08-10-2021, 01:13 PM
From Marc Stein:
Quote:When Miami exercised Goran Dragić’s $19.4 million team option for next season on Free Agency Eve on Aug. 1, its willingness to surrender salary-cap space to retain Dragić suggested to numerous rival teams that the Heat knew they were getting a free-agent commitment from Lowry and knew they had a sign-and-trade deal in place with Toronto. The Heat will undoubtedly counter by insisting that they did nothing wrong — that they were able to construct a sign-and-trade so swiftly by leaning on knowledge gained from their extensive discussions with the Raptors on a potential Lowry deal before the March 25 trade deadline. Miami is likewise sure to point to Lowry’s status as the godfather of Heat star Jimmy Butler’s daughter as a further connection between the parties, since league officials have long held that policing player-to-player discussion is something they intend to avoid absent proof that the player is operating as a proxy for his own front office.
How Chicago hopes to dodge trouble is less clear. The Bulls and Pelicans indeed discussed various deal scenarios featuring Ball before the trade deadline like the Heat and Raptors, but the sign-and-trade agreement they ultimately struck was the summer’s first prominently reported done deal. Power agent Rich Paul, who represents Ball, told The Athletic right at 6 p.m. ET on Aug. 2 (see enclosed tweet) that Ball was headed to the Bulls on a four-year, $85 million deal. One minute later, at 6:01 p.m., Paul told ESPN (see the second enclosed tweet) that the deal sending Ball to Chicago was a sign-and-trade. When the agent issues such confirmations with name attached, they are treated as fact. How could the Bulls and Pelicans have hashed out a full sign-and-trade agreement in one minute if the parameters weren’t discussed in advance?
Numerous teams have complained that the rush they feel to engage in free-agent discussions before they are actually permissible stems from agent pressure, as well as the corresponding fears of being left out of the transaction fest if they don’t participate. That certainly does not absolve teams from participation — it’s way too convenient to pass off blame in that manner — but front offices tend to be the party with the most to lose, since typically only teams get sanctioned for tampering violations. The NBA has limited-to-no jurisdiction over agents, who are governed by the Players Association.
Quote:What are the chances that either one of these sign-and-trades, or both, is voided by the league?
Slim to none. “Unwinding” one of these deals, to use the insider term for dismantling an NBA transaction, is probably the only measure that the league could take to truly dissuade such overt rule-breaking, but no one I’ve encountered in recent days expects either sign-and-trade to be rescinded after both deals were publicly announced as complete.
Yet if wrongdoing is ultimately proven, Miami and Chicago have to be, at the very least, hit harder than Milwaukee was last offseason. The Bucks were fined $50,000 and docked a future second-round pick after ESPN reported that they had already reached an agreement on a sign-and-trade transaction that would land them Sacramento restricted free agent Bogdan Bogdanović … more than three days before free-agent discussions of any kind were allowed to start.
The Bucks’ sanctions were modest in large part because they lost the player. Bogdanović and his representatives insisted that they never agreed to anything with the Bucks and he wound up signing a four-year, $72 million deal with Atlanta.
If the Heat end up with Lowry and the Bulls get to keep Ball, Milwaukee will have ample justification to protest louder than anyone, provided those teams are found to have committed violations. Fairness dictates that Miami and Chicago, in that scenario, must be fined larger amounts and/or stripped of more valuable draft capital.
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