NBA: Players Need to Stop Whining to Get Traded

<div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post"> A distinction needs to be made here.

The NBA is justifiably concerned about players' sitting out and not reporting to teams to which they've been traded, in hopes of being waived and eventually set free to seek another situation.

This has happened a lot in the past few weeks. Jim Jackson didn't report to New Orleans and signed with Phoenix. Dale Davis didn't report to New Orleans and signed with Indiana. Gary Payton didn't report to Atlanta and signed with Boston. Elden Campbell was traded to Utah and waived, claimed by New Jersey, then waived and finally re-signed by the Pistons.

I don't see anything wrong with these moves. No rules were broken, and all parties came out ahead.

The players -- all veterans, which is usually the case -- have a chance to finish the season with a contender. The teams that waived them get the salary-cap relief they traded for in the first place, and the teams that re-sign them get a player they want.

It's a different story when you are talking about the likes of Alonzo Mourning, Vince Carter, Glenn Robinson and Baron Davis.

These guys were signed to lucrative, long-term contracts -- Mourning with New Jersey, Carter with Toronto, Robinson with Philadelphia and Davis with New Orleans. All were expected to be big-time contributors. Davis and Carter were their teams' franchise players. All were miserable. All had various lingering injuries, and all virtually forced their teams to move them.

Once they got to the team of their choice (Robinson is still hoping to find his), they were suddenly fit and ready to play.

I hope the difference between the two groups of players is obvious.

The first group (and the teams involved) took proper advantage of a loophole in the system to better their situations. The teams on which they played and the teams to which they were traded had no use for them. They were contracts, not players. Why not turn them loose and let them join a team that needs them?

The latter group did not play fair with their original teams, causing significant damage as they whined and malingered their way out of town.

New Jersey's Jason Kidd, a little jealous that he couldn't pull off the same stunt, seemed almost proud of his former teammate Mourning.

"He waited," Kidd said. "But he had a plan. His plan worked out for him. He's playing to try and win a championship. And he felt the two teams he was with (the Nets and Raptors) weren't going in that direction."

So, don't try to do anything about it on the court. Just whine every day until the team buys you out of your contract.

No wonder Hornets coach Byron Scott went off on a tirade, thinly veiled in the direction of Davis, who never played a full season after signing a seven-year, $84 million guaranteed contract.

"These guys have got guaranteed contracts, and they get a broken fingernail and say, 'I'm out for two weeks,' " Scott told reporters in New Orleans. "Basketball should be just like the NFL, with no guaranteed contracts. In the NFL, you see guys with broken arms trying to get in there because they know they can get cut tomorrow."

This is why commissioner David Stern and the owners are pushing for a four-year maximum on long-term contracts -- the old bit about owners' protecting themselves from themselves.

At what point, though, do players hold themselves accountable? At what point do they fully honor the contracts they sign? At what point do some of these famously paid slackers stop being able to look at themselves in the mirror? </div> Source