I'm sick of hearing news about where Paul and Dwight want to play. I think they should include some performance clauses directly in their contracts like: 1. No player request to be traded. 2. No player can comment on the possibility of signing an extension from any prospective trading partner.
I would rather have a few superstars take hostage of a franchise than a franchise take hostage of every single player in the NBA. If you want to be successful you got to build a successful team; if you don't then why in the hell do you deserve to keep a top five player? Like I said before, incentivize staying... don't punish leaving. Having superstars dictate things like that will help the GMs actually do their job instead of just getting a superstar and then laying back for the next however many years. Look at Houston: Did Yao or Tracy ever ask to get traded? No. Because management didn't piss them off by being complacent. (Tracy asked to get traded because he didn't get minutes from the coach, not because the front office screwed him over). And then you see the Hornets with arguably the worst collage of role players built around Chris Paul since the Cavaliers squad around LeBron James. Why impose a double standard for players and not the Front Office? You can only play as well as your teammates, if your team sucks then that's not your fault. It's the GM's fault. If the player individually doesn't play up to par, then its his fault. Its not the player's fault if he continues to dominate and yet still lose playoff series after playoff series. Dwight and Chris have earned the right to get out. Its not like either franchise is even trying to improve the team anymore...
^Tracy asked to be traded, actually. The problem is that players only want to play in a select few cities.
You know, I don't remember Shaq making it a big deal before he signed as FA with the Lakers, bet the Magic wished he'd let them know he was leaving ahead of time. I bet the Cavs wished Lebron had made a decision ahead of time and let them know, Raptors would've probably benefited from trading Bosh before the FA too. Players thinking about leaving are actually doing a service to their teams by letting them know, a lot of times (like D. Howard), you don't actually hear them say they want out publicly. I bet it's the organization leaking the news out most of the time so it doesn't look as bad when they do trade away their star player. Of course Deron Williams played it the best so far. I want to come back but will evaluate the situation, which was what Lebron did and would've been ok had he not done it on live television as a prime time special.
That a player would leave in free agency is a risk any team should recognize. On the other hand, a player forcing his team to trade him and limiting the team's options by giving a list of select teams he would like to be traded for shouldn't.
