Portland's Darius Miles Peril Close, Or Is It?

As I understand it, Darius Miles logged two games for the Grizzles this week (a team that should give him a lifetime achievement award) before being dropped to make room for Shaun Livingston, who was then promptly released. And with that, a chapter in my life officially came to a close.

But the real story, as it's been all season, is how close Miles can get to sullying that salary cap Eden Kevin Pritchard has so carefully constructed down in Portland. Today, Adrian Wojnarowski reports a shocker: Those preseason games Miles played for Boston count toward that magic, or Satanic, number of ten, which means Darius just needs two more active appearances to kill an entire city's dreams. And that Portland's known this all along—they've just had no reason to spill the beans of doom.

Miles is in a weird spot, a pawn in a game. A prawn? He kind of looks like one. Anyway, Miles wants to come back to the league. But while it's looking less and less like he'll ever stick on an NBA roster again, and he gets paid either way, more than a few teams would love to make sure he gets in those last couple of games. Incidentally, Portland's known all along that the number was lower, they just hadn't advertised it. Which perhaps explains this invidious passage from AWOJ's piece:

Most NBA executives are reveling in the fact that clogging the Portland cap could be a way to slow the rapid rise of the franchise. Beyond that, there is a level of jealousy over the way that Portland's owner, Paul Allen, buys up draft picks from poorer teams for his GM to use.

See, this strikes me as hilarious. Kevin Pritchard may be sneaky, but he's also arguably the best GM in the league. Almost all the rest of them fall toward the other end of the competence spectrum. It's like instead of aspiring to his level of mastery, these other dudes would prefer to drag Pritchard into the much with them. That's both depressing, a reinforcement of mediocrity, and just a little too personal. You can feel the resentment dripping off of this "NBA executive are reveling" sentence. It's like, dudes, make your own teams better. Don't hate on the guy who does his job right. Now, of course strategically, screwing Portland is the right move. It's just a little conspicuous when, rather than do their own jobs and elevating their respective teams, the best many execs can come with is to take advantage of a fluke situation to bring Pritchard down.

In other news, I will spend the rest of my morning waiting for Ziller to screw up, so I can leave a bunch of anonymous comments that tarnish his good name forever. But seriously folks, there might not even be that much for Portland to worry about. Or at least that's the case made by Dave at Blazer's Edge. All vulture-ish GM's circling Portland's bright future should read this one. It will probably ruin their week of schadenfreude. Secret weapon: Raef Freakin' Lafrentz.

This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.