For those not up on the NBA:
My question is not whether Boozer’s a greedy unprincipled liar. I suppose you can say he is, though it seems a bit smug to say I would never ever do the same for $26 million.
My question is about his agent. If it can be shown that he was acting in bad faith in this – i.e. this was his plan all along – can the league do anything? If not formally punished, could he still be blackballed or placed on a persona non grata list?
The agent has reportedly resigned today for just the reasons you gave – he was afraid that Boozer would hurt the agency’s reputation. Business Ethics 101 stuff really if it is how it looks.
Given your “bigger question” I think it is very hard to blackball an agent - because he represents Labor and Management would not have much choice but deal with him if he represented a star player or draftee. The Players Association can decertify and suspend agents who do certain bad things mainly fraud (i.e. defrauding the players) – but other things as well (I won’t sh^t you I don’t recall what else there was) but I doubt they’d involve themselves in a case like this - & if they did they would presumably side with Boozer.
To be clear : I hope I would sign for 1 year $5 mil if I was in Boozer’s shoes given what he apparently agreed to – but I’m not 100% sure I would and don’t want to be phony about it
Hmmm… Didn’t know he was working for Arn Tellem. The radio yakkers here were saying that the sources they heard seemed to suggest that it was a deliberate switch by Boozer and/or the agent. Given Tellum’s status, it’s unlikely that he’d okay that, and the resigning seems to back that up.
Wonder if they’re giving up their percentage on the $68M?
He actually hasn’t inked the contract yet. I think the Cavs have offered $5 million this year and then a comparable multi-year after next season to try and entice him to stay.
Frankly, Booze should take the money in Utah (plus, I want Utah to have a good squad and get Sloan deep in the playoffs). He’d be stupid not to.
Hmm…$26 million or my good name…$26 million or my good name…$26 million or my good name…
I’d like to think I’d take the smaller contract and preserve my reputation, but then again, no one’s offered me an extra $26 million to renege on an unenforceable oral contract. (For the record, Boozer has responded saying that he had no oral deal with the Cavs. Not sure if I buy it.)
I do think Boozer* may * be learning right now that you can’t really put a price tag on your reputation. Tough lesson. In a way, I feel sorry for the guy. There’s no way, really, to regain what he’s lost (short of taking a HUGE gamble and accepting the Cavs’ 1-year offer).
In Boozer’s defense, I want to point out something that’s been missed:
As I understand it, the Cavs didn’t want to give Boozer a new contract until after the Olympics. That is a critical consideration. It means Boozer would have been playing through the Olympics without any security. If he were to be injured or (Odin forbid) be the victim of a terrorist attack, his family would be out of luck (save for any insurance proceeds). So I can understand why Boozer would seek financial security in his situation, to protect his family’s interests.
furt,
Greedy unprincipled liar is a bit harsh coming from someone who (I assume) was not inside the room when whatever went down went down. Boozer strongly denies there was an agreement; which, by the way, would have been illegal under the Collective Bargaining Agreement. Do you have any reason not to take him at his word?
The one reason I see is that the Cavs still had Carlos under contract for another year, that contract was signed when Boozer was a second round draft pick and was slated to pay him less than a million for the season. Now obviously Boozer’s market value is far higher than that and the Cavs wanted to pay him more in accordance with his play, but by no means did they want to release him. This is where my understanding as a casual fan gets thin, I’m led to believe the only way the team could renegotiate the contract was to not pick up their option for the up coming season therefore making Carlos a free agent. If that is true I can’t see any way the team would have gone ahead with that deal without some understanding from Boozer that he would stay in town.
Recent update, Boozer’s agent just passed on the commission he’d be due from the new contract and drooped Carlos as a client.
Then complain to someone who called him that. I didn’t.
I read somewhere that Pelinka is also Kobe Bryants agent. The article also said that the day after Bryant signs that Pelinka would be out of a job. I’ll see if I can find that story again.
I found the story.
It’s pretty complex and I don’t fully understand it either. The team had an option year on Boozer’s contract. An option is an additional year ( or years ) after the contract is over for a specified amount of pay. The option can be controlled by either the player ( who can force the team to pay him the amount of the option if he thinks he might be worth less on the open market ) or by the team ( who can keep him for less than market value ). This was a team option. For some reason the team allowed the contract to expire rather than exercising the option to keep Boozer from jumping to another team.
It’s likely the reason is that the Cavs are over the cap. The salary cap is what teams are exempt from when they use a midlevel exemption. The NBA is called a “player’s league”. The players call a lot of the shots and the Association has the prototypical “soft cap”. There are plenty of exemptions and it’s easy to go over. In fact, NBA teams usually are. The main drawback for not keeping payroll under control is that a team has a lot less flexibility with contracts. Of course, it’s nearly impossible to win if you don’t overpay players.
As for the incident itself, I think the ethics are pretty shady all around. It sounds like there was some kind of agreement or there wouldn’t the fuss. Teams normally do get mad when they lose key players to free agency but an agent quiting doesn’t happen very often. But lets be clear: Boozer is right, any type of agreement was forbidden. If one was reached both he and the team are dirty.
I hear that these are “gentleman’s agreements” which are fairly common in the sports world. Steve Phillips (ex-GM for the Mets) discussed the baseball version on a radio show. During negotiations, in order to get more time, the team would make a player elegible for arbitration. The player will take some time to “decide” about whether to accept arbitration, while the negotiations continue. They’ve already agreed to not take arbitration, and the team would be horrified if the player accepted, it’s just a way around the rules.
In the Boozer case, (from the Cav’s point of view) the agreement was to let him out of his <$1M 1 year option and sign him up 15 days later for $42M over 6 years, that’s win-win. Instead, Boozer said “Sure, I’ll do that” then as soon as the option is released, makes a deal with another team. He makes out like a bandit, and the Cav’s make out like Boozer was a bandit. From Boozer’s side, sounds like he met with them and said “I’d like to stay in Cleveland” and they dropped his option thinking this was an agreement to stay, when there wasn’t.
Speaking just as a casual fan, I’m wondering why, if the Cavs’ oral agreement with Boozer violated the collective bargaining agreement, that both the Cavs and Boozer aren’t subject to penalty. I understand that Minnnesota was sanctioned by the league for an inappropriate oral agreement with Joe Smith, but was Joe Smith ever sanctioned? It takes two to tango after all, and it seems wrong to penalize just Cleveland when the player was as much at fault as the team was.
Secondly, assuming the Cavs and Boozer did have an oral agreement, couldn’t Cleveland enforce it under the “detrimental reliance theory”, or are such things automatically voided by the terms of the collective bargaining agreement?
I don’t remember exactly what happened in the Joe Smith incident, but IIRC the T-Wolves had an oral agreement with Smith while he was still under a valid contract. If I understand the Boozer situation, the Cavs agreed to put Boozer in the position where he could negotiate a new contract with them.
My take on this is that Boozer took all of the good will that Gund put out there and crapped all over it. I think that the agent had a part in it but had second thoughts. You hear so many athletes talk about the lack of respect they feel they get from owners. If Boozer does sign with the Jazz the word disrespect had better not come out of his mouth, ever.
Another thing to consider- maybe the players union would want him to go back to Cleveland. Granted the union usually wants the players to make as much money as is possible. However, if going to Utah is going to jeprodize the future ability of team to make a good will jesture to a player, or for them to trust players to keep their word - in the long run that may be a bad thing for the union.
You certainly seem to be in the first sentence of the OP. What am I missing?
You’re missing that the OP said he didn’t want to address the question of whether he is. Then he says he supposes he might be but he can’t blame him.
It’s not an accusation, just a musing.
With all due respect, I think that’s slicing things a bit thinly. If I were to say" I’m not here to talk about whether George Bush is a baby-killing wife-beating junkie, although I suppose he might be," would you really think I had not insulted him, especially if I had no evidence to support it? I suppose it might be true that anyone on the planet is a greedy unprincipled liar. If he did not mean those words to be directed toward Boozer, why use them at all?
You realize that you are the only person in the thread to have an issue with this, don’t you? The statement was in the OP as an example of what not to discuss. Furt was trying to steer the direction of the debate away from Boozer and towards the agent, nothing more.
Actually, that’s exactly what I would think. And I think that’s what most sane people would think.
Where did the words come from? They were not in the linked article. Why did he feel the need to use them **at all ** if they were not to be part of the discussion. How is implying that someone is a greedy unprincipled liar steering the discussion away from that person? As for me being the only one having an issue with it, so what? Is my question invalid because no one else has asked it?