Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Dear Blazers Fans

Thank you for your comments. I have enjoyed reading them.


Now I'll attempt to respond to your comments. I noticed a few themes in your comments.
  1. The most significant theme was that Miles' injury wasn't reviewed by team doctors. That's true, and I apologize for the error. According to CNNSI's Steve Aschburner: "An independent medical examiner approved by both the league and the NBA Players' Association determined that Miles' ailing right knee was damaged enough to qualify [as career ending]".

    My intent was not to ridicule the team for labelling the injury as career ending. In fact, I'll bet most reasonable Doctors would have agreed that there was a strong possibility Miles wouldn't contribute to a team again. However, there was always the possiblity, however small, that Miles would rehabilitate. Regardless of who assessed the injury, the Blazers should have (and may have) understood the risk.

    What surprises me is that the misdiagnosis upsets Blazer fans. 

    In fact, this assessment benefitted the Blazers who gained financial flexibility, which allowed them to make moves until Miles proved otherwise (this week). The alternative is that Miles would have remained the Blazers' responsibility, and his contract would have been an even bigger headache for the Blazers who are in less need of his services than the Grizzlies.

  2. The second main theme is the Grizzlies are bad, the Blazers will get the last laugh, and it's sad that this is something that brings joy to Grizzlies fans.

    That is all true. 

    The Grizzlies are terrible, whereas the Blazers have a solid team, that is not only up-and-coming, but also enjoying moderate success this today.

    The Grizzlies on the other hand are entering their 5th lottery bound season out of 8 in Memphis.  It gets worse when you consider time in Vancouver or that the Grizzlies were embarassed out of the playoffs in each 'successful' season.

    Top it off with a number of transactions, culminating with the Pau Gasol trade, where the Grizzlies don't exactly hit it out of the park, and you can see that the Miles transaction, which has no downside and punishes arrogant behavior, makes a short list of enjoyable Grizzlies moves.

    You might say that the Grizzlies are so bad that Darius Miles can show up and score 13 points in his third appearance with the team after rehabilitating from a career ending injury.

  3. There was a third theme of comments I don't understand like: 

    "Tell Kevin Love that his team just screwed over his home."

    Perhaps the reader thinks Love plays for the Grizzlies?

    "Why don't call anymore?"

    I have no excuse here...

  4. Finally, "I can't believe I just waisted 15 minutes of my life reading a Grizzly Blog. Sheesh!"

    15 minutes ain't too bad. This blog goes back a few years.
In summary, I don't think it was wrong to diagnose Miles' injury as career ending. That may have been a fair assessment at the time. 

It was wrong to send the email for two reasons:
  1. It had little chance of accomplishing the Blazers' goal.
  2. The tone and content were unprofessional.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

I wish I could have a "career ending" knee injury. Apparently, a few months later I could post the following stat line in an NBA game: 4-of-6 from the field, 5-of-7 from the line, 13 points in 13:45 minutes. Last laugh meet D. Miles.

David Jones said...

It seems that there are some Grizzlies that have injuries that are worse than career-ending based on their level of play.

That is the only possible explanation for Conley's stat line.

Anonymous said...

Check out the jersey numbers retired by the Heat (credit to Bill Simmons' mailbag):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_National_Basketball_Association_Retired_Numbers

Lurch said...

How does Csonka not get in there or at least Ronny Seikaly? And do you think they meant to retir Harold "Baby Jordan" Miner instead of Michael Jordan? Also just to note that I had to google all three of those names for spelling.

David Jones said...

I thought they might retire Miles' number for giving the Heat an advantage in the free agent market and contributing some luxury cash. (Or are the Heat also over the threshold?)

Anonymous said...

We may trade Conley and get this guy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VBZ7LvD4Wg

That would be a deal!

David Jones said...

I like that the first comment on that video is:

"joe did a local radio tour here in dc....After both interviews i heard the interviewers said "well we'll never have that guy on again" .....he needs to lighten up a bit"