Felton heads into FA uncertain of the future
Raymond Felton
As the Lakers and the Celtics are battling one another for the NBA Title the big news in the National Basketball Association for me is a lot closer to Chapel Hill. Raymond Felton, ex national champion under head coach Roy Williams in 2005 and now the starting point guard for the Charlotte Bobcats, might have made the biggest mistake of his pro career. While the 6’1″ floor general (12.1 PPG ~ 5.6 APG ~ 1.5 SPG while starting 80 out of 82 games and playing 33.0 MPG) for another Tar Heel, head coach Larry Brown, had a good regular season he was nowhere to be found when it came to the playoffs, making the Magic’s Jameer Nelson do almost he wanted on both sides of the ball. Now, with the free agency coming up, with the ex Heel being an unrestricted free agent, Rod Higgins (the team’s GM) calls the situation “delicate”. So, where was the mistake Felton made? Last year he could have signed a long-term deal worth $6 million per year.
In an article by the News & Observer this sentence truly pops out at you…
Felton is an exceptional guy – accountable, competitive, a leader. The problem is he has not proven he’s an above-average NBA point guard. Yet, he seemingly expects to be paid like one.
Those are pretty harsh words for the fifth year point guard. But the problem might be even worst than all of this when it comes to the team, while it might help out the point guard out of Chapel Hill. The Bobcats right now have two choices: pay Felton (or should I say overpay Felton) or be at risk of starting next season without a true starting point guard. For those that think D.J. Augustin is going to be the solution I say this, if that had been the case don’t you think that the Felton situation would not be a real concern for Jordan’s team? Instead it is and right now MJ, Larry Brown and the rest of the front office might have a true problem when it comes to their floor general.
How many moves can the Bobcats truly make? The easiest one would be to pay Felton and see what happens. Might cost the team more money than they should be shelling out, something that with a tight payroll they might really want to avoid, but in the end they did get a good year from the Heel. Second find a way to sign the point guard and then trade him for another point guard, but that would be hard unless they first pay them the amount of money the other team would be willing to spend. Lastly would be rolling the dice with Augustin and hope to get something in the free agency market, the riskiest and the one that a team that got to the post season for the first time in the team history unlikely wants to make.
My guess would be that Felton will be starting for the same team that he started for last year. The key has to be that if the point guard gets the money he is looking for he has to step up in his fifth season in the NBA. For Raymond Felton, Larry Brown and Michael Jordan I hope that this is solved in a way that all three are happy with.
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