As a longtime Dallas Mavericks fan, I have to comment on this matter right away.
What Deandre Jordan and the L.A. Clippers Officials did today was an absolute DISGRACE to everybody who values honesty and sincerity in the NBA.
Personally, I used to like the Clippers for their efforts to turn a perpetually unsuccessful franchise around, but with this move, I have lost ALL of my respect for Deandre, Steve Ballmer, Doc Rivers and everybody else involved and with them nothing but the worst for their future.
If media reports are true, then Deandre is the main one to blame for
1. verbally agreeing to sign with Dallas, thus making Dallas stop reaching out to other free agent centers
2. getting second thoughts on his "decision" after a couple of days without any significant changes in either team
3. Calling Doc Rivers about those second thoughts
and finally
4. Breaking his word and going back to LAC.
But my anger at the Clippers franchise is just as justified:
While I understand their urge to resign DJ, I must say that I hate their methods:
1. They only went all-in and allegedly sent a 5+-man-delegation including their owner, coach and two all-star-players, after DJ had committed to Dallas. They could have done that right away on the 1st of July, as Dallas did with Dirk Nowitzki, Chandler Parsons and Mark Cuban.
2. Even if it is legally allowed due to the moratorium, it is morally highly questionable to convince a player to break his word, and definitely highly unfair to 29 other teams and 500+ other NBA-Players, who might have second thoughts about decisions as well, but are honorable enough to act accordingly to their promises. And more importantly: Everybody has to worry now, what their "verbal agreements" are really worth. It may also shake up current agreements as the MAVS now have literally no valuable free agent center still available on the market and from my perspective, they would have every moral right to try to "pull of a Jordan" as well, although I hope that they are classier and now have to live with this decision, a decision which honestly as a Mavs Fan probably makes the difference from being a good Playoff-team to having a hard time of avoiding the lottery.
3. The Clippers allegedly prevented DJ from meeting with Dallas one more time by staying with him until he would sign his contract. This is unheard of and an absolute scandal.
I know this happened before, but the difference this time is one the one hand the importance of the player: DJ would have been a face of the franchise for future years to come in Dallas.
and on the other hand: the time that passed from Jordan's verbal agreement to his change of mind.
As I mentioned before, this is the most significant reason, since the entire free agent market has already changed and all the potential replacements have already commited to another team.
I am outraged about all those things and as a German NBA-fan, it makes me especially sad that the indecison of one player and the questionable methods of a team might have ruined the last two seasons of Dirk Nowitzki's hall-of-fame-career.
Sincerly,
Max Schröder
