The San Antonio Spurs re-signed Manu Ginobili on Thursday to a one-year, $14 million deal, ensuring that one of their franchise cornerstones would remain with the team. But apparently San Antonio was forced to bring Ginobili back at a price greater than they would have liked.
A report last week said that Ginobili had received a serious and lucrative offer from another team:
We reported last week Manu had received a very serious, lucrative offer from another club. According to Yahoo, it was the 76ers. #Spurs
— Tom Orsborn (@tom_orsborn) July 14, 2016
The Vertical’s Adrian Wojnarowski said Thursday that team was the Philadelphia 76ers.
Sources: 76ers force Spurs to more than triple their initial offer to re-sign Manu Ginobili. @WojVerticalNBA report. https://t.co/u3DhH8NW20
— The Vertical (@TheVertical) July 14, 2016
Ginobili’s option for 2016-2017 was for $2.9 million, but he opted out of that. If San Antonio more than tripled their initial offer to Ginobili in order to retain him, that means their initial offer to him was for less than $4.67 million. In fact, Woj reports their first offer was for around $3 million. Contrarily, the Sixers were said to be offering Ginobili a two-year deal, with around $16-17 million guaranteed in the first.
Perhaps the $3 million amount was just the Spurs’ opening offer and they didn’t expect to sign him for that price, but if it weren’t for the Sixers, they probably wouldn’t have had to pay him $14 million, either. The domino effect apparently was the Spurs could not afford to match Detroit’s offer sheet for center Boban Marjanovic.
