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Biedrins: To extend, or not to extend? (Update: SFGate art.)

For much of the offseason I've been in the "re-sign everybody" camp: Baron, Barnes, Biedrins, Nellie, hell even Pietrus for a little while. Obviously, I liked last season's team, and my gut reaction is to keep them together.

But as we all know, Mullin's played a great game of hardball throughout the offseason. Nellie backed off of his demands, Barnes returned at a reasonable price, Sarunas was bought out for a little more than the price of his first-class plane ticket to Greece, and now Mullie is refusing to overpay for Baron's return. So far, so good. Mullin's converted me to a hardballer.

So what about Biedrins? It seems like a given that he's going to be re-signed, because lord knows we need him on this team. But at this point, after all of the other hard bargaining Mullin has done, why offer a lucrative extension to Biedrins now? If you're not going to offer an extension to your superstar and team leader, why offer one to Andris? He's going to be a restricted free agent next summer, so the Warriors can always match whatever offer sheets are put on the table, and surely Andris' free agent value is not going to surpass the $10mil/year we're all assuming Mullin's going to re-sign him for, even if he does improve by another leap/bound.

He could, of course, pull a Varejao/Pavlovic and just refuse to report to camp, if nobody offers him a decent contract and the qualifying offer of $3.6mil is all that's on the table. But unlike Cleveland, we should have decent cap room next summer, which would allow us to increase the offer if Andris refuses the qualifying.

So aside from "good will"--which nobody else has received from Mullin this offseason, without any negative consequences quite yet--what other reasons are there to offer Biedrins big money this offseason?

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[Moderator's Note, by OptionZero:]

According to Janny Hu, the Warriors are indeed looking to get a deal done this month:

Both Warriors vice president Chris Mullin and Bill Duffy, Biedrins' agent, anticipate talks to pick up as preseason moves along, and although neither is publicly offering any numbers, all signs point toward a deal getting done.

This FanPost is a submission from a member of the mighty Golden State of Mind community. While we're all here to throw up that W, these words do not necessarily reflect the views of the GSoM Crew. Still, chances are the preceding post is Unstoppable Baby!