All grown up, Sonics forward poised for big payday

WHY: He is talking about his future

	Rashard Lewis is averaging better than 20 points for the third consecutive season. Terrence Vaccaro/NBAE via Getty Images

The list of max free agents this summer could include Detroit's Chauncey Billups, Seattle's Rashard Lewis and New Jersey's Vince Carter. Until recently, none of them had spoken in detail about their contract strategies.

But Billups recently began giving interviews to discuss the teams he might want to join should he leave the Pistons. Now Lewis, who plans to opt out of his contract, is following a similar course.

"Talking to Tony,'' the Sonics' forward says, referring to his new agent, Tony Dutt, "a lot of teams didn't know that I was going to be free this summer. They thought I was getting ready to sign the extension [with Seattle]. Tony was saying, 'You've got to put it in their ear so they can either make a run [at trading for him] or create some [cap] room.' You have to give the teams time enough to think about what they want to do, who they want to go after, and that's the reason why I'm putting it out there a little bit more that I will be a free agent this summer.''

Lewis says he hired Dutt after his previous agents, Kevin and Carl Poston, estimated that it would take the entire summer to secure a new contract for him. "It made me mad,'' he says, because it reminded him of 2002 when he re-signed with Seattle for $60 million over seven years. "That one took the whole summer. The other teams already did their work, and there was no more money left. So Seattle could pretty much give me what they wanted and I had to re-sign with them.''

Looking ahead to this summer, he says: "I felt like we had to get the job done early, so teams could give me offers. I felt that's the only way Seattle would even budge: Another team would give me an offer, and then Seattle would make their move. Because they're not going to make the first move.''

The Sonics considered offering Lewis a two-year, $25 million extension early this season, and my understanding is that he probably would have signed it at that time. But the Sonics didn't make the offer because new owner Clay Bennett was focusing on arena negotiations in Seattle.

"Rick [Sund, the Sonics' GM] was telling me that the owners were in the middle of buying the team,'' Lewis says, "but who knows the truth. That's what the owner could have been telling him to tell me, or that's what he could have been saying just to stall me out. I believe Rick, but at the same time I don't believe him because it's a business and they're going to do whatever they can to protect the organization and the team. That's his job and I respect him for that, and I'm just doing my job also.''

Lewis hired Dutt last month, and one week later the Sonics offered the two-year extension. "I knew I signed the right guy,'' says Lewis, who rejected their offer. "They were a little bit scared Tony would be able to shop me around and make things happen for me.''