Yahoo! Sports’ Adrian Wojnarowski just reported that the magic number of games (10) that Darius Miles needs to play this season to mar the Blazers’ salary cap includes preseason, meaning those six with the Celtics count, as do the two he just played with the Grizzlies.
The plus side for the Blazers? The Grizz traded a second-round pick to the Heat on Tuesday for Shaun Livingston, and they waived Miles to make room for him (I guess they decided that one almost-seven-foot HS-to-NBA prodigy with knee problems was better than the other), then promptly waived Livingston (I guess not).
At this point, Miles has already served his ten game drug-suspension, so any team is free to sign Miles to a ten-day contract, play him twice, waive him, and watch the $9 million/season over the next two go back on the Blazers books. It would also put the Blazers over the salary cap, meaning any team under the cap would also receive a cool $250K from the Blazers via luxury tax, although obviously the main concern is that the Blazers lose that “great free agent destination” status when they halve their available salary for this summer. Yahoo! hypothesized that the Blazers could theoretically sign Miles and plant him firmly on the bench, thus ensuring he never plays two games this season. That would be really cool, and Kevin Pritchard is probably smart enough to do that (btw, apparently he’s known the preseason games counted this entire time but tried to keep it quite so vindictive GMs wouldn’t know) but it’s likely David Stern wouldn’t allow it.
Anyway, we’ll keep you updated as to the exploits of Jordan Brand’s all-time greatest ambassador.