The Grizzlies sign D-Miles

The Memphis Grizzlies signed Darius Miles to a 10-day contract, a day after Portland sent an e-mail to the league threatening legal action if Miles was signed with the sole intent of harming Portland financially.

While most everyone around has called Portland everything from stupid to arrogant and worse, there is a lot more to this story than the common refrain of "Portland messed up and are crybabies about it"

Consider:

• It has been commonly said that Miles didn't have a career ending injury. After undergoing microfracture surgery, Miles' knee never regrew the cartilige that the surgery is intended to regrow, thus his knee is rubbing bone on bone. When the independent doctor chosen joined by the league and the player association (who are now filing a grievance against the Blazers) ruled that the injury was career ending it wasn't because he could no longer play basketball at a professional level but because playing continuing to play basketball would further damage the knee such that long term issues requiring knee replacement surgery would almost certainly follow. Thus playing basketball, in the eyes of the doctor, became a situtation so hazardous to Mile's ability to live a normal life that it was in Miles' best interests to retire. So while this injury wasn't career ending in the same way that losing a limb would be, in the eyes of the doctor playing basketball is deterimental to his long term health and as such he shouldn't be doing it. This is similar to why Cutino Mobley retired. He was diagnosed with a heart condition that made it dangerous to play basketball, so he retired because of it, and not because he lacked the ability to play. Had the condition been discovered prior to his trade to the Knicks (or had the Knicks backed away from the trade because of it) the Clippers could have used the same process as the Blazers for salary cap relief
• Part of the confusion lies within the Collective Bargining Agreement itself. In the relevant section that guides this process (Article VII, Section 4), the only thing guide the definition of career ending injury is this:  

  The determination of whether a player has suffered a career-ending injury or illness shall be made by a physician selected jointly by the NBA and the Players Association.

  This is a different standard than the commonly applied "He is playing in games so the injury obviously isn't career ending".
• By sending the e-mail the Blazers weren't saying "Don't sign Miles". They were saying "If you are thinking about signing Miles, make sure that you do so because his basketball abilities and not because you want a free luxury tax payment from us" Here is what the author of the famous e-mail said: 

  our purpose here was not in any way to keep Darius from being able to play. If he can come back and help a team to win and play at a level on the court that is, again, helps the team, then we have no problem with that at all. Our issue is that if a team is trying to do something malicious to hurt us financially. And that’s why we took the action that we did.

• The ideas that some people are proposing that they sign Miles, play him for 2 minutes in 2 games just to stick it to Portland is in my opinion demeaning to Miles. In that case you are looking a him solely for your personal profit and not as someone who is looking at rebuilding his career (although at potential personal harm). While it is the job of Darius' agent to get Darius a job I would think that the agent is savvy enough to stay away from those situations where Darius would be exploited in such a fashion.

In the end, it seems like the process in the Collective Bargaining Agreement doesn't adequately proctect the Blazers in this situation. Had the Blazers done nothing and kept Miles' contract on the books, that contract would be very valuable as it expires in 2010 when every team in the league is trying to create cap space on the off chance that they will be able to sign LeBron James or one of the plethora of top players who will be free agents during that summer. Instead,the Blazers will lose the ability to trade an expiring contract AND not be able to use the services of a basketball player. The best solution for all parties (the Blazers, the NBA and Darius) would be for the NBA and the Players association to rework the language of that part of the CBA so that both the team and the player are protected in that case.