Richard Jefferson Opts Out

According to KSAT news Richard Jefferson has opted out of final year of his contract that would have paid him $15+ million. Follow the jump to become better informed on the topic than your average bear.

Spurs fans should be in turmoil because while he was shitty last season, opting out screws the Spurs over a bit because now they have no starting SF.

And now a word from Mike:

So I am sitting her at my local Chili’s and I get an ESPN alert talking about one Richard Jefferson opting out.

Question is, you crushed by the news?

The Spurs will likely be right around the projected cap figure for 2010-2011. This is good because the luxury tax hit will be much smaller this time around. Even if our calc’s. are a bit off and they are below the cap, they will not be more than the MLE (probably around $5.8 million) under; that means they will have a choice to either use the MLE in full or their cap space in full, BUT NOT BOTH. They will also get to use the LLE and minimum contracts to fill out their roster.

What does it all mean? Basically they are in the exact same position they were in yesterday. Only now they have a vacant spot at starting SF. They still have the MLE, LLE, and minimum contracts to use but they also have one more player (impact player at that) to sign.

It’s still possible the Spurs re-sign Jefferson. Unfortunately this might be the most ideal situation as the Spurs still own his Bird Rights. What that means is that they can sign him to whatever contract they like and it won’t effect their MLE or LLE. While we can all agree he was less than stellar last year, he might be the best option at SF for the Spurs’ current situation. That is unless they can convince someone like Rasual Butler to sign for the LLE. ***OR*** unless Splitter decides not to sign with the Spurs. And we can all agree that would suck more than Tom Cruise on Friday nights.