Reports are coming out of Sports Illustrated of a warning from the Portland Trail Blazers to other teams: Don’t mess with us.
And this isn’t on-court trash talk either. It all ties back to former squad member Darius Miles. Miles has microfracture surgery a few years back and doctors said his knee injury was career-ending. If that’s the case, the Blazers are still on the hook to pay his salary, but they can remove Miles from the roster and his 2-year, $18-million pay check doesn’t count against the Blazers Salary Cap. Which they did.
Here’s where things get sticky. If Miles plays in a total of ten games during that time for another team, then that 18-million goes BACK under the BLAZERS salary cap, limiting their options for the next two seasons in terms of which players they can attract.
This season, Miles has played in a handful of games for the Celtics and the Grizzlies meaning that if he takes the court just twice more, the Blazers lose their 18-million points of wiggle room.
While it may be great strategy for another team to put Miles on the floor for two nights to handicap the Blazers in 2009 and 2010, it’s also poor sportsmanship and kinda crummy when you consider that the Blazers have done everything you want a team to do the past few years (community involvement, role models on and off the court, solid young team playing well, big fan base).
So as a pre-emptive strike, team Pres Larry Miller REPORTEDLY sent a warning e-mail to the other teams that essentially says “if you sign Darius just to mess with our cap space, we’ll see your butt in court!”
Nice to see the Blazers getting aggressive 
