I think people who voted for him can be forgiven if they didn't realize he was going to be THIS bad..... but the people who STILL support him.... well...... I don't know what to say about that.
Just call a spade a spade? Speak out against them? It's not that hard and we need people like you to fill that role. Truly. It's really about being a good American right now IMO. When John McCain is the voice of reason...
you are assuming I'm defensive. Please ask me and I will give you a response. There is so much written and verbal interchange in this world with precious little clarification requested. This is a clear sign of already having one's mind made up.
I will ask--how, within the confines of the CBA, do you believe Paul Allen could have done what you suggested in your OP?
He was, is, and always will be a liar, a thief, a narcissist, and a con man. The information was out there, and it was obvious. His fortune was built on thievery, fraud and bankruptcy. Clearly that is not a workable business model for government. Lot's of "good people" who voted for him still have their head up their ass. There's a sucker born every minute. And they vote, apparently.
I was talking about how I was viewed as defensive on the subject and not the subject itself. Look, I don't know too much about the subject but I thought if he would just pay a specified penalty, he could pay LeBron whatever he wanted. Is this totally prohibited no matter the cost?
Yes, it is prohibited. If a team is below the cap, they are only permitted to offer a free agent an amount up to the amount of their cap space. If they are over the cap, they can only offer the amount of an available cap exception. There are no cap exceptions that would permit Portland to offer Lebron $30M.
Lanny, this is why I said you were being defensive. You have multiple people in this thread telling you it's not possible and it's not how it works yet you are still questioning whether it is prohibited or not. It's not even close to being a possibility. The Blazers would've had to have almost $36 million in cap space to offer a max to LeBron. The salary cap is $101.9 million. The Blazers have over $131 million in guaranteed contracts. That means the Blazers would've had to trade away at least $67 million in contracts this year (not including other factors) with nothing in return just to be able to OFFER LeBron a max contract. It would still after all that (which would've been about an impossible of a task as I can think of) be completely up to LeBron.
That's not being defensive. Being defensive is where you take offense at something you view as a personal attack. I take none of this personally. I'm simply trying to understand how it works. A simple query of this would get you a response that you might make understand my motive better. Do you see the difference?
When they signed Durant, they weren't. Now that he's been on their squad for a couple years, they have an exception allowing them to give him a max deal. Other free agents they've signed (David West, Demarcus Cousins) have taken vastly below-market-value deals to sign with them. Everyone that they have signed has either been with cap space or with a cap exception.
Pardon me for not understanding how this works but as I learned while building jumbo jets and nuclear missiles, if I don't ask, I'll never know. This means that I have to ignore being thought a fool and learn anyhow.
I never have a problem with people asking honest questions to gain understanding, even if I would normally assume NBA fans would have this as common knowledge. If my responses came off as condescending at all, I apologize.
Not to derail too much but how GS came together gives me some hope. If Dame / CJ / Nurk have a great year say they make it to the wcf or even play really tough in the 2nd round. FA’s will be much more likely to come here and maybe even on the cheap.
