When is Gilbert going to sign his contract?

Ivan Carter has a great article up today about Gilbert’s upcoming free agency.  The free agency period starts tomorrow (July 1st) but as Carter mentions in the article, the flight for Gilbert’s scheduled trip to Asia leaves at 9 a.m. which doesn’t give Ernie Grunfeld much time to negotiate a deal before he leaves.  Sure, he could try to work something out in those first nine hours, but I can’t see how trying to set up negotiations at one in the morning would help him in negotiations.  After all, Gilbert is going to want to get one last Halo session in some sleep before he leaves.

So the chances are looking pretty slim that Gilbert will be signing a contract before he jets off to Asia.  The chances are even slimmer that he’ll sign a deal while he’s on his trip:

“Right now, I’m just sitting back waiting to see what is going to happen,” Arenas said. “I have a number in mind, a number I feel I’m worth and we’ll just have to see what they come with. I guess we’ll find out” tomorrow.

And if the sides don’t reach an agreement before he heads to China?

“Then it will have to wait until I get back,” Arenas said.

In other words, if you don’t hear anything about Gilbert signing a contract by 9:00 a.m. tomorrow morning, you’ll probably have to wait until mid-July before you hear anything more about contract negotiations, barring a change of heart from Gil, which isn’t entirely out of the question.

Who’s going to sign him and how much is his contract going to be worth?

No one can say for sure, but Ivan assures everyone that this won’t be a minor deal:

According to a league source familiar with the situation, Wizards President Ernie Grunfeld plans on soon offering Arenas a lucrative long-term contract, one that could cover up to six years and could be worth more than $100 million.

However, whether Grunfeld and the Wizards are willing to meet the three-time all star guard’s wish for a maximum-level contract — one that would cover six years and pay him over $124 million — remains unclear.

The issue of whether or not he gets the max could end up being the sticking point in negotiations.  Gilbert is listed as the best available unrestricted free agent available by ESPN, so his services will be in demand.  The problem is, outside of the Wizards, there aren’t a lot of teams with the cap space to make a run at Agent Zero:

Arenas has turned himself into a max player over the past few years and, despite recent knee troubles, will likely cash in on his newfound celebrity status. While he continues to maintain publicly that his first choice is to re-sign with Washington, it’s possible that, given his eccentricity, he could change his mind.

The biggest issue for Arenas is the same one that plagues all the free agents: Who else has the money to pay him? I can’t see the 76ers or Grizzlies spending the cash. The Clippers would have interest, but Arenas already spurned them once.

Ivan seems to reiterate those thoughts in his article:

One team that could potentially make a run at Arenas is the Philadelphia 76ers, but they already have a point guard in Andre Miller and likely will look to add a forward this summer with the $11 million they have available. [...]

The Los Angeles Clippers could target Arenas, who is from the Los Angeles area, but they just drafted a scoring guard in Eric Gordon and would have money to make a big offer to Arenas only if Corey Maggette and Elton Brand choose to opt out of the final seasons of their contracts.

Of the four teams (Washington, Memphis, Philadelphia, and the LA Clippers) that can give Gilbert the money he’s looking for, it only looks like two are really interested in making a run for him.  Memphis has a glut of point guards that they can build around and Philadelphia has a much greater need for inside presence that a guard.  The Clippers could make a run at Gilbert, but they’d have to let go of their two best players to make it happen.  I don’t think either side would find that appealing, for the Clippers, that’s probably too much to give away to get Gilbert, and Arenas probably isn’t interested in joining a team that wouldn’t be competitive.  So by process of elimination, that would seem to leave Washington as the only reasonable choice, unless he wants to take a significant pay cut.

Will his new beard help him in negotiations?

Of course!  How can you say not to a guy that looks like this?