

bob


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Shannon Brown got torched by whoever he was guarding. He certainly is a great athlete - but the Celtics would be better off with a more defensive minded guard off the bench (i.e. Tony Allen)

It would be something to watch during Training Camp watching these two fighting it out for first swingman off the bench.

But mrkleen09 I agree Shannon Brown is a great athlete, but what else can he do other than dunk the ball?

I would much rather have TA