What is the price you would be willing to pay for a 32-year-old Paul Millsap? The four-time NBA All-Star is set to hit the free agent market this summer joining a class potentially headlined by Chris Paul, Blake Griffin, Gordon Hayward, Stephen Curry and Kyle Lowry. On the next tier of top free agents you’ll find guys like Derrick Rose, Serge Ibaka, Otto Porter and the Atlanta Hawks star forward Paul Millsap.
Back in the summer of 2015, following a memorable 60 win season, Millsap signed a short two year deal with Atlanta to keep him on the team in hopes of making a push towards the NBA Finals and also aligned himself with the expiring contracts of Al Horford, Kyle Korver, and Jeff Teague. Here we are two years later, and Millsap is the only member of that franchise best starting lineup remaining.
With the Hawks turning the franchise over to Dennis Schroder and new signee Dwight Howard, Millsap’s time with the squad could be coming to an end, and the Hawks might be willing just to let him walk for nothing. It comes back the original question, how much would you pay to re-sign a 32-year-old Paul Millsap? It sounds like Atlanta won’t offer the max, according to new general manager Travis Schlenk.
Following comes from a Travis Schlenk interview with Chris Vivlamore of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
The Hawks want to keep Paul Millsap but there likely will not be a maximum contract offer made to the four-time All-Star power forward.
New general manager Travis Schlenk told to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that retaining Millsap remains a priority. However, he acknowledged that Millsap may receive better offers elsewhere as an unrestricted free agent next month.
“We are going to make Paul our best offer,” Schlenk said this week. “Will he have better offers? I don’t know. Do we want to keep Paul? Sure. I said last week, if you are building a team with all the things I’ve said, Paul checks all those boxes. He’s a hard-worker. He’s a good guy. He’s high-character. Skilled. He does all that stuff. We’d like to have him. The reality is, he might get better offers than we can make him.”
Schlenk said he has met twice with Millsap’s representation with a breakfast meeting just after his hire and a tour of the team’s soon-to-be completed practice facility last week.
Schlenk has said several times that his philosophy, developed as an assistant general manager with the Warriors, is to avoid bad contracts and accumulate players with tradeable deals. Schlenk cautioned that the skill of a player and not merely the terms of a deal determines a bad contract.
“I’ve also said a contract level depends on the player,” Schlenk said. “Certain players, whatever Steph Curry and Kevin Durant get this summer, that’s going to be a tradeable contract.”
“I’m focusing on the draft rather than Paul,” Schlenk said. “It’s (being discussed) in the room but, right now, No. 19 is the most important thing. I can tell you we want Paul. We want to keep him. He checks everything.”
