Transcript of Larry Miller's teleconference

Trail Blazers president Larry Miller held a press conference Friday night to address the ongoing situation with Darius Miles and what Miller perceived to be potentially malicious attempts by other teams to harm the Blazers financially by signing Miles long enough to play him in two games, which would cause the salary for the final two years of Miles' contract to return to the Blazers' books.

Below is a complete transcript of Miller's teleconference:

Have you received any contact from other general managers for the NBA regarding your e-mail last night?
We have received a couple.

And what was the response and how many have you received?
Uh, like I said, we received a couple and the response was mixed. Some were positive, and some didn’t agree with what we did.

Can you just explain what the thought process was for that e-mail?
Absolutely. The thought process was we would, did this with the sole purpose of protecting our organization. We were hearing a lot of rumblings and rumors that there were teams out there that were planning to sign Darius Miles specifically and maliciously to hurt our organization. And this was our way of responding to that and letting folks know that we weren’t going to take it sitting down. And we composed the letter and sent it out to all the teams. And again, the sole purpose was to protect this organizataion from malicious activity from other teams.

When did you send this out and how would you prove if another team was signing them for the purpose of specifically hurting you guys?
We sent it out last night. And we’ll cross that bridge if and when we come to it. But we did have information that led us to believe that teams were at least thinking about and considering this.

Have you heard from David Stern today or the league office? Heard from them at all?
I have not.

Did you contact Commissioner Stern or the league office before you sent this e-mail out?
Yes I did.

And what was their response?
I told them what we were going to send out, and they said if that’s what we felt we needed to do, we should do it.

There’s been suggestion from the union, and I’ve heard this elsewhere, too, that this could be interpreted as an attempt at collusion, which obviously opens up a whole new can of worms and legal actions. Any concerns along those lines?
Well, again, our purpose here was not in any way to keep Darius from being able to play. If he can come back and help a team to win and play at a level on the court that is, again, helps the team, then we have no problem with that at all. Our issue is that if a team is trying to do something malicious to hurt us financially. And that’s why we took the action that we did.

Who made this decision in your organization to take this unusual step?
It was a joint decision among the senior leadership here at the organization, including the entire senior leadership team. We talked about it, discussed it, and decided that it was, we felt it was the right thing to do.

Other than yourself, and I assume Mr. Allen is involved in it, who else is in that senior leadership?
Uh, Kevin Pritchard, Tod Leiweke. It was basically the four of us.

What about Mr. Allen?
You asked about Mr. Allen, and I said yes.

We’re at the point of the season now where teams do sign players to 10-day contracts for a number of different reasons — injuries, because their record isn’t very good, because they’re looking to improve their talent level. If a team does that with Darius without any malice toward you guys, I guess where I’m getting at is, how do you prove that they have malice toward you by signing someone to a 10-day contract at this point in the season?
When we come to that — if and when we come to that — we will address that. But our issue was we heard a lot of rumblings, a lot of rumors, that teams were thinking about and considering doing this from a malicious perspective, not from the perspective that Darius could help their team, but from the perspective that they could hurt the Trail Blazers. And that’s what prompted us to take this action.

Can you just discuss why you chose the timing for releasing the letter that you did? Was it because Darius was about to clear waivers, or did you feel that one of those teams was about to try to claim him? Or was there another reason?
It was the fact that he was about to clear waivers and we knew that with him clearing waivers then a team could sign him to a 10-day contract and, again, do it for malicious purposes. And that was what spurred us.

You mentioned the four people who vetted it. Did you run it past any of Vulcan’s attorneys or anyone like that?
No, it was a business decision.

So attorneys didn’t play a role? They weren’t involved in the process?
Well, whenenever we make these kinds of decisions, we always make sure that our attorneys are involved and that we run it by them and make sure that we’re not doing anything that’s gonna get us in trouble, we hope. But the decision was made by the group that I mentioned.

What is your response to the Players Association release they sent out that said they would vigorously defend Miles?
Hey, that’s their job. And we have no problem with that, because again, we’re not trying to do anything to hurt Darius Miles. This is not about Darius. Like I said, this is about other teams trying to hurt us.

If you do end up having to take action, are there routes you can take within the league to address this, or would you pursue options in court or outside the league?
Again, we’ll address that if and when it comes to it, and we’ll figure out what’s the most effective way to address it.

I’m sure you guys probably anticipated some backlash coming out on this whole matter. Would you change anything about the way you guys handled it?
I wouldn’t. I think there have been some folks that have thought this was not the right approach, but by the same token there weere people who thought that we did take the right approach. So at this point we wouldn’t change the way we approached this. Again, we’re trying to protect our organization, our franchise. If you guys know anything about where this organization is today and where it’s come from, we’ve had some significant improvements over the last few years. Fans and the community have reconnected with this team. We’ve got a great group of young players who are exciting and put on a good show for the fans every night, and we’re trying to do everything we can to protect that. So one of the goals we’ve been working toward is to get this business to break even, which we still have not gotten to. Paul Allen has been the benevolent owner and sank a lot of money into this organization, and our goal is to try to get this organization to a point where it can break even. And so anything that threatens our financial viability, that we feel is not fair or we feel is being done maliciously, we’re gonna not sit down and take it.

I understand that the financial end of this is large and these are huge numbers, but how much of this also is about flexibility, the cap space you could use in either of the next two summers, and possibly losing that?
That is a part of it. So it’s the financial impact to the business, but it also is our flexibility from a cap-space perspective. That was one of the factors that we took into account.

Were you at all worried about this becoming a distraction to the team right now, this season?
Not at all. Our coach is one of the best young coaches in the league and I think he’s got our guys playing well and focused, and I think this will not be a distraction for our team.

You had mentioned that you heard rumors and mumblings. Did you have knowledge that a specific team that was planning to do this under the way that you saw it as being malicious?
Uh, I’m not going to go there right now. But we did hear a lot of rumblings and rumors about different teams that were maybe considering this. And we felt this was a way for us to try to protect our organization.

Could you do me a favor and run through the numbers again? What I’ve heard is that it would be, like, a $7.9 million hit if he plays two more games with another team?
I’m not going to give specific numbers. You’re in the ballpark.