Ben Wallace leaving Pistons for Bulls
The Dirt:
A league source said Monday night that Wallace has told the Pistons he has accepted an offer from the Chicago Bulls.
While the offer was first thought to be a four-year, $52 million deal, a source close to the negotiations told ESPN.com that the deal is actually for four years and $60 million, with a starting salary of nearly $14 million a year.
A deal can’t become official until July 12, when the salary cap is set for the 2006-07 season and exact contract values can be computed.
“I appreciate everything Detroit did for me and my family,” Wallace told the Detroit News on Monday night. “They gave me an opportunity to make a name for myself and we had an opportunity to win a championship together.”
The Spin: Count on things getting ugly in the Motor City. Wallace was not too shy about voicing his displeasure over his lack of involvement in the Flip Saunders offense, and you can bet that had much more to do with his decision than a few million dollars. Pistons fans were already unhappy with Detroit’s collapse in the playoffs under Flip Saunders, and now it looks (whether it’s true or not) that Flip has driven their most beloved player - maybe ever and in any sport - out of town. On top of this, Detroit has to watch him walk and without getting anything in return for him. There are rumblings that Detroit might go after Kevin Garnett, but nothing suggests that is even feasible, much less likely. The best thing Detroit can hope for at this point is a player like Nazr Mohammad or Tyson Chandler, neither of whom bring anything close to the table what Wallace did. Another option would be to play Rasheed Wallace at center, which would be an interesting experiment seeing as how ‘Sheed prefers not to play low post. Count on Joe Dumars to fix this, but don’t count on this being anything close to the same team as they have been. This is a huge blow to Detroit. Ironicly this is pretty much what Darko Millicic was drafted for, and since he has been traded away that becomes even more of a disaster than it already has been. The only good news is that Detroit will shoot up about 20 spots in the team free throw percentage standings.
July 5th, 2006 at 1:06 pm
Great article in the Detroit Free Press by Michael Rosenberg about how this may not appear as it is. I think the mentality in Detroit was that if he didn’t sign, Dumars would do a sign-and-trade so they could at least get something for him. But that didn’t happen, and that’s the worst part of it, not that he left because that’s just too much money to pay for him, and in a couple years Chicago is going to find that out the hard way. This also does not address what Chicago needs - offense.