San Antonio Spurs Free Agency

Fans, Air Alamo Weigh In: Should Spurs Offer Zach LaVine the Max?

Zach LaVine
Zach LaVine / Stacy Revere/GettyImages
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San Antonio Spurs
Zach LaVine, Devin Vassell / Ronald Cortes/GettyImages

The Air Alamo Staff Weighs In

As I often do, I turned to the staff of Air Alamo writers to see how they feel on potentially offering Zach LaVine a payday over the next few months. Here's what some of them had to say:

Cal Durrett: "I wouldn't. I'd want the Spurs to stay the course on the rebuild rather than sign LaVine. They'd probably be better off in the long run too."

Roberto Araiza: "I also wouldn't. I'd vastly prefer the Spurs make an offer to Deandre Ayton if they're going to throw money around like that. Or just stay patient and sit on cap space.

Will Eudy: "I agree with the Ayton sentiment, I wouldn't sign LaVine for that much and would rather have Ayton."

While I think we'd probably all unanimously prefer Deandre Ayton over Zach LaVine given the team's needs, we weren't unanimous with this question. "I would make the offer. He’s the best free agent in the class," said writer Jonah Kubicek. "If the Spurs don’t overpay, someone else will, so it would be worth it. He can command the market."

As for myself, I tend to agree with the majority of our Twitter respondents and the staff. The injury history does scare me a little bit, and so does tying up so much money for so long -- something the Spurs haven't really done very much over their storied history.

Still, I feel like LaVine has plenty of All-Star basketball ahead of him, so it wouldn't be the end of the world for me if the Spurs went against the grain here.

In his offseason guide, Marks had plenty of reservations about Zach LaVine's injury history and was unsure about investing long-term in him with so much money. Still, he believes he'll be back with Chicago after some sort of agreement.

"I think he'll be back. It's just a matter of what the contract is going to be. Is it five years, four years? Is there some type of protection in there?"

"I would be stunned [if] on June 30th at 6:00 when you can start negotiating, he's the first guy off the board for five years, $212 million. I might fall off my chair if that's the case. If you said four for $180 [million] and the fourth year is not guaranteed, I'd say good value."

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As Marks concludes, it needs to be a win-win for both sides, and I tend to agree. The full max might be a little much to ask for from the Spurs, but I wouldn't be surprised if another team comes to the table with that.