A painful injury, a painful trade or a painful loss. Anyway you slice it, here's what's making someone hurt in the world of sports this week:
The NBA used to be revered around the world, both as an example of how a league should be run and as a place every baller wanted to play. But it's been a weird summer, where the NHL free agency season has run laps around the glacial pace in hoops central. It's not just that nothing is happening; it's that it is happening badly.
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Previous That's Gotta Hurts:
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New Jersey Jets said they’ll sign SHAREEF ABDUR-RAHIM. Then they said they’d trade for him. Then they put the trade on hold after knee-scarring showed up in his physical. Then SHAREEF blasted the team, saying “I don’t want to be there.’ Now reports from the New York Post say the Nets might sign him despite their health concerns just to save face.
It’s easy to see why New Jersey would be hesitant: they gambled on ALONZO MOURNING two years ago before discovering his liver and back and knees could only hold up if the team was, y’know, playing well. Once JASON KIDD went down with an injury, ‘ZO took a powder until a suitable sucker (Toronto GM ROB BABCOCK) could be found.
The new collective bargaining agreement was supposed to solve problems like the MOURNING sit-and-hold-his-breath strategy, but it’s also made things confusing for teams trying to figure out its minutia. The thing is reportedly 300 pages. So maybe it's to blame for the hold-up of real action this offseason. But New Jersey has made one thing clear: no paper document can solve the problem of good-old fashioned ineptitude.
Ditto the Atlanta Hawks, who initially looked smart when they created a convoluted contract for Phoenix Sun free agent JOE JOHNSON where much of the money was paid up front. But when Phoenix agreed to a trade, one of Atlanta’s owners said Hey, wait a minute…do we still need to do this funky math with the contract now that it’s a trade? As a result, the trade has yet to go through. Do you think anyone else is going to rush to sign with Atlanta? Yeah. They’re doomed.
And then there is the Orlando Magic. Passing up talented players like GERALD GREEN, JOEY GRAHAM, DANNY GRANGER or SEAN MAY, the Magic selected Spanish power forward FRAN VASQUEZ with the eleventh pick in the 2005 draft. And somehow along the way VASQUEZ decided he’d rather star in Spain than understudy in the U.S. I mean, since when has that ever happened? When the Toronto Raptors lost Croatian point guard ROKO UKIC earlier in the summer, you could understand it because the Raps couldn’t offer him much money. But VASQUEZ was going to make $2 million a year, guaranteed for three years. What’s the lesson? There are two. One, someone in Orlando didn’t do their homework. And two, nobody gets starry-eyed at the NBA anymore. I mean, look at how they’re run.
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