mcsluggo said:
That is plain and simply wrong. He signed a contract which stipulated that he may be traded: since he has been traded, this means that he can no longer demand that houston pay him. That is all. However, he ALWAYS has the option to withdraw his services entirely.
The military is the ONLY job where you are not allowed to withdraw your services at a later date, except in cases where payment for the services has already taken place.
No actually, that is simply wrong:
Jim Jackson is, or was, an asset.
He is also among the most ridiculously overpaid people on the planet. Now how do they get so overpaid? Well, they play in a fabulously successful sporting league. And how does the fabulously successful sporting league get so successful? In significant part because it has developed a set of rules, bargained for between the owners and players, which allow both sides to benefit, and critically also allow for competitive balance among the various teams. Fans in Sacramento care as much about the league as fans in New York because their team has hope as long as players follow the rules. If players do not follow the rules, do not get off that plane to the bad franchise, THE ENTIRE LEAGUE suffers from their conduct.
Now to the punchline.
Jim Jackson has committed at least 4 wrongs in the course of his selfishness:
1) he is guilty of fraud. He signed a contract with an explicit stipulation that he could be traded to any team, and obviously never had any intention of honoring that clause. He should have to pay back not only the remaining years on the contract, but some percentage of the last year and a half as well. He could NOT have signed that contract for as much money if people knew that he was including an absolute trade veto/be a little ***** clause. Nobody would have wanted to pay him that much money if they knew they were stuck with him. He may have still been able to sign A contract, but almost certainly for less money or a shorter term. He signed his contract under false pretenses. If he wanted total control of his future he should have signed one year deals at most.
2) he is guilty of breach of contract. Obviously. That, by the way, is illegal in case you did not know. If people cannot be trusted to live up to the written agreements they enter into, then the whole economy goes to hell as nobody can be trusted to do anything that they promise to do. More specifically in the NBA setting, the entire bargained for structure of player movement, bargained for BTW precisely to allow small markets/struggling teams like New orleans to compete and recover, collapses. Of COURSE nobody wants to go to New Orleans. But that is not relevant. If everybody actually starts refusing to do so then the Hornets franchise is dead and can never recover, just as Sacramento would have been dead and likely relocated if Mitch or Webb had taken the next selfish step from unhappiness to outright refusal to play for a dregs team. Without hope, the fans go away. JJ is a minor player at this point, but that's irrelevant. He has hurt the entire league through his actions. If he were a superstar, it would be a huge problem. As it is, it is still a problem.
3) He owes New Orleans some amount of money for services not rendered. You see, while JJ does not seem to feel he is bound by the CBA, everybody else in the league is. Thus New Orleans is now lacking a player they were depending upon, and have no option to replace him beyond the rules set down in the CBA. Thus instead of a steady veteran player in Wesley, or an equally steady veteran player in Jackson, at best they can pick up a crappy player sitting on the waiver wire. That is NOT what they intended or deserved. If it were, they would have traded Wesley to a team for somebody with an expiring contract or somebody injured rather than for another aging vet with another year left on his deal who just happens to play a position where they lost their starter for the year. Any money saved does New Orleans very little good this year, as there are simply no players left to use it on. JJ has left the Hornets high and dry in the midst of an historically bad season and helped make it even worse. If Mike Bibby stormed off tommorow and refused to play anymore this year we would NOT be just as well off getting the money back from his contract as we would be with him playing. We would have no one to spend it on. NBA players are not freely replaceable assets. Everybody but JJ is bound by the CBA and can only replace players at certain times in certain ways according to vastly detailed bargained for regulations. This is NOT a free market. NOT a for hire economy.
4) He has irrevocably harmed the Hornets franchise. Not only has he cost them wins, or at least competitiveness this season to help hold together their fanbase, but he has effectively slandered the franchise by declaring it beneath him. He leads by example. And that latter charge is especially serious because not only does it further damage the Hornets fanbase -- nobody wants to play here so what's there to cheer for? -- but it also is a black mark that must be overcome in future player transactions. What player wants to go play for a frachise that nobody else wants to play for? That players will in fact breach their contracts to avoid? Must be something really awful about the place. Through his actions JJ relegates the Hornets to second class franchise status with a smaller pool of available talent to choose from in putting together their team. The Lakers get to pick from every player in the league. The Hornets only get to pick from every player in the league willing to play for them. As mentioned above, longtime Kings fans know this syndrome. We've been there.
The Players Union should feel no compulsion to intervene on his behalf. He is, after all, breaching terms of a standard NBA contract that the union has negotiated for. And in doing so he has hurt one of the franchises in the league, and thus the league itself, and through the league the players. It certainly does not benefit the remainder of the players who still honor their contracts and intend to continue playing in the league to have one of its franchises damaged and fans potentially lost. Every viable NBA franchise provides another 12-15 jobs to members of the union worth about $50 million in salaries on average. Besides which, by doing all of this is JJ is effectively no longer an NBA player.
The League should bar Jackson from ever playing in the NBA again if he persists. He has blatantly violated the terms of the CBA, and thus the terms to which all players agree before being allowed to play in the NBA, and damaged a franchise. Furthermore he has shown a lack of respect for the sanctity of an NBA contract and should never be allowed to have the opportuinity to do so again. Competitive balance is destroyed if you allow a player to simply unilaterally breach his contract whenever he does not want to play for a particular team and then return to play for the team of his choice.
