UPDATE, 9:21 p.m.: It's official. 4 years, 50 million, as Stein originally reported. That's a lot of dough.
Juicy, juicy blog post from Ivan Carter about the Antawn Jamison negotiations. The important part is that the final figure should be 4 years and 48 million, which is closer to Marc Stein's report than Mike Jones'.
I'm waiting to fully comment until the final figure becomes official, but my first thought is that while we're talking about a lot of dough, it looks like we had no choice. According to the post, Philadelphia was prepared to offer their entire 11-million dollars of cap room in order to sign Jamison to man the power forward position. Eleven million seems like a ton of money to offer a 32-year old power forward who plays the same position as two of your best young prospects (Thaddeus Young and Marreese Speights), but I can see the Philly angle here. With the exception of Andre Miller, they're a young team, and Miller is entering the final year of his contract. They could use somebody who can score in the low post, and Jamison can do that despite his frame.
So basically, we were stuck. I never did an Antawn Jamison offseason primer (it was supposed to be written tonight), but the important point I was going to stress is that the threat of Jamison leaving is very real. Other than Arenas, he's probably the best of a mediocre free agent class, so any team with cap room was going to try to cash in. We're just lucky that nobody had more than 11 million dollars in cap room, because otherwise, someone probably would have bid more.
As it stands, 12 million a year is a lot to give to a 32-year old power forward, especially when you add the fourth year. I'd rather see Antawn get a three-year contract, to be honest, but it's not a complete disaster. It's a lot better than the alternative of losing him for nothing.
There's a ton more in that blog post that pertains more to Arenas, but I'm saving that for later tonight. For now, the important thing is that Antawn looks like he'll be back, albeit at a pretty steep price.