Quote:
Originally posted by JNice!
 Hardly a sure bet, but a difference in the contract of 40 or 50 million sure would make it one.
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The numbers are a little misleading, because the Lakers deal has an extra year. Let's calculate both deals over 7 years (the Clippers can extend him later, if they want, so let's just pretend that they extend him by a year at some point for the sake of equalizing years).
Lakers can start Kobe Bryant out at $15.12 million and offer 12.5% raises (from his first year salary) every season, which would be $1.62 million raises.
Year 1: 15.12
Year 2: 16.74
Year 3: 18.36
Year 4: 19.98
Year 5: 21.60
Year 6: 23.22
Year 7: 24.84
Total: $139.86 million ($19.98 million / year average)
(I'm not sure what the discrepancy is between my figure and the article's figure, but it's not a large difference...we might be starting from different reports of Kobe's salary from last year. I got my figure from:
http://www.dfw.net/~patricia/misc/salaries04.txt )
Clippers can start Kobe Bryant out at $11.272 million and offer 10% raises (from his first year salary) every season, which would be (approximately) $1.13 million raises.
Year 1: 11.272
Year 2: 12.402
Year 3: 13.532
Year 4: 14.662
Year 5: 15.792
Year 6: 16.922
Year 7: 18.052
Total: $102.634 million ($14.662 million/year average)
(At year 6, my figure for the Clippers jibed nearly perfectly with the article's figure, incidentally.)
So, there's still a $37.2 million difference over the life of the contract or an approximate $5.3 million / year difference on average (the difference between the two offers is slightly less if the article's figure for the Lakers' deal is correct). Which is significant, but not nearly as sizable as the supposed $52 million difference that reports make it sound like.