Originally posted by Liathano

On the other, this is sort of like the situation with Richard Seymour in New England. I don't really see either team budging on the issue because that's just their team mentalities. Some teams are firm believers that if a player is still under contract, they should be obligated to fulfill that contract before demanding more money.
This is normally my stance, but it is COMMON practice to negotiate the new contract before the FINAL year of a contract starts.

If he was not in his final year, I'd think it was kinda crappy. But he did wait until he only had one year left, which is when almost all players work to re-negotiate their contract before ending up on the free market.