I don't think this could be accurate. Denver would have been tampering, because Miles was under contract with the Blazers. Portland signed Miles to an extension, rather than risk him becoming a RFA. One of the many TERRIBLE decisions that Nash made. I don't know enough to say that Paul Allen was the one who forced him to do that. Ed O.
Paul Allen's resources are the constant in the equation. His resources were here before Kevin Pritchard and we all know where the organization was at that point, in the sewer. So it shouldn't be that difficult to understand why people place a lot of the credit on KP and his staff, since that is the variable that changed, and soon after the team got a lot better. But oh, I'm disagreeing with you, that must mean I have a man-crush on KP. He's my savior. He's perfect in every way.
Ed, we signed him to that extension September 1st. http://www.realgm.com/src_playerfile/37/darius_miles/ Miles was a restricted free agent, which means that we could match anything he signed with another team (Trent Hassell and Paul Millsap fell under that same rule). He went out on the market and Denver was the only team interested in him. The Nuggets never formally offered him the deal because Miles' agent made it clear it wasn't sufficient and Portland would simply match it. Darius and his agent then went and complained to PA that his value was crushed because we made it clear that we were going to match whatever was offered to him. PA then capitulated and gave him that $48MM deal.
I think something like Joel, Rudy, and maybe Bayless are on the block. Can anyone think of a team that needs a Center and a SG?
Allen didn't have a strong opinion about that draft, but Roy was McMillians top choice. Nate lobbied hard to get him, KP was really high on LaMarcus but more indifferent when it came to Roy.
The lakers starting center is as injury prone as Oden. Guess you can play gasol there with odom at the 4 but Gasol seems to really shine when he gets to play PF.
For posterity, here's a summary from this thread. Is it accurate? -------------- Miles was about to become a restricted free agent, which means that we could match anything he signed with another team. Nash told Miles to go out on the market and get an offer, which we would match. So his agent got a 6 year deal at $24M from Denver. The Nuggets never formally offered him the deal because Miles' agent made it clear he wouldn't accept it and besides, Portland would simply match it. Is that considered tampering, since Miles was under contract with the Blazers? Miles and his agent complained to Allen that his value was crushed because Allen had made it clear that he would match any offer. Allen capitulated and signed a $47-48M extension on Sept. 1, rather than risk him becoming a RFA. I don't recall Pritchard pushing that deal as DPP. In fact, I don't even know if Pritchard was here. The trade was Zach and Miles for Steve Francis and Malik Rose. Allen didn't want to trade Miles, so Pritchard changed Miles to Webster. Then Penn crafted a TPE to trade Jones and Dickau for Francis and Frye, getting the exception we used for Jones (to get Rudy's pick from the penny-pinching Suns, who didn't want just the $3M). The idea was that since Miles would come off the salary cap, the team should medically retire him instead of trading him. Trading him would have gotten a worse contract and not fixed our cap issue. For this, Penn was promoted from Consultant to Asst. GM. Malik Rose's contract ended 1 year before Miles. That extra year didn't matter to New York because they had a bunch of contracts running until Summer 2010. But the Blazers would have benefited from the extra cap space in 2009. Getting medical cap relief isn’t easy, so instead of gambling on that, we should have jettisoned Miles in the deal. If you want to ship out talent and gain future cap flexibility, it needs to be all or nothing. Going half-assed with a cap clearing strategy caused us to miss benefits of MLE signing players for multiple off-seasons and expiring contract trades. When Miles played for Memphis in 2008-09, it cost Allen $27M. That was $9M a year for the final 2 year's of Miles' contract, plus a 100% luxury tax match for the 1st year. If we'd kept Miles until after the 2009 playoffs, no team could have poached him to play 10 games and messed with our cap space. If Memphis had not played him until 2009-10, it would've gone on 2009-10's luxury tax, but not on the cap in Summer 2009, which no one would care about since we probably had already blown our ~$20M in cap space. Had the Blazers kept but not medically retired Miles, we would have had his cap space for Summer 2010 signings, since he comes off our books June 30th, 2010. At the 2010 draft Pritchard refrained from trades and non-Euro picks, to position the team with cap space for Hedo.
Quick/Canzano speculations are blended in with facts throughout this thread. Nothing but pot stirring points to PA having anything to do with DMiles's resigning except for okaying the deal that his management extended him. IMO there was considerable empathy among the local hacks for the new management following the contentious era of Trader Bob... mistakes couldn't be attributed to the new guys that they were championing. Along with several other posters still active here I was absolutely baffled by DM's contract when it was extended so I read everything possible trying to figure out why they gave him the farm when no one else had the capspace... I recall Darius himself being quoted as saying the deal was (paraphrasing) "much better then I was hoping for". So was it management or PA trumping the good common sense of John Nash who gave him that sweetheart deal Several Blazer presidents and GMs have spoken to how PA enjoys being involved in personnel discussions, but at the end of the day he allows them to make the decisions almost without exception. In specifically rebuking the validity of the NY trade that you recapped, KP claimed that on only one occasion has PA nixed a trade he wanted to do and this wasn't it. the one thing for certain is that we don't get the straight story. Certainly every sports team's management lies/embellishes and tells half-truths just as certainly as reporters pull BS from their backside because of deadlines and the need to generate controversy/readership, but Portland's local media has had a particularly lazy/sloppy/inaccurate track record. Yes Quick and Co have implied all sorts of innuendo, but it's been almost all been done without quotes from those involved and often been proven to be not only wrong but lacking basic reporting ethics (Coach Ivaroni). STOMP
Restricted free agents don't sign extensions, do they? They sign new contracts or qualifying offers. By the time they become RFAs it's too late to sign an extension, I thought. Ed O.
