July 8th was perhaps the most absurd day ever to occur in the history of NBA free agency. Reports surfaced late morning indicating that the Los Angeles Clippers were once more reaching out to center DeAndre Jordan in a last ditch effort to entice him to stay with their organization. Days before, Jordan verbally committed to a four-year, $80 million deal with the Dallas Mavericks. What ensued was an emoji-laden, wild, obnoxious, and unprecedented chain of events that concluded with Jordan re-signing with the Clippers.
After the early reports, Twitter sprang to life. New reports kept rolling in about Clippers players on their way to Jordan's home in Houston. Blake Griffin, Chris Paul, Paul Pierce (who verbally agreed to terms with the team recently), and J.J. Redick all joined head coach Doc Rivers to convince Jordan to stay. All of them, save for Rivers, indicated they were traveling to Houston on Twitter via transportation emojis. Pierce, however, used a picture of an emoji rocket ship rather than the actual emoji itself. Yes, this is the world we live in.
Chandler Parsons, though, who played a major role in the initial wooing of Jordan, got things started by tweeting an emoji airplane indicating he was on his way to meet with his would-be teammate. Reports also indicated that Mavs owner Mark Cuban was on his way to Houston to encourage Jordan to stick to his verbal agreement with the Mavericks.
As the day progressed, reports (there were a lot of them) indicated that Jordan felt like he made the wrong choice and reached out to both Griffin and Rivers on Monday. This is apparently what prompted the Clippers to move quickly, bypassing Jordan's agent Dan Fegan, to talk to the All Star center.
Word then spread that the Mavericks would be granted a sit-down meeting with Jordan after he met with the Clippers. That, unfortunately, didn't occur. Instead, the Clippers refused to leave Jordan's home, staying with him until he could officially re-sign with the team at midnight. They wouldn't even let his agent be present. Reports suggested that Cuban was frantically trying to contact Jordan, to no avail. To an outsider, the scene as described appears childish and unbecoming of a professional sports organization. That notion is only buoyed by an image of a chair propped up against a door that Griffin tweeted, allegedly from inside Jordan's home.
And just like that, played out in a series of tweets before our eyes, the Mavericks lost the biggest free agent the team thought it had acquired.
So, what happened? Who should we point fingers at? Who's to blame? Frankly, it's Jordan. He verbally committed to Dallas and then backed out of that decision. The choice to refuse to meet with Cuban again on Wednesday night was also his. He chose to hide from the reality of his situation. He didn't have to act on his arrangement to the Mavs and he certainly didn't have to meet with them. Everything he did was his prerogative.
The verbal agreement that Jordan entered into with the Mavericks occurred during the NBA's free agent moratorium period. From July 1st through July 8th, players and teams can meet to discuss potential future agreements. Nothing, however, is binding during this period. Instead, binding agreements, unless otherwise noted by the collective bargaining agreement, can only happen beginning on July 9th.
Jordan's reversal during the moratorium will leave a black eye on the NBA until the league changes its rules. The moratorium is in place to prevent teams and players from having an unfair advantage in free agency. Team officials are not even supposed to talk about free agents publicly. They will be subject to fine if they do so. Cuban was recently fined after comments he made about acquiring Jordan's talents. Those were happier times, to be sure.
In today's web-dominant era, the NBA's moratorium period is out of place. Players, agents, teams, and the media are more intertwined than ever. This is evidenced by this whole scenario taking place on Twitter. Everyone is talking to each other. Though it may not fit the NBA's legal definition of tampering, this level of intercommunication allowed something to happen. DeAndre Jordan is now the poster child of that something and it leaves one wondering if everything that transpired was on the level. Mark Cuban is certainly wondering that at this point.
If Cuban does decide to press the issue, as he is sometimes wont to do, he does have legal avenues to pursue. They are outlined superbly in this post. Since I am not a lawyer, I will not even try to explain them. There are options, though.
Further, this situation is a damming reminder that the Mavericks have done little to help themselves by building a core of players through the draft or acquiring young assets through trades and free agency. No, there is no way Dallas could have predicted Jordan would flip-flop on them, but they have to live with his decision and a near gutted roster. Wesley Matthews, who will reportedly still sign with the Mavs in spite of everything, becomes the consolation prize. How the rest of the roster will fill out is anyone's guess now.
In the comments Cuban made that got him fined, he mentioned that the team would tank if they didn't land Jordan. It's hard to see that happening at this point but it's always an option. This extremely humbling experience will hopefully teach the front office to pay more attention to the draft in the future. No one receives a trophy just for trying in free agency.
What happened on Wednesday, July 8th belongs in the record books. It was also, however, one of the more sophomoric chapters in NBA history. Yet, it lends itself as a learning experience for both the league and the Mavericks. The NBA must update its moratorium policy lest Jordan set a precedent. It also must look into the circumstances surrounding his reversal to be sure that nothing that occurred was a rules violation.
As for the Mavericks, being on the wrong side of history yet again should be a wakeup call. They have to completely overhaul their strategy of team building going forward. There are only so many times that a team can come up empty. It wasn't their fault that Jordan backed out. However, they have to live with the hand they dealt themselves.
