Teams Won’t Be Scared Off By Blazers

I still don’t get why Portland felt they could intimidate other teams in the small matter of Darius Miles’s “comeback”. One, it’s not like they’re the Knicks or Lakers, franchises with mighty legacies, media pull, and clout that smaller market teams like the Blazers can only dream of. How seriously does Jerry Buss, or James Dolan, take a threat from a team in a former logging town that has to play .600 ball to get on national television? It’s not a legal angle, it’s the corporate version of that scene in Scarface when Pacino flips out and throws the phone. If Tony Montana were a sneaky math genius known for chess hustling.
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↵It’s shaping up to be a battle between owners, which is why, according to Yahoo!, the league’s issued a statement trying to defuse the situation. Or get out of the way. You make the call: ↵↵⇥The league notified teams on Friday that Miles had cleared waivers and is eligible to be signed to a standard contract. “Any such contract,” the league wrote in the email, “would be approved by the NBA.”
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↵⇥“What they’re saying is: ‘Don’t let that scare you off,’ ” said one Eastern Conference GM who had received the memo. ↵↵Even “don’t let that scare you off” can be read as both egging GMs on, censuring Portland for their silly little email, or washing their hands of the whole thing. As far as the league’s concerned, Miles can be signed anywhere. If the owners want to beat each other up over it, let grudges take root that last for ages, or get in line behind the anti-BCS forces in this nation’s courts (are we on the verge of a Darius Miles bill in the House?), that’s their problem. One thing’s for sure: There’s more at stake for Portland here than cap space. If other teams more or less laugh in its face, won’t that take some of the sheen off of the team’s astronomical ascent in the Western Conference? It makes that front office look either slightly amateur-ish, or just a little too conniving, or at least unsubtle about it. I don’t see Kevin Pritchard as arrogant on this one, but he might have been too blatantly manipulative for his own good here.
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↵All of which proves, I think, that he might not be quite as otherworldly as everyone thinks. On some level, Pritchard’s still an NBA general manager, and the Trailblazers a business venture. The Northwest is only so strange, my friends.↵