And that's pretty much all we've seen for the last few weeks. People either:
A) Think Darius isn't getting paid his money
or
B) We're going to sue anyone who signed Miles for any reason.
Clearly these people either didn't read the email we sent out, or didn't understand it. Either way, the common opinion of the team from that email is that we're assholes. Nothing we can do about that now. It's over. I'm ready for this thing to end, and quite frankly I think it's a dead issue. He's going to play, the money is going to go back on the cap, and that's that.
This is where you and I disagree. I don't think we should waive the white flag; I think we should go on the PR offensive.
Put out Larry Miller, Kevin Pritchard and Tom Penn to discuss EXACTLY what the situation is.
--That Darius is getting his money.
--That he's earned it.
--That the severity of the knee injury scared everyone in the organization.
--That, regardless of his misdeeds, at the time of the injury, he was far and away our best SF and that we were building the team with him as a major cog.
--That we rewarded him with a contract to make him a long-term member of the team and he was playing his best ball ever when he was injured.
--That we worked for two years to get him back on the court.
--That we couldn't in good conscience force him to play on those knee joints, so getting the career ending injury exception was best for both parties--it enabled us to move forward, got Darius paid and saved him from future joint replacement surgery.
--That the NBA and the Player's Union agreed with our diagnosis.
--That we are not trying to stop him from playing or earning a living. We are trying to stop him from being a pawn and being used by other franchises. We are trying to stop him from being signed ONLY to harm our future cap flexibility. If one of those franchises sincerely wanted to sign Darius to an NBA-subsidized veteran minimum guaranteed contract, we'd be thrilled for him. Yet neither Boston nor Memphis think enough of him.
--That the rule that is being applied was never meant for this situation. It was meant for teams who tried to sign their own player after getting the injury exception, thereby circumventing the cap.
--That this rule is being abused by Memphis and Boston. That Boston has personal reasons to mess with us (going back to the Telfair/Ratliff for #7/Dickau deal) and Memphis wants to knock us out as competition for cap space this summer.
--That sports journalists are doing a terrible job explaining the issues at stake. There are a lot of misconceptions and we need to clear them up.
The bottom line is that we're in the right. We should act like it. Just taking the abuse is a recipe for failure.