That's the problem. Unless you have smoking gun evidence (an email, an informant, etc.), it is up to debate. Because of this email, any team that signed Miles knew that the Blazers were going to scrutinize the decision and that you are at risk of being sued by the Blazers. Even if you did not have a malicious intent, the Blazers and their army of lawyers could argue that you did. So... I think that the union/Miles potentially has an argument, even if the threat was limited to teams with a malicious intent. I think the email did reduce Miles' value. Let's say you have two equal players that you are considering as a team. Then this email comes out about player B. You are logically going to prefer player A, all things being equal. So if you were considering Miles before the email (maybe you even thought that Miles was marginally better than another FA option). After this email, a team owner would probably look somewhere else. It is not as if Miles is that good anyway, so I think people trying to split hairs on this are missing the practical effect of this email. Now, since the Grizz picked him up again, the email probably helped Miles. So, as to not create the perception of impropriety, the Grizz are more likely to sign him for the rest of the season to help prove that they did not have a malicious intent but genuinely thought he was helping their team. They may not do this, but they are more likely to, to help build their case that the signing was not malicious.
