Pitch-a-free-agent: Sending Paul Millsap our best offers
Free agency is when everything is possible. No matter how small your market is, all it takes is one sensational pitch. Because we’re helpful people here at The Step Back, we’re each picking teams and penning our best offers to the free agents we think those teams should chase. Here’s what we have for Paul Millsap.
Minnesota Timberwolves
Paul, remember those old “Want to get away?” Southwest Airline commercials? That’s what we can offer you at Minnesota, a chance to get away. Away from getting swept by LeBron James. Away from the monotony that is the Atlanta Hawks franchise. Away from Dwight Howard. Away from the perception of being undervalued.
Karl-Anthony Towns and Andrew Wiggins would easily become the two best players you have ever played alongside in your career. Hell, Zach LaVine might even top prime Deron Williams in the coming years. The talent is here for us to do something special in the near future.
We want you here, Paul. We believe in you, Paul. We need you, Paul.
PLEASE TAKE OUR MONEY, PAUL! PRETTY PLEASE!
Our Offer: MAXIMUM YEARS, MAXIMUM DOLLARS (that we can realistically offer).
— Brandon Jefferson (@Jefferson_Hoops)
Phoenix Suns
Paul, Paul, wait don’t hang up yet!
Are you there? Okay, good. Listen, I know we’re not the best team right now, but that’s why we need you! Here in Phoenix, we would like to bridge the gap between young and good sooner rather than later. We’ve got our young stud in Devin Booker, who’s a more exciting scorer than anybody in Atlanta is.
Plus, you’d get to serve as a mentor! Dragan Bender is so close to being a star player — he just needs somebody like you to help him get there! With Booker and Eric Bledsoe, we’ve got a sneaky-good pair of guards. You would make us solid in the forward department as well, and your passing could really help open up this offense.
We won 24 games last year, Paul. With you around, I bet we get at least 35. Imagine being part of that kind of epic turnaround!
Our Offer: Three years, max money.
— Ti Windisch (@TiWindisch)
Utah Jazz
Paul! Paul-y! Paul, baby! How’s it shakin’!
Look, first off: our bad. You know what I’m talking about. Summer of 2013, we had just spent the last seven years watching you outplay every big-budget power forward we threw on the roster, then we let you go to Atlanta for a price so incomprehensibly low that even neutral fans wanted to fire your agent for you. Like I said: our bad. We did the same thing with DeMarre Carroll, too, actually. You guys probably talked about it.
But, hey, good news! We pretty much haven’t made a team-building mistake since then. Seriously, check it out.
Paul, this locker room is stuffed to the gills with silent, cerebral dudes, just like last time. Only now, instead of Mehmet Okur and Enes Kanter leaving you with all that low-post dirty work, we’ve got Rudy Gobert all locked up. You know what that means? It’s throggles time for Mr. Millsap! We really should have listened to you when you said that that 3-point shot was coming along. Don’t know if I said this already, but: our bad.
Our offer: Three years, $108.3 million, third-year player option.
— Miles Wray (@mileswray)
San Antonio Spurs
Paul, we have already been speaking in the silent, telekinetic language of cerebral, hustling basketball players. We even believe that you exchanged a short, wordless nod with Kawhi during one of our games this year, which may already mean that you are committed to signing with us. Regardless, thank you for meeting us in the locker room of this San Antonio YMCA to talk in person. We usually don’t roll out the red carpet like this.
You already know that we invested in the wrong power forward. LaMarcus, yeah. Fortunately, the New York Knicks love that he is such a big name, and LaMarcus is going there in exchange for Justin Holliday, Mindaugas Kuzminskas and a 2021 first-round pick. We will use that pick on a Chilean or Icelandic or Mongolian teenager who will join the Spurs in 2028 and then help us win the 2032-2035 championships. We’ve thought it out. I digress.
I’m going to write a number on a piece of paper. If it makes you gasp, it will not be the good kind of gasp. We don’t really do negotiations, so take it, leave it, whatever.
Our offer: Four years, $100 million.
— Miles Wray (@mileswray)
Denver Nuggets
Mr. Millsap: We understand that this letter is no doubt buried among dozens of others in your mailbox, but we are sincerely grateful that you are reading this. We would be so grateful if you could send us your response in the self-addressed, stamped envelope also included here, and hopefully you will allow this to lead to a phone call. Sooner rather than later — fingers crossed!
Mr. Millsap, some exciting things are going on here in Denver. We almost made the playoffs last year, and we’ve pretty much got the cap sheet of a rebuilding team — only two other franchises have less money committed to next year than we do now. We’re putting serious offers in front of just about every A-list free agent you can think of. Admittedly, we haven’t heard back from anybody yet. But one of our self-addressed, stamped envelopes could be coming back to us any day now!
Here in Denver, we like to think of ourselves as a team of second-rounders. We’re the only team that’s been willing to give Will Barton the ball so he can fly around like the beautiful maniac he is. And, uh: Nikola Jokic — ever heard of him? Everybody else looked at Jokic and his 6-foot-10 body and 3-point shot and ingenious passing and prolific rebounding and position-warping defense and almost total lack of weaknesses and were like, “No thank you.” As the princes of the second round, though, we were like, “Yes, please!”
Next: The Warriors constructed two profoundly different greatest teams of all-time
We just love the second round! We’ve got more Jokic’s coming down the pipeline, too. Have you ever peeped a highlight reel from elegant stretch-5 Petr Cornelie from some half-lit gym in France? We are confident that Petr will, somehow, be right alongside you and the Joker in the upper echelon’s of ESPN’s Real Plus-Minus rankings in 2019. Plus, we’ve got picks 49 and 51 this year, and things are really going to pop off.
Our offer: Four years, $144.4 million, fourth-year player option.
— Miles Wray (@mileswray)