because they don't plan to keep him for more than a couple of appearances on the court, if they hadn't waived him that would have guaranteed his contract for the rest of the season.
because if they had kept him they would have had to guarantee his contract for the rest of the year. Now, they can play him two games, screw us, then cut him and only have to pay for the two games. First they screwed us by giving the Lakers Gasol, now they screw us again. Chris Wallace needs to be castrated.
Wow, to a ten-day deal. Pretty ballsy by Chris Wallace. This is basically a money-grab by Memphis. I hope Wallace enjoys being blackballed by most of the league after Paul Allen sues the crap out of Michael Heisley. I hope the $300k was worth it after the franchise is bankrupt a year from now.
The NBA needs to step in right now and end this nonsense. On the other hand, I now have a new NBA team to hate, and a new GM to spam with emails.
Yah, but what would be more proof that you're NOT doing it to screw over Portland? Signing him to a contract for the rest of the year. This just comes off as them post-poning that another what, 10 days? Don't teams have to sign players to a contract for the rest of the year after the 2nd 10 day contract? If they want to look like they're not doing it just to mess up the cap situation here, they should've just signed him in the first place. Now Memphis is calling Portlands bluff, or trying to force the Blazers hand. It could get ugly. Portland bites on Memphis trade suggestion, and then the Grizzlies waive Miles or they force Portland to "sue". The funny thing is, one theory has it that Portland and Memphis had a trade brewing between the two teams, and Portland said no. So Memphis said "ok, we'll sign Darius then" to which Portland said "pfft, go ahead". Then Memphis signed him, and Portland then wrote the email, to which Memphis said "go ahead, we'll re-sign him" thinking this could be their trump card in forcing Portland to trade certain players they don't want to trade (I would guess, Rudy). The funniest thing is, this would make sense if Darius was actually still a good player (or ever was). Right now, it's tantamount to Portland signing Jason Jennings. Someone who won't make a lick of difference on the court. Think about it, Darius has had, since Pre-Season, to get into game shape. And he still is gimpy and shitty.
Honestly, the Grizz are looking pretty sympathetic right now to the rest of the owners in the league. My guess is KP might have trouble getting personnel guys to return his calls for awhile.
Another thought: This is freaking fantastic in terms of drama. I love it, and clearly Portland was tipped that Memphis was going to pull this bush league tactic.
That's a whole helluva lot of speculation backed by nothing more than idle message board chatter ... not saying it's impossible, but pretty hard to prove -- unless KP and Tom Penn have been taping all of their conversations with Wallace?
My guess is that Memphis just pulled a stunt to screw a fellow owner out of almost $9 million dollars. I guess I don't see other owners lining up to hire him, especially when the Grizz declare bankruptcy a year from now.
Your "sympathetic" take is speculation as well. Mark Cuban already came out and said he would have done the exact same thing as the Blazers did in a similar circumstance. The reality is that the NBA/David Stern and their simplistic CBA has caused this situation.
Maybe, maybe not. He did just give a gift of a quarter-million dollars of Paul's money to each of the other owners. They might be feeling pretty good about Wallace right now. It might not be a lot of money, but at least they can tip the pool boy or something with it. barfo
Touche. I'll still go with my assumption that most of the owners have an ethical way of doing business.
I think the Lakers are responsible. They have a mysterious connection with the Grizz dating back to the days of Jerry West. Their gift to the Lakers last year was Pau Gasol. Their gift to the Lakers this year is effing Paul Allen.
