IMO, it all has to do with him getting paid early and getting his career in the NBA off right. He had opportunities to sign a two way deal this summer. He turned them down. He had opportunities to get drafted in the second round last year. He asked teams not to draft him because he didn't want to go to Europe, he wanted to try to make the NBA as an undrafted FA. He then signed a two-year deal with Dallas midseason and got his rookie year in. We traded for him, not under the guise of reading him but keeping him around to play if we had moved Anderson. We couldn't get Anderson traded. Cut him. Then he had multiple opportunities to sign two-way deals and he turns them down for a one-year ng deal with Indy. Indy then cuts him and keeps 37-y/o Damien Wilkens. That one is hard to explain. Uthoff is a better player than both Wilkens and Joe Young and Indy has around $7 Mimi of cap space. The only thing I can figure there is they didn't want to put Uthoff in the rotation and then lose him in free agency. I see no other explanation. Indy is in a strange situation. They were supposed to be bad. But they're actually good in the East. And they're sitting on three contracts of over $10 million per season non-guaranteed for next season. Small market team. So money is important. But.....with a couple pieces they could be dangerous in the East. And honestly, in my mind, Uthoff is a better player then even Thad Young, especially when you consider Oladipo coming into his own as a franchise cornerstone now. (Think about throwing Gordon and Anderson or Uthoff into their starting line-up alongside Oladipo, Bogdanovic, and Turner.) I'm not understanding why Indy doesn't give him KJ McDaniels money for three years. Surely he would take that and outperform it. So good deal for both sides. And the above or something similar is where I expect Uthoff winds up, whether it's Indy or somebody else. The only room I can figure out that Indy didn't keep him is because he witted fall under the Arenas provision if they had kept him and odds are they would have had to pay him even more next summer. I think Uthoff is caught in the CBA fee agent cracks right now. I'm sure there are several teams eyeing him but unwilling to take him on for a partial season knowing that if he produces he likely walks next summer. Uthoff wants to be paid like a first rounder at least (if not short circuit the system and make more). I think it's a matter of time before somebody signs him and I wished it would be us. Frankly I'd trade them Anderson and Bobby Brown right now for Al Jefferson and Darren Collison (if they would do the deal) and go ahead and sign Uthoff and plug him into our rotation, and have his non-bird rights to deal with next summer. Once he establishes himself and signs a long term deal, Uthoff will be an interesting case study for guys like @BimaThug to write about.
