After packing his bags playing for one season with the listless Los Angeles Lakers during the penultimate year of Kobe Bryant with the team, Jeremy Lin signed with the Charlotte Hornets to a two-year $4.3 million contract.
The amount is relatively peanuts compared to the $25 million three-year contract he got from the Houston Rockets after his short-lived but sensational stint playing for the New York Knicks during the 2011-12 NBA season.
He played the first two years of the multi-million dollar deal he got with the Rockets before the Lakers bought the remainder of his contract on its third and final year. Unfortunately, Jeremy Lin was a lost sheep under the system of former Lakers coach Byron Scott. He was not able to showcase his wares playing alongside Kobe Bryant too.
And in times when he was playing for the Lakers without Kobe Bryant, he was inconsistent, apparently unable to find his place in Scott’s old-school coaching methodologies.
So when he became a free agent after playing for one season with the Showtime franchise, it was off to the races and the free agency for Jeremy Lin. He actually got offers from eight different NBA teams during the offseason last year and he decided to sign with the Hornets and a lower pay at that at roughly $2.2 million per year.
However, his two-year contract with Charlotte has an opt-out clause after one year and now that the season is over and the Hornets have already been eliminated in the first round of the playoffs by the Miami Heat, the 27-year-old Harvard graduate is certainly entertaining the option to opt out of his contract.
Wants a better deal
It is not that Jeremy Lin wants to play for another NBA team again. In fact, he really wants to return to Charlotte for next year or the next years to come.
He shall be merely exercising the opt-out right in his contract with the Hornets because he obviously wants to be given a new and certainly more palatable deal, that should be more than $2.2 million he received this year.
It is likely that Michael Jordan, being the president of the Charlotte Hornets organization, would offer a higher salary to his alternate point guard but the team would probably want to tie up Lin for more than just one year.
The Hornets would surely want to forge a multiple-year deal with Lin, who seems likely to stay considering that he has found his rightful place in the team.
Does not want a change in scenery
In a recent interview, Lim admitted that he does not want another change of scenery. He said that he does not like moving every year because he does not like packing and unpacking boxes, reports USA Today.
He explained that the current NBA season has been the most fun he has had in his six years in the league. He added that being around a great group of guys and a coaching staff that really cares, he has learned so much about the game of basketball, particularly at the defensive end, where he was previously almost a nobody.
In fact, this NBA season, Jeremy Lin’s defensive rating of 100.4 was the highest it has ever been since his brief Linsanity days with the New York Knicks. His defensive efforts also enabled the Hornets to finish as the NBA’s ninth-ranked best defense.
Lin said that he definitely wants to play with the Hornets guys and Coach Steve Clifford. He explained that when he bounces around a lot the way he has been, there’s a lot about the Hornets that he can appreciate in terms of his experience which he did not have in previous situations.
Jeremy Lin is actually just one of the five key Hornets players who will become free agents this summer including Nicolas Batum, Al Jefferson, Courtney Lee, and Marvin Williams.
It is likely that the Hornets would work on re-signing all those five but if they lose one or two in the free agency, the team would move on and build in another direction.
However, many believe that Jeremy Lin would be one of the easiest among the five to convince to return to the Hornets fold for next season and even beyond.
You like Hornets but what did Hornets give you? Move out and any team would appreciate your skills and contribution.
2016 proved that Mchale and BScott were newspaper coaches…ck the news, coach the team