A Power Play for Howard

“A Power Play for Howard”

Shamakio Royal, LaMonica Austin, Yolanda Kinard

MGT/445

June 24, 2013

Dr. Kenneth Idle

University of Phoenix

“A Power Play for Howard”

Every year, contracts offering up to hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars are presented to the teams and players during negotiations. The contract of a player expires, and the player may be traded for another player, or for intents, and purposes bought by another team. The value of a player very much depends on his playing power and his fan base. In the case of Juwan Howard, a former player for the Washington Bullets, both his playing power and fan base made him a wanted player by many teams when his contract with Washington expired in 1996. Negotiations became heated, mostly between Miami and Washington, until a mistake in the negotiation terms resulted in Howard signing with Washington for another term.

Summary

Juwan Howard was a professional basketball player in the National Basketball Association (NBA) and was looking to renegotiate his contract with his current team, the Washington Bullets; this would give Washington the first chance to make an offer. With Juwan consuming the option to renegotiate his contract after two years, he decided to do so. Washington's new general manager, Wes Unseld, made an original offer of $78.4 million dollars. This was not acceptable as the open market had determined his worth much higher and other teams joined in on the bidding. The Miami Heat and Washington Bullets (along with other teams) started bidding. Miami ultimately out bided the others, making Juwan’s original offer more than what he intentionally wanted; the offer was set at $100.8 million dollars. Howard accepted the contract offer, and it appeared that he was to become a player for the Miami Heat. Issues started to arise after the NBA was informed by Alonzo Mourning (another player with the Miami Heat) that he was also going to be signed into a $100 million dollar contract. This was very important...