AJC > Sports > Hawks > Blog > Archives > 2006 > July > 14
Friday, July 14, 2006
A gentlemen’s game?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
As the trade deadline looms closer in Major League Baseball and as NFL teams sign free agents before camp opens, I am intrigued with the NBA’s “sign and trade” method. To my knowledge, no other pro sports league moves players to other teams quite like that.
Instead of simply becoming a free agent and choosing where the money is, Al Harrington will simply wait for the Hawks to sign him and then trade him to another team for players.
Amazing.
Amazing that a team would re-sign a player and trade him instead of letting him go. In this day and age, I guess I’ve gotten used to the “free-for-all” that the other sports leagues use. A better term might be, “You snooze, you lose.”
Kudos to the NBA for putting this method in place. It makes sure that some teams aren’t left holding the bag when their best player(s) leave. But, the downside is that players like Harrington are waiting, so I guess it turns the players into “cattle” more so than other leagues.
Thoughts?
