After turning down a 4 year, 60 million dollar offer Hawks SG Joe Johnson plans to test the open market in summer 2010. This was a very poor decision considering the economy and all of the free agent competition that he will face.
Next summer has been hyped to be the most important free agent season in recent history. LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh, Carlos Boozer, David Lee, Ray Allen, and now Joe Johnson will all be on the market. The problem is, the NBA is expected to lower the salary cap once again to somewhere around 53.4 million. Taking into consideration that Wade, LeBron, and Bosh will all get astronomically expensive contracts there will not be much money left out there for everyone else. Ray Allen will probably get a small one year deal, and Boozer will most likely get something like a 4 year, 50 million dollar deal packed with incentives.
So what does this mean for Johnson? It means that he made a mistake. The same exact mistake that Ben Gordon made, no matter how well Johnson plays this year he's still not going to see more than the 60 million which he has already turned down. This is strictly because the money is just not there, he will be forced to accept a deal that he is probably too good for. If any team gives him more than 55 million I'll be stunned. This is called the Ben Gordon syndrome. Like Gordon, Johnson thinks he's better than he is and thinks he should be payed like a superstar.
There are plenty of teams that could use a Joe Johnson. The only problem is that they are all already flirting with the luxury tax which is an absolute killer. Under the luxury tax, for every dollar a team is over, they must pay a dollar to the league. This doesn't sound like much but when you're talking about the 10-15 million dollar range the train of thought of an owner changes drastically.
