The 17-year Kovalchuk deal got struck down as a salary-cap dodge by the NHL. The back years were at near-minimum salary so as to bring down the average cap number. The NHL seems to loaded with such front-loaded, back-impoverished deals. I recall that being an NFL trick as well; I think it was Bill Romanoski that signed a 10-year deal when he was 35 in order to spread out his salary cap hit from the signing bonus.
This might be too geeky even for capologists, but they might try some sort of present-value weighting, where the early years get full weight but the later years get a discounted part of the weight using something like 1.1-(n-1) from present value math (I'm using a 10% discount factor here for starters). Year one gets full value, year 2 gets 91%, year 3 gets 82% and so on. Thus, the end years only count about 5% as much as the first year.
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Pat Haden was a so-so announcer, but he seemed like a straight-shooter. He's the new USC AD and is looking to bring in former teammate JK McKay as his assistant; McKay has a brother who heads up the Falcons and a quote-machine dad who was the USC and later Tampa Bay football coach.
Haden's got his work cut out for him. Godspeed to him.
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We've got the B-list playing for the US on the national team heading for the World championships next month. Like the 2008 Olympic team, it seems a bit small, with a lot of wing players and not many low post players, but the angled lanes of international play seem to lend itself to 3-4 tweeners like this years Gerald Wallace and Kevin Durant; LeBron played power forward in the last Olympics and we bagged the gold.
TrueHoop posits the idea that the Spanish might be the favorites rather than the US. That wouldn't be a surprise, especially since this new crew will have to develop chemistry quickly and adapt to international rules. Even our B-team has more talent than anyone in the field, but talent alone isn't enough if the whistles are going the other way and they're draining threes out of their keisters.
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