Hardwood Paroxysm Presents: NBA Free Agency Super-Overreactionizer

David West Really Likes Winning

By Tom Westerholm (@Tom_NBA) — Hardwood Paroxysm

I like to think of myself as a relatively progressive basketball thinker — the kind of person who values true-shooting percentage over effective field-goal percentage (eFG doesn’t even take free throws into account, what am I, a savage?) and who certainly values both TS-percentage and eFG over plain overall percentages. I appreciate what PER brings to the table while recognizing its limitations. I understand why certain basketball fans prefer the “hustle” and “grit” of college basketball to the “one-on-one” and “flashy” NBA.

I also believe that an NBA player should make as much money as he possibly can. Last season, David West earned $10 million, which sounds like a lot of money (mostly because it’s a lot of money), but it’s also very much a finite number. Houses cost money. Cars cost money. Insurance and food and clothes and kids cost money. Drum sets cost a ton of money (and apparently West is an excellent drummer). Things cost money, and money runs dry eventually.

For the life of me, though, I can’t help but love what West did in this free agency period, even though it goes against what most financial advisers would encourage an NBA player to do. West has made a lot of money — roughly $87.6 million in basketball salary, to be exact — and he’s playing for something else now. He turned down a $12.6 million player option with a team he really did not want to continue playing for and took a big pay cut to join the best-run organization in the NBA. West wants to win, and he wants to do it with a team he respects, not just the team that will pay him the highest possible salary.

That’s why the Spurs are such a perfect fit. Players don’t sign with the Spurs because they are flashy or because they need the most money — they sign with the Spurs because they want to win, and because they love playing basketball. San Antonio plays beautiful basketball not only stylistically, but also because they maximize the potential of their players. West will be 35 at the start of next season. He has seemingly been fully realized as a player already, but that’s what’s beautiful about the Spurs — when they signed Austin Daye, we all assumed Daye was about to become Kevin Durant (spoiler: He didn’t. We were wrong about that one). More often than not, San Antonio brings out the best in its players, and for a player like West who loves and studies the game, that would make the Spurs a destination worth a massive pay cut.

This isn’t really a scorching hot take, and maybe West’s reasoning is simpler than all of that. Maybe West just sees the Spurs as his best chance for a championship next season, and he decided to go ring chasing. But knowing what we know about David West, I doubt it’s that simple. I’m guessing West sees the Spurs as title contenders — to be sure — but also as a team that is both willing and able to make him the best basketball player he can be, even in his mid-30s. If you like basketball, you can’t help but love that.

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