Yep, thanks to PA's mancrush on Darius Miles, we ended up outbidding ourselves, by a HUGE amount to resign Miles. Nobody else was willing to give Miles anything close to what PA did. If Paul Allen wants to blame anyone for anything involving Darius Miles, he needs to look in the mirror and see the idiot that insisted on giving Miles that huge contract in the first place. Actually, I think it's closer to $27 million. It was $9 million a year for the final two year's of Miles' contract, plus a 100% luxury tax match for the first year. BNM
IIRC, KP said the original trade was ZBo and Miles for Francis and Rose. Then, Penn told him about the fancy CBA maneuvering you could do to get rid of Jones and Dickau instead of Miles for Francis and Frye...making it 3-for-2 in our favor and getting us the exception we used for Jones (to get Rudy's pick from the penny-pinching Suns, who didn't want just a 3M check).
Hey, I was as pissed as anyone when Miles wasn't included in that deal, but that's triage after your leg has been blown off. That's not on KP. Besides, we don't know that deal was on the table; we've only heard rumors. As for medically retiring him, as I explained before, it was a set of unlikely circumstances that occurred to mess that up. And any contract we could have moved in him a trade for would have been worse by that point. It wouldn't have fixed our cap issue. Again, Miles was Allen's pretty little pet. He wants to be hands on when everything goes well, but then tells Nash to sign him for twice his market value and now blames it on KP? I call bullshit.
Ah, thanks. I guess I never knew about Miles potentially being a part of the Knick deal. As you stated though, Allen has only himself to blame for any missteps involving Miles.
BNM, thanks for the monetary correction. You're 100% correct. Repped. There used to be an unwritten rule that owners don't screw each other out of money like that.
From what I remember, KP had Miles included to NY, but Paul Allen said no. PAUL didn't want to trade Miles. Then, KP shifted it to include Webster, and THAT was when Penn brought up the TPE which could get Jones and Rudy. Paul can't be mad about the lack of inclusion of Miles when he never wanted to see him traded in the first place. I also highly doubt Paul's mad we didn't trade RLEC, and that that's leading to KP being fired, since that move saved Paul a decent chunk of money, and it was rumored he didn't want to take on extra pieces with Gerald Wallace in a deal.
Yes, they can talk and make trades once their season is over. Well, they can talk at any time, but can make trades now that their season is over. Just not with free agents.
Malik Rose's contract ended one year before Miles. That extra year didn't matter to NY; they had a bunch of contracts running until this summer in 2010. But it mattered to our Blazers, they would have benefited from the extra cap space in 2009. Getting medical cap relief isn’t always easy in the NBA; that’s why at the time I was furious Miles wasn’t jettisoned in a Zach deal, if you wanted to ship out talent and gain future cap flexibility it needs to be an all or nothing decision. Going half-ass with a cap clearing strategy caused us to miss out on potential benefits of MLE signing players for multiple off-seasons and expiring contract trades. Sure you can make a case the Miles medical fiasco was hard to foresee, just as it was hard to foresee Oden being a far inferior player to Durant. So that argument would be that KP made correct moves at the time but circumstances went against him. But then you have to look at moves the other way as well; the Turkoglu signing was a set of unlikely circumstances that prevented the signing at the 11th hour, KP had made the decision to target Hedo and even held back at the draft to position the team with cap space. Well circumstances benefited KP greatly in that his 3rd free agent choice of Miller clearly outplayed Hedo while having a far more reasonable salary.
I've heard this often asserted on this board, but there has never been a link provided that back this up. As far as I'm aware there has only been one public quote from PA on Darius which was when it became apparent that he could be traded for initially. Paraphrasing it went... "We can trade for DM? Cool!" What we do know is that when he was resigned KP wasn't the GM, Nash was... Pritchard was in charge of scouting. Maybe he shoulders some blame for the way DM wrecked his knee being rushed back from the IR, but even that seems like a stretch. I don't see how he gets any blame on the contract. STOMP
Look, you're preaching to the choir. You don't need to explain the situation to me because--as anyone from O-Live will attest--I was adamant that if we were going to get rid of Zach for scraps, we needed to get rid of Miles, too. However, if PA had a hard-on for Miles, how could Pritchard trade him? I'm glad you understand that 20/20 hindsight is for whiners, but the balance overall has been toward KP. Sure, we dodged a bullet with Hedo, but otherwise KP has been as good as anyone in the league at building a team. FYI: Oden isn't a "far inferior" player to Durant; he's more injured. Even out of shape, Oden changes the entire game when he's playing.
Parker didn't exactly light it up last season. IMO, he really doesn't qualify as a move that would save KP's job.
