What is Matthew Stafford’s market value? On Luka Doncic’s value, period – San Bernardino Sun

Jim Alexander: Breaking news! Tom Brady, minority owner of the Raiders – when he’s away from his day job with Fox, that is – supposedly hosted Matthew Stafford on a tour of the Las Vegas facilities during Stafford’s “What Am I Worth?” tour … oh, wait. Not so fast.

That was the first report. Brady’s agent, Don Yee, subsequently clarified that Stafford’s meeting with the Raiders was not a recruiting visit and Brady wasn’t conducting the tour. Although … according to CBS Sports, Brady “was in direct communication with Stafford’s camp, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Brady and Stafford recently ran into each other, unplanned, at a ski resort in Montana, according to the NFL Network Wednesday afternoon.”

In the old days of college basketball, when the NCAA actually had enforceable rules regarding recruiting, this was known as a “bump.” Purely accidentally and coincidentally, a coach or representative of the university’s interests would just happen to be in the same vicinity as a coveted player and greet him with an, “Oh, hi, didn’t expect to see you here.”

Right. Who accidentally runs into someone at a ski resort in Montana?

What this all means? This is the NFL’s Silly Season, and Stafford, who is still under contract to the Rams, restructured his contract to the team’s benefit last season to enable the club to get what it needed to get done under the cap and would like to make up some of that money this time. The Rams have agreed to allow Stafford to test the market and see what his actual worth at this point in his career, at age 37, would be.

(My estimate: High. Really high. He almost brought a team that started 1-4 back to the Super Bowl, because he was one pass completion away from overcoming the Eagles, in the snow in Philadelphia, in the NFC Divisional Round.)

Other reports have the New York Giants, Cleveland and Pittsburgh showing significant interest, which isn’t surprising. Meanwhile, there are hard deadlines coming in this saga, according to Sports Illustrated’s Albert Breer. Stafford is due a base salary of $23 million in 2025, and a $4 million roster bonus is due by March 14. The NFL’s “legal tampering period” – love that term – begins March 10, and the league business year officially begins March 12. So by then we almost certainly will have clarity.

My take? The Rams’ granting of permission for Stafford to test the market is a calculated gamble, but a gamble nonetheless. They need him; Sean McVay has admitted as much, and losing him would mean going back into the quarterback market, unless you believe Jimmy Garappolo is a worthy successor. (I don’t.)

Mirjam, what would you say the chances are that this ends well for the Rams?

Mirjam Swanson: Hmm. 50-50? Optimistically?

It does feel like a band you love on the verge of breaking up. All that beautiful music condemned, once again, by creative differences – er, financial differences. But maybe some creative, too? The Rams have let it be known they’re removing Stafford’s favorite collaborator, Cooper Kupp, from the ensemble, and it doesn’t seem like the quarterback is a fan.

My husband was in a rock band once and I’ll never forget something his bassist – shoutout Omar – joked when news of a buddy’s group dissolved: “It’s music, of course it ended badly.”

Seems the case quite often when players go taking hometown discounts like Stafford did in 2022 after the Rams won the Super Bowl. I guess when you’re 34 and rolling, the future seems bright, you dig the idea of running it all back and the vibes are so great you want to believe your team will do right by you down the road.

And then, three years later, you look up and you’re still a top-10 quarterback, but you’re not being paid like it, and you’d like to be. Sure, you’ve already earned close to $365 million, but there aren’t many more paydays ahead, so you’d like to wring as much compensation out of this incredibly physically taxing job as you can before you retire. And your wife would like you to, too – “I love the city of L.A.,” Kelly Stafford podcasted earlier this month. “With that being said, I love an adventure.”

But you’re 37 and even though you’re only (ahem) being paid that $27 million, you have a cap hit of nearly $50 million, and the Rams have never been a team that’s easily swayed. See: Last season’s stunning Ernest Jones IV trade, or back in the day, when they sent the great Eric Dickerson to the Colts after he protested about his inadequate pay. And now the Rams are inviting their star QB to go ahead, go out and see if he can get a better-paying deal.

Surely he can, as you noted.

But it will be with the Raiders or Giants or maybe Cleveland, teams that won’t be as talented or close to contending as the Rams are – with Stafford.

Both sides are better with each other. So hopefully, the team and the quarterback can compromise and come together for a couple more tours around the league.

But it’s sports, and I wouldn’t count on it to end harmoniously.

Jim: I remember that Dickerson trade – which was made at Halloween in 1987, seven years before the NFL salary cap was implemented – and the (no pun intended) money quote that came out of that situation, with reference to coach John Robinson: “Let him run 47 gap!” To interpret that another way, the guys on the field understand how hard these jobs are and how underpaid they really are, especially compared to their counterparts in other sports.

This is the downside – one of the downsides – of a salary cap. You want to win, you do everything you can to put together a championship caliber team, but at the end of the year keeping it together is almost impossible because of that artificial limitation, plus all of the arcane rules surrounding the cap.

Ask people around the LA Galaxy. It took them years to build back to where they could compete for, and win, a championship. And then MLS’ even more restrictive cap rules forced them to break up the group.

And yeah, I know, it’s supposedly all about parity (and, dating back to the days of Pete Rozelle, the perfect NFL season was always considered one where half the teams were just above .500 and the other half just below). But I’m not a fan, because the actual benefit of salary caps is (a) to keep money in the bank accounts of the owners rather than to distribute it to the guys on the field who take the risks, and (b) to enable those owners who aren’t as passionate about winning to keep salaries down and hide behind the cap.

I know. We’ve had this discussion all winter involving the Dodgers. If I were a fan, I’d want my team to be passionate about winning and aggressive about putting together a team to get it done. That’s been the Rams’ template under general manager Les Snead and his staff. Parity? How about this alternative: You get what you earn, and if you’re not bold enough to make the moves to try to win you shouldn’t be able to hide behind the cap. And if you are bold enough, you shouldn’t be unduly penalized by it.

OK. End of rant.

Mirjam: Heh, I doubt that’ll be the last we discuss it.

But I think about Kobe catching flack for not taking pay cuts like other aging stars were to help the Lakers improve their roster: “For me to sit here and say, ‘Oh yeah, I’m just going to take a huge pay cut.’ Nah, I’m going to try to get as much as I possibly can.”

Which … fair.

But it’s become a thing again in the current NBA, too, where teams can point to the second apron as an excuse for being reluctant to just hand out the max money that they previously were. Whether it’s rumors that Memphis might want to move on from its biggest star, Ja Morant, before his contract is up, or the Clippers pulling the plug on their “213 Era” by letting Paul George walk rather than retain him alongside Kawhi Leonard …

… or, yes, the Dallas Mavericks deciding Luka freakin’ Doncic wasn’t worth the maximum contract they’d owe him.

But hey. That trend – unfortunate for players, perhaps – is the Lakers’ gain.

You were just there for Doncic’s emotional reunion with his old Dallas mates the other night – what struck you about the new-Luka Lakers?

Jim: The “Thank you, Nico” chants, referenced in my column and directed at Dallas general manager Nico Harrison, caught me by surprise. But the vibe I took out of this first week or so of the Luka-LeBron combination is sort of a “good old days are back” feeling.

Having two scorer/facilitators on the floor will make everyone else better … especially when Luka’s new teammates get accustomed to the idea that the ball might be coming to them from unexpected angles. Watching the game against Dallas – and, for that matter, Luka’s first game against Utah – reminded me of Magic Johnson’s first days with the Lakers, when guys who weren’t watching were liable to get smacked in the side of the head by a pass they weren’t expecting.

Do I think, as our friend from the other newspaper opined, that we can pencil the Lakers in for a spot in the NBA Finals right now? Uh, not yet, but maybe I’m just overly cautious. Jaxson Hayes, the resident 7-footer, is going to have to step up defensively, which I believe he can. And I like the mix of talent on the roster a little better than before. We know what Austin Reaves is capable of, and Rui Hachimura seems to be a lot more assertive. And their team defense has improved dramatically, maybe because players aren’t waiting for other guys to do it. (Also, as ESPN’s Kendrick Perkins noted during their afternoon programming today, the Lakers seem to be very strategic in selectively allowing the 3-pointer, and it’s working.)

And just imagine how well their offense will work when they shoot better than 27.5 percent themselves from beyond the arc; they were 11 for 40 against Dallas and got away with it.

Mirjam: I don’t see why they wouldn’t contend for the NBA Finals – I’ve been thinking that since they made the trade. Even without the addition of another center, JJ Redick’s proving a great defensive schemer with a squad that’s obviously bought in, in a way that makes for good defense effort (because it is so much effort). Plus: Jarred Vanderbilt is back, Gabe Vincent is a proven pest on the perimeter, and they’ve got another former Dallas gamer, Dorian Finney-Smith, shoring up the D, too.