Last week i wrote a piece titled, Blazers Miles From Resolving Conflict, which now looks to be a true statement after today’s most recent update. I wrote about the Portland Trail Blazers absurd reaction to the Memphis Grizzlies signing of Darius Miles to a 10-day contract extension. Miles needed to only play in one more game with Portland or any other NBA team, for the Blazers to owe him $18 million this year and additional fines to the NBA for going over the luxury tax and ultimately ruining their free agent opportunities in the off-season.
After all of the hype last week about the Blazers sending threatening emails to all NBA teams, Miles did not do much over the weekend and still needed only one more game to make the Portland organization really upset. Well, as of only hours ago, the Grizzlies have signed Miles to yet another 10-day contract.
After his first debut with Memphis, Miles played in three games overall and averaged 8.3 points and grabbed 3 rebounds. His stats and ability on the court are what the Grizzlies will be evaluating again, however, what the Blazers and the rest of the league will be watching for is if Miles will step on the court in a game for any amount of time and ruin the Blazers off-season.
After signing a second 10-day contract, it seems likely that Miles will log some minutes. The number of games and overall minutes he plays in will be crucial as Portland is likely to file some type of greveince or complaint regarding the issue. A loss of $18 million more to the Blazers budget will only make the rough economy seem worse for Portland, but realistically they have to honor the contract they made with Darius and may be held to it fully.
4 replies on “One More Mile”
Zak, thanks for the post. As an agent, how would this impact you? How does this Miles situation impact the Blazers financially this season (I do not think it has anything to do with the salary cap)? This off-season, how does having Miles salary on the team’s budget impact who they can sign? Is the Blazers’ off-season really ruined? Aren’t the contracts of Blake and Outlaw not guaranteed? What are the free agent amounts for Frye and Diogu? How can the Blazers make a trade to get some more cap room? As Darren usually does, try to dig deeper and go beyond a journalist reporting perspective and give us some details about how an agent would analyze this scenario. If the Blazers only have $9.5 mil in cap room and not $18 for example, wouldn’t someone like Charlie V’s agent be happier than David Lee’s agent? What is the deal with Speedy Claxton – can the Hawks get some relief?
SAB,
Can this guy play or not? Is his injury career ending or not? If he can average 8 points a game, then they shouldn’t have tried to cut him, and have the insurance company pay his salary. They had no plans for Miles in their future, so they tried to do what all the teams do, cut a deal with him, to let the insurance company pick up his contract by declaring his injury a career ending one. Portland, I must confess is one of my favorite teams to watch this year (Indiana and Boston being the other ones), but they must honor their contract. By the way remember this, Aldrige will be one of the best players in the league in 2 years if not next year. Great young player with nothing but upside. Why on earth Chicago would deal him is beyond me.
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Thanks for the advice, I will try and touch on some of those issues in a future post on Miles. Stay tuned.
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