Bad news for the Cavs today. Jason Kidd has been traded and he isn’t coming to Cleveland. He is headed to Dallas to play for the Mavericks. But the key to making the deal work, since Devean George used his no-trade abilities was a retired Keith Van Horn signing a $4,000,000 deal just so he could be traded to New Jersey to match cap dollars. When the geniuses behind the salary cap put the rules in place, I don’t think this is what they had in mind.
Keith Van Horn hasn’t played a minute of basketball since 2005-06. He has enjoyed being retired and being a dad. For whatever reason, Dallas still has KVH’s rights as a player even though he isn’t under contract. As a result, they can (apparently) sign him and trade him (and his salary) to another team to make sure that they measure up.
As a result, KVH signed a $4,000,000 deal to be traded to New Jersey and apparently he only has to report for duty for about 30 days. That works out to an unbelievable $133,333.33 per day for 30 days so that someone could send their best player to another team. Someone tell me why this makes sense to run a league this way?
I don’t have my thoughts together on this yet, but here are a couple of thoughts.
- How is this good for the game of basketball to have worthless players attached to deals?
- If the owners “locked out” the players in the late 90′s and they had all the bargaining power, how is it that the players seem to be winning out BIG TIME right now.
- Even if this is technically within the rules of trading, it isn’t good for the game for one team to basically trade their best player to clear out cap space.
- When transactions get this complicated it isn’t good for the fanbase to try and follow.
Maybe when I get a cohesive argument together and a possible solution I will write more. For now, I wish I was Keith Van Horn and that is about all I know.
