OT: Darius Miles and Portland situation getting weirder and weirder

This whole situation is Portland's fault to begin with. They wanted to dump Miles because he was one of the Jailblazers, but couldn't get a trade for him, so they found a doctor who would tell them what they wanted to hear. Miles went along with it because he presumably got his money upfront. Miles' career obviously wasn't over. Miles should still be on Portland's roster, and should still be counting against their cap. I hope somebody picks up Miles and plays him the two games, because Portland deserves to get screwed for trying to pull a fast one.

 

Memphis already signed Miles. The deed is all but done.

I wonder if Portland will send another email to Memphis.

 

blazers should have just played miles until his damn knees tuned to dust and then sent him off in a wheelchair.

 

I don't think the nba was averse to Miles disappearing as opposed to periodically showing up in the news ticker for something embarrassing to the league.

 

The league blocked Portland's attempt to pick up Miles last week because they thought the blazers were going to try and stash him and not play him thereby not trigger the salary cap hit. Interesting that Memphis cutting him only to resign him after the guarantee contracts deadline was doing essentially the same thing on a much smaller scale, and only probably signed him in the first place to hit Portland's salary cap.

 

A genetic test could only determine disposition to the condition, not if Curry was unable to play. So IMHO they wanted as much or more say in shutting down Curry's career as PDX did Miles' career.

 

i wonder who? probably deron. i would doubt it is boozer or milsap, since they will have one less bidder this offseason.

 

I do think there's some interesting stuff to consider here. For one, it's possible Miles is going to suffer long-term damage to his knees by continuing to play. I wonder to what extent this outcome is more likely for him than the average player. For that matter I wonder what the likelihood is for the average NBA player. How much should a player risk his health? How responsible should a team be if it doesn't want to be party to the player risking his health?

 

Seems like PDX didn't want to be a party to having 18M back on their salary cap. Unclear if they gave a whit about Miles.

If Miles wants to play, it's his own choice. I don't see much gray there. He will probably still be in much better physically shape than your average retired NFL running back that had a lot of carries.

 

True enough. I don't think they give a whit about Miles, but just as a general principle I've never thought it made much sense to greatly penalize teams who actually do want to do the right thing. Or for that matter, are basically being penalized by a pretty random event (a guy getting hurt).

I guess the way I see it, if you get a doctor who's approved by both the league and the player's association to say a guy's toast, then he's at least damaged enough he ought to come off your cap in a year. If the player wants to go prove the doctor wrong, he's free to do so, but let the professional opinion determine the cap space. That'd at least eliminate all the nonsense that's gone on around Miles this year.

 

Hey Mike!

I'd agree....it's odd that PDX fans have been rooting against a player trying to come back from an injury. So your idea is pretty good. I'd rather then NBA just have some suckatude clause where a player in a long term contract can be cut by team and some % comes off the cap later.

 

Heh, I hope it could be called the suckitude clause. Come to think of it, just calling it the Darius Miles clause isn't far off.

The most amazing thing out of all of this is how it's turned Miles, who was pretty much universally regarded as a jackass, into a sympathetic figure.

 

As I understand it, the doctors who sign off on decisions now are pre-approved by the NBA and NBAPA. I wouldn't change that. In that respect, what I think I'm really suggesting is establishing a binding arbitration process.

That sort of thing seems to work in baseball with a lot more money at stake. Remember here that there's not actually $18M at stake. Miles is being paid either way. The money at stake comes from him pushing the Blazers over the luxury tax threshold, and the problem there is the current system puts that decision in the hands of folks that stand to benefit from the outcome (the teams that will get the revenues from the Blazer's tax payment this year, and the reduced competition from the Blazer's salary cap hit next year).

But any team could be put in a similar position, because severe injuries are essentially random events. So it seems to me that appointing an impartial party would reduce the screaming and crying foul.

By picking the doctors ahead of time, and having everyone agree on them, I think you eliminate a lot of the risk of gaming the system.