Even for people who have no taste for the NBA, you have got to love the situation that the Portland Trailblazers find themselves in at the current time.

Let me set this up for you.

Darius Miles had a career-ending injury that required micro-fracture surgery. There are certain rules in place by the NBA and by insurance companies insuring the teams that will prevent horrible injuries to players from damaging teams and their viability as a contender in the league for longer than a couple of years at the most.

It has now been long enough that most of Darius Miles’ salary will be covered by insurance and that his salary will not count against the team’s salary cap or against the luxury tax that the team will be forced to pay.

The only stipulation to prove that a player is injured enough is if they can play games. The number that has been arbitrarily set to decide this is 10 games. If a player can play in at least 10 exhibition and regular season games, then he is healthy enough not to be considered permanently injured.

Unfortunately for Portland, Darius Miles has managed to play 8 games this year before being cut by the Boston Celtics and Memphis Grizzlies.

That means that if a team signs him to a 10 day contract and he plays in 2 more games, Portland will have to pay all of his salary this year ($9 million) and next year ($9 million), they will have to pay a luxury tax penalty, and his salary will count against their salary cap at the end of the season. With the other salaries coming off of the books (Steve Francis, Raef LaFrentz), Portland will likely be below the salary cap and able to sign better free agents away from their respective teams.

To prevent other teams from signing Miles just to hurt Portland, the team president Larry Miller has apparently threatened all of the other 29 teams with a lawsuit.

Beautiful!

Would it be worth it to any other teams to sign him just to hurt Portland?

Absolutely!

Let me give you an example.

The Utah Jazz have Carlos Boozer and Mehmet Okur who are likely to opt out of their contracts after this year. The Jazz are below the salary cap threshold. If the Utah Jazz sign Darius Miles to a 10 day contract, it might cost them $50K or so (just a guess).

For spending that $50K (or probably less), they do the following…

1. Force Portland to be on the books for another $18 million (insurance would have covered most of this before). Upping the total expenditure averages of the teams could have some affect on future salary caps, some of which might be helpful to the Jazz trying to re-sign major free agents while staying below the salary cap threshold. (It’s a little hard to say on this one.)
2. Keep Portland from being $9 million or more under the salary cap, which essentially means that Portland isn’t competing for the services of Okur or Boozer in the off-season.
3. Put $300K into their own pocket from the salary cap penalty ($9 million / 30 teams), easily paying for Miles 10 day contract salary and then some.

Is it in the best interest of the Utah Jazz and other teams in similar situations?

Absolutely!

Will somebody do it?

They have to do it, don’t they?

It will fun to see how this will end, but I can’t imagine that it will end well for the Portland Trailblazers. There is too much money involved for a team not to take advantage of this situation.

Add into this the fact that it is totally illegal to prevent a player from getting a job by threatening all of the potential employers and you’ve got a very interesting issue on your hands.