Smart. (Although I think he's a giant douche.) Carmello is leaving. That teams going nowhere fast. Why rush back to be part of a 30 win team?
Selfish, without a doubt. His whole argument is based around being owed something and not wanting to injure himself further in a contract year. Well, the Nuggets are paying him a very large sum of money to play this year, not save himself for a new contract possibly elsewhere... Of course, the bigger question is whether he actually could come back earlier and contribute. But that aside, his approach to the matter sounds very selfish.
If you combined Oden's and Przy's knee problems, you still wouldn't have what KMart's gone (going) through. I agree, he's making 16M this year to help his team out. If the best way to do that is to make sure the knee's fine, and then strap them up for a playoff run, fine. If he's stalling in his rehab, I'd imagine that's a suspendable offense.
Selfish. Maybe smart, but definitely selfish. Extensions of players over the age of 30 are almost never in the teams' interests, and while I don't blame KMart for being selfish, I have thought he's a jerk with a big mouth for quite a while now and I wouldn't mind seeing him be perceived as damaged goods if he sits out much of the season and gets treated as damaged goods when he becomes a free agent. Ed O.
By that logic, wouldn't it also be selfish to come back ASAP so as to avoid the "damaged goods" label? I think self-interest and team interest align pretty well here. The team doesn't want a guy who comes back too soon and either re-injures himself and can't play, or who can't play well. The team doesn't want a guy who loafs and doesn't play when he could be playing. The player will be punished on his next deal if he refuses to play and is perceived as a loafer, and the player will be punished on his next deal if he plays too soon and is perceived as incapable.
Meanwhile Rudy Fernandez outhustles the entire Blazers team in camp, going so far as to risk a career-ending injury just to block a newbie who probably won't even make the rotation.
Selfish and smart. But since we're talking about a professional athlete playing for (arguably) his last contract aren't the two one and the same?
If we knew OBJECTIVELY what his capabilities were, it'd be easier to argue one way or the other, but by linking Harrington's contract to the injury discussion, it seems pretty clear to me that he's pointing out that the team and his interests are NOT aligned. There's always a greater than zero chance of injuring oneself when one gets on the floor... a player who's 32 years old and in the last year of his contract is one that a team would allow to become a number higher than they would, say, a young player with a few years to go on his deal. A player who's in the last year of his deal and miffed about the team signing another player would prefer that the number is closer to zero than he would if he had a long-term deal. Obviously, if a guy's hurt, then a guy's hurt. I don't think that he's being sincere, though. I think he's trying to teach the Nuggets a lesson and/or look out for himself more than reasonable NBA players usually do. Ed O.
