According to DallasBasketball.com, the Seattle SuperSonics are fed up with Rashard Lewis delaying his decision and trying to squeeze more money out of them and have set a Wednesday deadline for Lewis to accept their offer or else they’ll take it off the table. I’m not really sure whether to trust the article at this point, but there’s a more important question -- what am I hoping happens?

Back in January, I debated myself on another Lewis issue, then whether he was worth the max contract he seemingly asked for in an infamous Tacoma News-Tribune article. It amuses me to think that back then I was considered a bit of a Lewis critic because I eventually decided he wasn’t worth the max! Now, many Sonics fans are all too quick to argue he isn’t worth the Sonics’ offer of $60 million (or, if DallasBasketball.com is to be believed, now $64 million). What a difference eight months make.

More recently, I’ve gone around and around on whether the Sonics might not be better off using Lewis’ cap space next summer in a wide-open free agent market. At the start, the answer was obvious -- if I felt Lewis was worth $70 million (and I did), getting him for $60 million is good news indeed.

After the Vin Baker trade was completed, however, I crunched the numbers again and realized that re-signing Lewis would leave the Sonics likely unable to sign a free agent for the max next summer, even if they renounced Gary Payton. That gave me second thoughts on whether the team might not be better off in the long run without Lewis’ contract, even if I still didn’t believe he would be overpaid.

Also part of that thinking was the possibility that if they moved one of their either mid-salary players (Vitaly Potapenko, Calvin Booth, Jerome James, and, yes, Brent Barry) the Sonics would probably have the room to sign two players to lucrative deals, raising the enticing possibility of a Payton-Jason Kidd backcourt (while I don’t think friendship with Howard Schultz would be enough to bring Kidd to Seattle to replace Payton, joining him is another matter altogether). Trading Lewis and one of the aforementioned group might just be enough to make the Sonics a legitimate contender.

The more I thought about this possibility, however, I doubted that any team would be willing to take on the long-term salary of any of those players save perhaps Barry, and giving up both him and Lewis might not be such a good deal, even for Kidd. In addition, there are pressing questions about whether Payton would come back if the Sonics don’t extend him this summer.

So there was a second change of heart. A new plan from The Candid Corner -- do what it takes to bring back Lewis and then extend Payton and see what happens.

That one lasted what, a couple of weeks? Then there was the explosive article in the Portland Tribune on August 6 claiming that for Payton to agree to extend his contract would now take a six-year deal at the maximum, or, as I like to call it, financial suicide. Payton leaving, which was that article’s implication, has a significant impact on re-signing Lewis. If the Sonics go into next summer with Lewis and planning to replace Payton, they will have far less money to work with than many free agent competitors -- and there are not a lot of ‘intangible’ arguments that would convince free agents to come to the Puget Sound.

Also hurting Lewis’ case is the presence of alternatives. Within the past three weeks, the Sonics have reportedly contacted four free agent forwards who they might sign with their “million-dollar” exception. While I’m not sold on Houston’s Walt Williams or Scott Burrell and it would take a sign-and-trade to land New Orleans’ Lee Nailon, I think Washington’s Popeye Jones would be a better than adequate fill-in for Lewis next season. If Radmanovic can replace Lewis’ outside shooting and rebounding, Jones would be an upgrade on post defense and a huge upgrade in rebounding.

Then it’s off to free agency. While I’m not sure the Sonics will improve themselves in the short term even if they land one of the top free agents out there, they’re in a far better situation -- assuming Payton’s finished in Seattle, as Goodwin indicated he is -- without Lewis than with him, in which case they’ll only be fighting amongst the free agent scraps.

Rashard Lewis has packed a lot into his four-plus years in Seattle already. There were his tears on draft night, when he was left all alone in TNT’s ‘green room’ before the Sonics finally took him with the 32nd pick. After the lockout, Lewis showed up in Seattle and was almost immediately promoted to the starting lineup during the second week of the season, when then-coach Paul Westphal was doing his best to keep the team out of the playoffs. While Lewis was downright awful that year -- what else could have been expected from a 19-year-old rookie? -- he demonstrated the promise to be an All-Star while winning my over.

Then there was Lewis’ second season, when he and Ruben Patterson stepped up to fill Seattle’s void at small forward following the departure of veteran Detlef Schrempf. Who can forget his career-highs of 30 points and 12 rebounds against the Dallas Mavericks? Or how a player still too young to legally drunk broke into the Sonics’ starting lineup during the month of April and was cooler than the other side of the pillow as the Sonics almost upset the Jazz, averaging 15.4 points (second on the team) and 6.2 rebounds during the series.

That summer, I hoped on everything holy that Lewis would re-sign with the Sonics; the question was not if he would be an All-Star, but when. Maybe in hindsight, as I’ve speculated before, I started seeing things that weren’t actually there in Lewis’ game. Maybe all along it was evident that Lewis had some glaring flaws in his game and I didn’t want to believe them. When Lewis did come back, spurning the advances of the Toronto Raptors, everything seemed right with the Sonics.

The last two seasons have not brought stardom, and Lewis has certainly been in no position to make any All-Star teams. At the same time, however, he has become a consistent performer and displayed that he was able to carry over his bench performance to 36 minutes a night. While critics claim Lewis has never shown an ability to create his own offense, that simply is not the case. During the second half of the season, he was dramatically improved in this regard with Lewis showing a national audience his newfound ability in the fourth quarter of game two against San Antonio. Who knows what he might have done in game five had he not been injured.

You know what makes this the most difficult? Lewis is the best player the Sonics have developed since Payton. Now they might wave both goodbye?

In the end, however, this is about the head, not the heart. And the head says good luck in Dallas, Lewis.

Kevin Pelton has served as beat writer, columnist, editor, copy editor, and webmaster for SonicsCentral.com since its inception. He also writes a weekly column for Hoopsworld.com and is a student at the University of Washington in his spare time. The Candid Corner is updated every Monday. Kevin can be reached at kpelton@sonicscentral.com. All opinions expressed in this column are solely the views of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of other columnists or the SonicsCentral.com staff.

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