about how well Portland does. If anything, they don’t want all the stars going to Portland. They need it to be spread to different markets. Portland is not going to get any favors done. Glad the management is going after teams.

what’s gonna happen??

i personally believe that Darius has no legal standing as far as the “He could sue” rumors go. A league appointed doctor made that call.

I just hope this doesn’t keep us from paying attention to the important season at hand.

It will be furious.

The e-mail doesn’t threaten the other teams "don’t sign Miles". That would be an indefensible position against the lawyer of Darius and the NBPA. It says "don’t sign Miles with just the purpose of screwing our tax/cap position – or we as a fellow franchise will sue you for damages". I.e. prevent other teams from giving him a ten day contract to just play him for two minutes in two games with the intent of making some luxury tax money (ca. $250K) and prevent the Blazers from being a bigger player in the 2009 free agency. The Blazers couldn’t do much against a team offering him a one-year contract to regularly play him anyway, except file a complaint to review the CBA section pertaining to this “comeback from medical retirement” situation.

Then Portland would set up a trade to get rid of Raefs expiring contract and send them a player they want from Porltand, like Sergio or Frye.

I would never play Hold ‘em with either KP or Miller, even if it’s just for beer money…. This email seems to be the equivalent of re-raising while holding eight deuce off suit.

Like if Miles does get his two games in and this destroys the Blazers off-season plans. Why else would they send that e-mail? to show that they aren’t soft? i don’t think so… guess we just have to wait and see what happens…

During the JailBlazer era, we were in court for marijuana, DUIs, illegal prostiitution… things have changed a bit, but now it’s a bit more formal and “cute” with lawsuits.

I don’t like this situation at all. I sense fans/readers here are blowing this off. The fact that Darius can play in NBA games, even for 2 minutes, seems to indicate that his injury is not career ending.

Basketball should stay on hardwood courts, not jury courts. The fact we are discussing this now, points to a decision that has led us into topics that this franchise claimed was something of a past. We were suppose to be making solid choices. This isn’t one of them. If we knew 2 years ago that this decision would lead us to this point, we would have seriously looked at alternatives.

Reminds me a bit of Steve Patterson.

I counted 29 wins. That would bring us to 50 wins. Then there are about 7 or 8 we might win, couple that with the us losing the easy wins, and winning some tough ones. I’m expecting somewhere between 50-56 wins this year. Blazers should not be worried about free agency. I do think it’s nice KP is doing something about it though. It’s better then not complaining at all.

If Darius plays no games the rest of this season, and plays only 2 games next season, do they add to the 8 existing and thus go “against” us???

it is not retroactive, however. Miles $9M would be added to the Blazers salary pending the immediate petition by the Blazers to reconsider.

"The point that everybody is missing is that this isn’t about Portland’s salary cap. It’s about whether this guy [Miles] is healthy enough to play or not," said an Eastern Conference executive. "He obviously is healthy enough to play. It doesn’t matter how good he plays. He can still play, and they said he couldn’t.

"Portland received benefits when [Miles’] injury was ruled career-ending. If he can play, they don’t deserve to have those benefits."

… but big corporations send each other hate mail like this all the time. Go down to the court house and read a few lawsuit preambles. They all read this way. This is obviously a “not for publication” type letter. Miller never thought this thing would be read by you and me, so he worded it like lawyers word stuff to each other. But this time, the veil was pulled back and fans are seeing the ugly behind-the-scenes NBA that I’m sure has existed as long as the league has.
Unfortunately, the Blazers can’t really do much in the way of damage control because such action would only call more attention to the problem. Not only that, but Darius could certainly sue if he is slandered, libeled or kept from earning money he would otherwise make.
A legal can o’ worms we will be writing about for five years, I’ll bet. These kinds of legal junk drawers have no bottom, especially if Miles feels like he’s been wronged. Let’s hope he wins the lotto and forgets about the whole thing.
As for other teams, let’s hope the other GMs don’t take this fiasco as an excuse to show how big their testicles are and knock the chip off Miller’s shoulder.

It read something like “Blazers Blackball Miles”, now it’s “Blazers send e-mail about Miles”

Miles is on the opposing team…. and…. it’s Game 7????

Nobody, even a multi-billionaire wants to pay $10 mil+ that he doesn’t have to.

I applaud the move, the rule is clearly not working as intended.

cmon i cant be the only one

I’m a Kings fan (for those who don’t know who I am), so from this perspective, it doesn’t matter to me. My personal feeling’s on Paul Allen run a bit differently, in part because I live in Seattle, and Allen lives on Mercer Island (a suburb of Seattle essentially for those who aren’t aware) which is part of the greater Seattle area. I hate what he’s doing with the South Lake Union development (I think the view’s of the water are great, particularly from Capitol Hill, and all that development has taken away from that. But such is life in a place like the Emerald City.)

That all being said, what the Grizzlies did was a step to screw the Blazers. What the Celtics did was understandable, but did not ultimately hurt anything. It seems the Celtics are less to blame here, and the Grizzlies did this to gain something financially. My hope is, that despite the ugly warning letter, despite Miles still wanting to play, he goes oversea’s and does it that way. I don’t really think he can help a NBA team, and I’m willing to bet most NBA teams would rather go with a younger more talented player than Miles. I think Miles is still living a dream essentially.

I’d be surprised if this hurts the Blazers, and while I don’t really care, and don’t think it even matters more than anything than simple greed for other teams, it will be interesting to see how this works for the future.

Again, I have no stake in this one way or the other. Keep it in mind. (And, I’ve always thought very ill of Miles game personally.)

This is about a rich man looking out for his interests and that of his company.

I don’t really think Blazer mangement cares about what Boston fans, or Memphis fans, or even naive Portland fans think of this decision.

So the ‘class’ argument is kinda silly.

I’m a little disappointed in the team for taking this path, mostly I think because it removes the spotlight from the good things the team has done so far this year. We’ve been playing really well, and now this becomes a bit of a distraction. I hope it doesn’t negatively affect our players …

So even if Miles sues Portland and wins. How much does Portland pay out? Miles is still getting his money from the medical retirement. So if he sues for the salary that the new team would have paid him is that the league minimum?
If it is the league minimum then I would definitely send this memo. I would rather pay league minimum salary vs. spending millions towards salary and luxury tax ramifications.
Am I incorrect in this, and isn’t this just common business practice?

For me this all boils down too the Blazers over reacting. If the Blazers felt that teams are thinking of signing Miles just to put his contract back on their books they should talk to the league about this and not threaten the other teams. This is a league were you have to work with other teams in order to get better. In addition David Stern is not a guy you want to piss off. I think this should have been brought to his attention first and handled from a league stand point.

It feels almost like a bullying statement. It makes me feel like the old regime is back and trying to lay down the law.

Look Portland signed him to this contract. When it became more than clear they did not want to have Darius on the team they had a few choices, cut him, trade him, or try to get him to retire. They decided that his knee was bad enough that an independent doctor might rule that he was unable to play on the knee anymore and could file for a medical retirement. They knew the risks when they decided to go down this road. It was the best choice they had and they went with it. Good for them. But now is not the time to whine about it. The Blazers have made many strides over the past few years. Let’s not revert back, hey you win some and you lose some and the Blazers front office has had quite a winning streak as of late. Perhaps it was time for a loss.

ridiculously large wheels.

Where’d he suddenly get all this motivation to quit eating ice cream?

I don’t think Miles is worthy of a spot on any NBA team. If someone does pick him up now it is completely out of spite or with intentions to ruin our salary situation. There is such a thing as respect among the owners, I doubt anyone will sign him now.

I wonder if other teams will boo us on the road lol.

Would be for Stern/NBA to

1. Change the rule; establish a certain number of minutes that resembles “reasonable playing time” in order for the medical retirement to be waived. I’d use a formula, something like 50% of the PT of the average player at your salary over those 10 games (ie, if average $9m guy plays 15 minutes a game; Miles has to log 75 total minutes to qualify).

This would prevent sham ‘garbage time’ minutes simply to get a guy an appearance and a notch in the 10-game belt.

2. Simply declare Miles contract off Portland’s book, unless a “blue ribbon panel” or arbiter deem that Miles’ continued play in the NBA actually was meaningful and indicated that his medical retirement unnecessary.

This prevents any team from “screwing” the Blazers in “bad faith” but does not prevent Miles from playing. It simply states that Stern would enforce the spirit of the law, rather than the letter.

I wonder if league has wanted to punish the Blazers for their “no” vote against the OKC move. Of course, it’s unprovable, and in this case, teams have a small financial incentive to stick the Blazers also. But in my weak moments, I wonder.

This action makes as much sense as a small child threatening to hold their breath until they get what they want. All the positive pub about the TB organization wiped away not to mention the repercussions that might occur…ie All Star selection. BAD MOVE!

This should have come from the league office, not the Blazers.
Perhaps there is another, similar, email that states the same thing from Stern.

And…sending it by email is a neat trick. Now, there is a data stream with internal message headers and keywords into every teams email system. Search algoryihms will find references to it and be able to pull much more information in the case of any requests for related communications.

Any team that deletes any email outside of its normal email retention policy (assuming they have one) will now have to explain it. That will look bad for them in front of a judge.

This is a bit of a threat, but the Blazers do have a point. In the spirit of collective bargaining in the league, going out of your way to harm another team is not a smart practice. This letter doesn’t preclude teams from getting Miles, but if they get him they definitely better actually use him. The Blazers can make a good case that getting Miles and barely playing him is a managerial decision meant to punish the Blazers, not to improve the team that signs him. If that scenario does play out, I think that the Blazers are correct that legal action is necessary and they have a good chance through, at the least, arbitration of getting some of the luxury tax penalty decreased for the Blazers.

This was a smart calculated move. I highly doubt this is the first time anything like this has been done, its just the first time someone got so pissed they leaked it.
The Blazers will not sue. They would have no chance of winning and they know it. Its not a winnable case because it supposes you could argue for a person’s motives (the GM). Impossible to do.
Its not a threat so much as a notice to GM’s. We know what your doing, and if you do it, be prepared to be blackballed by the community. I would argue that 90 percent of the GMs are on the Blazers sides on this. I think if someone were to get something out of Miles and actually get him some run on the floor, no one would mind, but playing 1 min for two games just to screw with the Blazers, well the entire GM frat would turn on whoever did that. Thats just plain unethical. And once you get the frat against you, good luck making a deal or keeping your job.
I wouldnt however be surprised if the Blazers leaked this themselves. I think it puts pressure on Stern to deal with this publicly now if a GM does this. Its one thing to screw a team behind their back, its a whole nother to do it publicly. Now the public knows exactly what a team would be doing (yes we know it, but the majority of the leagues fans do not) fans of the NBA would put major pressure on Stern to handle this not only logically but with policy change and hopefully some positive repercussions for the Blazers.

Yahoo

Henry pulls his usual “I’m a Blazer fan, so I have to be as hard on them as possible to not appear biased” routine that he’s doing a lot these days.

My favorite part? He conveniently forgets that the medical retirement was specifically due to concerns over long-term knee damage, not that he couldn’t run or jump anymore. Good investigative work, Henry, way to fully present the retirement in a factual manner.

I just watched video of all of his regular season minutes. From the January 6 Grizzles vs. Timberwolves game, we can learn that anyone who tells you he’s permanently broken is blatantly wrong.

TrueHoop

isn’t that in a Billy Joel song? I can’t get it out of my head now.

me and Mortimer just got Truehooped by proxy (since Dave put our quotes on the front page).

Man, this little event has really rejuvenated my interest in sports and entertainment law, this has been a lot of fun guys. Great debating with all of you!