It's the length of the contract that actually kills teams & that was addressed w/ the new bargain agreement (max. 5 yrs). With that said how much better is Harden compared to Marcus Thornton? .....maybe he's a better play-maker. Thus, 10 mill is reasonable for Harden (ala Ben Gordon) but not the max. With that said, of all the organizations you could think of the Spurs handed Air Gay 10mill/4yrs just because there weren't any decent SFs in the market.