There was no explosion, but there was an unmistakable edge, maybe even a threatening edge, in the words from Jayson Williams yesterday. The message was clear: Don’t try to go low ball in free-agent negotiations. And the threat was hardly veiled.
“I want to be here seven years,” Williams said after his workout at the Nets’ practice facility in East Rutherford. “Don’t come in trying to shake me down. They’ve paid people in the past. Now it’s my turn. I don’t want to get insulted. I’m not coming in saying, ‘I’m going to Chicago or Detroit’ or ‘I’m going to go somewhere else.’ I’m going to stay by my guns.
“I’m not going to hold them over a barrel. I want to stay in New Jersey,” continued Williams, who finished out a three-year, $7 million contract last season and figured to make a free-agent splash before the new collective bargaining agreement threw a few potential wrenches in the plan.
“They know that, that I want to stay. So let’s come in here and don’t insult me. Let’s get this done.”
The “stay-put” tact has been what Williams expects. But he admitted if he gets insulted, “You hate to think about it but you might have to go somewhere else.”
Williams’ attorney, Sal DiFazio, is expected to meet with the Nets brass to start negotiations today. Originally, talks were supposed to start yesterday but other commitments and “scheduling conflicts” popped up and the talks were pushed back. Williams’ nose may have gotten a bit out of joint. After all, he wants this done. But even if a new contract is hammered out, it cannot be signed until the CBA is formalized. The earliest figures to be next week.
Williams, 31 next month, repeatedly referred to the possibility of his being on the Olympic team in 2000, and flat out said what he is looking for: long terms at “fair market” prices.
“I want a seven-year deal for an All-Star center, someone who could be on the Olympic team and a guy who’s a good guy. I want what I deserve,” Williams said. “The bad thing about it is once you’re a good guy they get caught up with, ‘he’s wants to stay here.’ But if you’re a jerk, people go, ‘Oh, he’s going to leave’ then they say, ‘OK, we’ll give him the money.'”
Williams said he is confident the Nets will provide for him. He can receive a seven-year deal starting at $11 million and growing by 12 percent annually to just under $105 million. One opposing GM said the Nets must “watch out for the spite factor” factor and cited the Terry Mills case. Feeling low-balled, Mills fled Detroit and accepted a deal for less money in Miami.
Team president Michael Rowe and general manager John Nash will conduct the negotiations with DiFazio. Coach John Calipari indicated he will not get involved but expressed confidence his All-Star would be back playing center in the Meadowlands.
“I will not be involved,” Calipari said yesterday. “The way we’re operating, they’ll come to me with, ‘What kind of team do you want? Who do you want?’ So now it will be, ‘What kind of deal should we put together?’ I don’t believe I should be involved in that. I should tell them what I want my team to look like … I said it coming in, I don’t want to be the GM, I just want him to work for me. I don’t want it to be his team that I’m coaching.”
But when asked if he had any doubts about Williams playing somewhere other than New Jersey, Calipari said, “It would be hard for me to believe.”