Smaller story but you may be interested. The Philadelphia "76ers" have ceased trying to accommodate the trade request of James "Beard" Harden to his preferred destination, LAC. Beard is under contract and the "Sixers" expect him to report to them for camp. What does this have to do with the price of tea in China or the price of Dame in Portlandia?
Well, I feel the heavy, soft-soled shoe of Adam Silver on both. Adam has a pronounced distaste for stars under contract forcing their way to another team. K.D., Kyrie, Baby Ben join repeat offender Beard on Adam's watch list and Adam is most vigilant of these waywards. Add Damian Lillard to his list.
Adam has created a new template and Philly and Portlandia are using it to create hardened (no pun intended) molds. Both expressed desire to accommodate their stars in their trade requests, Philly tried but when there is only one designated destination the market is constricted from thirty to one and there is the whiff of trade restraint in the anti-trust sense. A contract is a serious thing. It is malleable, if both contracting parties are of the same mind, but if they are not the contract is a binding thing. That's the way they work. I sense in Portland, I don't know enough about the Philly situation, that Joe Cronin has fashioned a hardened mold for Dame. He doesn't like the shoes Miami is selling and is not going to pinch his toes for the next years by being forced to wear them. Cronin is not even negotiating with Miami! He's not interested. Cronin is within his rights, as Philly was, and Adam Silver is right. A contract is a serious, binding thing. It is my sense now, after Adam's Lillard Memo, after the Beard situation, that Cronin is not going to trade Dame to Miami before the start of training camp, that he is going to have Dame report to Portland's training camp and Miami can leave and take its shitty shoes with them. Dame has been Bearded.
