Going someplace? Not if you're a restricted free agent

Sasha Pavlovic, a starter for the Cavs in the Finals, is one of many restricted free agents who hasn't secured an offer sheet from another team. AP

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Restricted free agency, the way it typically plays out in the NBA, isn't so much a negotiating status as it is something George Carlin might mock.

For all practical purposes, it is an oxymoron, as inherently contradictory and borderline silly as jumbo shrimp, deafening silence, military intelligence and metal woods. The liberating and financially enriching opportunities suggested by the last two words in that phrase are all but slammed shut by the limitations imposed by the first.

And it's not merely some young pro basketball players -- think, in particular, Anderson Varejao, Sasha Pavlovic, Mickael Pietrus and Charlie Bell this summer -- and their agents who suffer. The league and its fans suffer, too.

Not sweet sorrow, Shakespeare. Plain ol' sorrow.

Restricted free agency itself has gotten rather restricted over the years. Back in the proverbial day, a team would owe a draft pick to a rival after signing away one of its players; that's how the Lakers ended up with Magic Johnson, using the pick they got from New Orleans after the Jazz signed Gail Goodrich. Now the original club's rights are limited to "first refusal'' -- that is, the ability to match its player's offer sheet and retain him. It applies only to those coming off the fourth year of their rookie-scale contracts, or players who have been in the league three seasons or fewer. Yet it's prohibitive enough to cast a pall over what ought to be a more vibrant offseason talent market.

The biggest problem with restricted free agency is the gentleman's agreement it inspires, born from what generally has been a futility in trying to sign away players covered by it.

As long as Team A knows that Team B is likely to match any offer it puts on the table for a valuable young guy, Team A would be wasting its time wooing the player and structuring a contract. It would be doing an opposing club's work for it, since the original team merely would have to duplicate the paperwork's clauses and provisions.

Even worse, it would be tying up its own free-agent flexibility; the collective bargaining agreement gives the original team up to seven days to match an offer sheet, during which the player must be carried on the bidding team's books. That waiting period used to be 15 days, but there really is no good reason that it should be more than, say, one. Except, that is, to chill the market.

Oh, every once in a while, a team will give an offer sheet anyway, either hoping that a rival will go cheap and refuse to match, or trying to demonstrate pro-activity to its own unimpressed fan base. For instance, when Minnesota signed Ricky Davis in 2002, it was a little of both: Kevin McHale hoped Cleveland would let Davis walk either because of the price or his reputation, and he was eager to placate Timberwolves fans and Kevin Garnett weary of six consecutive first-round playoff exits.

Even more rare, the mechanism can be used for a little gamesmanship, as when Miami extended an $84 million offer sheet to Clippers forward Elton Brand in 2003. The Heat structured the deal so that L.A. would tie up a lot of front-end money, then swooped in to sign fellow Clipper Lamar Odom as a consolation.

Mostly, though, teams just say no. A player unhappy with the bids he gets can accept his original team's qualifying offer, play for one season, then try again as an unrestricted free agent. Which is what so many of them -- too many of them, it says here -- end up doing.

"Restricted free agency is designed to give the teams a lot of leverage, and it works,'' said Mark Bartelstein, who lists Bell among his clients. "Free agency is such a fast-moving business that a team that's going to make the offer sheet is nervous to get its money tied up for a week. How many players might you lose out on in the meantime? So unless you're a team that is using cap room to sign a player, teams feel their chances of getting anyone are very slim.''

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