Richard was thinking about whether to talk to Rashid or Curry about a contract extension.

As a result, Zhang Weiping hurriedly walked into Richard's office.

"Richard, guess what?"

"Jordan just announced his retirement ......"

"Good news! Absolutely good news, this year our championship is gone! Zhang Weiping's face was full of smiles.

In Zhang Weiping's view, this is undoubtedly good news, after Jordan retires, the Bulls are still a hairy ......

And who else in this league but the Bulls can stop their Trail Blazers from winning the championship?!

No, absolutely nothing!

Originally, Zhang Weiping predicted that Richard should be the same as him, and his face was full of joy after hearing the news, but Richard was quite calm.

There was no joy on his face at all......

He was not surprised at all by Jordan's retirement!

Jordan announced his retirement at this point in time, and in Richard's view, part of the reason was to threaten the league.

At least 30% of the glory of the league today should be attributed to Jordan!

When Jordan retired for the first time, it was Stern who personally invited him back, and he also formulated a rule specifically for Jordan, which is commonly known as the "Jordan Ordinance......

Each team can designate one of the highest paid players, and the salary does not count towards the salary cap.

This gave Jordan the opportunity to get an annual salary of 30 million, otherwise, the total salary cap was only more than 20 million before, how could Jordan get an annual salary of 30 million.

Later, Reggie Miller also benefited from this regulation and signed a contract with the Pacers with an annual salary of 10 million, becoming the highest-paid player in the league except for Jordan.

Now that the season is over, negotiations between the NBA Board of Governors and the players' union are about to begin in earnest.

Jordan jumped out at this point in time to announce his retirement, and it is impossible that there is no intention of threatening the league......

It's just that this time Stern is obviously impossible to give up the bottom line because of Jordan, because more than half of the league's teams are currently in a state of loss......

Jordan, Reggie Miller, O'Neal and Garnett had a pretty bad start, especially Garnett, who could almost be said to be the trigger for Stern's determination to introduce a salary cap.

In October 1997, just before the start of the regular season last season, the Timberwolves and Garnett signed a six-year, $126 million super contract extension before their rookie contract was completed.

The huge contract of 21 million per year, on average, directly made Stern unable to sit still.

Garnett got such a horrible contract for a rookie, but what about the other rookies? Millions of contracts, can they still look at it?

There will definitely be price gouging, the salaries of the players are getting higher and higher, and the team is losing more and more money!

In the long run, the NBA league is completely finished......

After all, the team is in a state of loss, how can the bosses support it? You must know that many team owners, their only industry is the team, if the team loses money, they will not be able to make ends meet, and it is not a problem to persist for a year or two, and if it is a long time, they will be completely cold......

Therefore, Stern has already made up his mind to introduce a maximum salary this time.

……

"You seem to know about this in advance?" Zhang Weiping asked suspiciously.

Richard smiled and waved his hand: "I don't know, but I can roughly guess it, by the way, Lao Zhang, you help me contact Dell, I am going to meet with him in the afternoon, and talk about the renewal of the contract first." ”

……

Originally, Richard was thinking about talking to Rashid and Curry Sr. about the contract extension after Jordan announced his retirement.

After all, Jordan has retired, and the Trail Blazers are the top seeds in the league to win the championship, and at least in the current situation, no team in the West will pose much of a threat to the Trail Blazers.

And the East, at best, is a New York Knicks, and they are even less of a threat to the Trail Blazers.

In this case, the chances of the Trail Blazers winning the championship are too great, which is also quite beneficial for the player's contract extension.

Especially a veteran like Curry Sr., a career untitled veteran, he is expected to be happy to stay with the Trail Blazers......

In the afternoon, Richard met Curry Sr. in his office.

"Old man, now it's time for us to talk about contract renewals." Richard said with a smile.

"I thought the Trail Blazers were going to give up on me and look for a home in the free market......" Curry Sr. laughed.

He really didn't expect Richard to take the initiative to talk to him about renewing his contract.

Last season, Curry played more minutes, and in the season just ended, because of the addition of Martial Saint Jackson, Curry Sr.'s playing time further declined, and he was the player with the least playing time in the backcourt of the five Trail Blazers.

It can be said that with or without the old Curry, in fact, it does not have much impact on the backcourt strength of the Trailblazers, after all, the defense of the old Curry is not very good, and it is at least a grade worse than the defensive strength of the other four backcourts.

In this case, he feels that the Trail Blazers should give up on themselves, after all, the Trail Blazers have five draft picks in their hands, and in the next draft, they can easily replace the position of Curry Sr. by selecting a random backcourt player.

But now Richard actually took the initiative to talk to him about a contract extension, which made the old Curry a little excited.

If he can stay with the Trail Blazers, he naturally doesn't want to switch to other teams, not to mention that staying in the Trail Blazers has a good chance of winning the championship this season, but the matter of moving also gives Old Curry a headache......

If you change a team, you have to move once, he is a family man, and he hopes that he can always be by his wife and children.

"You're the oldest player in our backline, and those young guys still need your guidance, so naturally we have to find a way to keep you." Richard said with a smile.

"Let's not talk about the contract amount today, you can talk to Orsie about this then."

Curry Sr. nodded, he was well aware of the Trail Blazers' current predicament.

The Trail Blazers' predicament is different from other teams, other teams are worried about the lack of good players in the team, while the Trail Blazers are worried about too many strong players, and they will renew their contracts next year......

Even if Lao Sa leaves and frees up a lot of salary space for the Trailblazers, when it comes time to renew his contract next year, he is still stretched.

At least Big Ben, Little Ao and Kobe Bryant want to renew their contracts, and the Trail Blazers can't swallow all three.

Therefore, this season, the Trail Blazers can only be cautious and try not to sign long-term large contracts as much as possible to prepare for next season.

Curry Sr. is well aware of these situations, and he knows very well that the Trail Blazers are unlikely to offer him too much salary.

However, he didn't expect a high salary, seeing that the veteran who is almost 35 years old and has always been a substitute, it is unrealistic to want a high salary.