Tuesday, October 12
By Jeffrey Denberg
Special to ESPN.com
By my own unofficial count the Orlando Magic prudently reduced their load from 22 to 16 guaranteed contracts heading to training camp. They did it by waiving players like Harvey Grant ($1.1 million) and Michael Smith ($2.4) and eating their paychecks.
|  | | Harvey Grant had a short stay in Orlando. |
Why a team as bad as Orlando is going to be would dump a hard-nosed player like Michael Smith is beyond me. It was beyond the Washington Wizards, too. They signed Smith within 48 hours because he filled their need for a solid power forward.
Going into Tuesday's start of training camp, the Magic had a projected starting lineup of Michael Doleac at center, Chris Gatling at power forward, Bo Outlaw at small forward, Tariq Abdul-Wahad at shooting guard and Darrell Armstrong at point guard. Rookie Corey Maggette and second-year forward Matt Harpring play off the bench.
This team might win 30 games for rookie coach Doc Rivers. And then again it may not. Meanwhile, with season ticket sales hovering around a franchise-low 10,000, there is no sense of a plan by GM John Gabriel except that all this means his owner must pay $10 to $12 million for guys who won't play, all in a bizarre dash to accumulate final-year contracts and open up major cap room next summer. No wonder Rich "Mr. AmWay" DeVos is looking for a financial angel to bail him out.
What we're also seeing here is utter contempt for the fan who bought tickets (also see Chicago), an utter lack of responsibility to put the best possible team on the court and a way to subvert the restrictions of today's NBA tight money cap.
After the league allowed last winter's lockout to kill half the season so they could restore some semblance of financial sanity to their sport, we find at least one organization that doesn't care about that at all.
The hard reality of the NBA today is that movement has been sharply restrained by the rules set in place by owners. Teams with bloated rosters have learned that someone else may want your player, but there's no way to do business if the other guy is so capped-out he can't absorb his salary. That's what happened with the Hawks and Grizzlies over the summer. Vancouver wanted to take Ty Corbin's contract before the Hawks waived him. But the Hawks had to take this same Michael Smith to make it work. With 13 guarantees already in house, they wouldn't do it.
Strewn across the landscape last summer, the Magic dumped Penny Hardaway, Horace Grant, Nick Anderson and
Isaac Austin and picked up and discarded Danny Manning, Tim Legler, Jeff McInnis, Dale Ellis, Billy Owens, Harvey Grant, Smith and more.
"We are looking forward to a new era of Magic basketball, one which we believe will be extremely interesting with the young talent we have and will assemble," Gabriel said the other day.
I have an idea. Instead of putting the league-mandated 1,000 seats on sale for $10, DeVos ought to give $10 to every fan who bought seats, thinking he was going to see a pro team in Orlando.
I bet Tim Duncan can't wait to sign up with this bunch.
Around the league
Bison Dele (Brian Williams) says he might retire, forfeiting $34.5 million in pay, because he can't give 100 percent of his attention to the game. I don't understand. That was never a problem before.
The Detroit News took a poll and 81 percent voted the Pistons should "kick their heels for joy;" 19 percent said the Pistons should try to keep him.
"He told me that he was tired and his heart was not in it," Joe Dumars, the Pistons director of player of personnel, said. "He said he did not have the motivation to keep on playing."
"He's going through an epiphanal moment in his life," agent Dwight Manley said.
Ain't life grand?
For all the media disagreement over Ernie Grunfeld's work as GM of the New York Knicks, at least Grunfeld talked to the press. Successor Scott Layden had a 1½-hour presser with NYC's press(ecution) and mainly said he doesn't discuss team business.
Meanwhile the Knicks opened camp in the lovely port city of Charleston, S.C., while Patrick Ewing nurses his ailing Achilles and Latrell Sprewell defends himself in a civil trail in northern California.
With Ewing's ability to open the season in question and Chris Dudley rehabbing a knee ligament sprain, the Knicks signed 11-year veteran Andrew Lang, who had contemplated retirement so he could enter the ministry.
And while Sprewell may only be a day or two late, who knows when Ewing will show up, which begs the question of preparation for the Knicks. Do they set a course for the wide-open style that took them from the lottery to the NBA finals? What happens when/if Ewing returns, insisting he is still the show? What happens if Jeff Van Gundy defies Sprewell and again makes him play off the bench because that's what's best for the team?
Stay tuned for these and other warm human interest stories out of Gotham.
Pat Riley went through a summer in which he could not make a single substantive improvement in the Miami Heat (that's right, he signed Otis Thorpe).
Now, Propaganda Minister Riley is trying to sell inertia as something good to Heat fans.
"Once and for all, once and for all. Let's see what we've got this year, once and for all. Let's see who we are, once and for all. Once and for all, Zo (Alonzo Mourning). Once and for all, Tim (Hardaway). Once and for all, P.J. (Brown) and Mash (Jamal Mashburn). Show the public whether you have what it takes, once and for all. Either that, or it's time to be honest with each other. If we don't get it done now, then none of this talk of breaking things up is premature."
Once and for all, Pat, get a backup point guard.
Dennis Rodman spread the lie he would play in Milwaukee. "He'll probably play somewhere this season, I just don't know where," Bucks GM Grunfeld said.
Rodman also approached Dallas and Atlanta and maybe a dozen more teams that don't want him. Could this be the long good-bye?
Jeffrey Denberg, who covers the NBA for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, is a regular contributor to ESPN.com.
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