OK, this is it... I promise (maybe)...

["Berry, Mark S" <berrym@BATTELLE.ORG>]

One thing I forgot to address in Wallace's spin session with Josh... The
Lakers analogy and how they "had to" trade Elden Campbell, Eddie Jones and
Glen Rice to avoid having three max players. Bull. Absolute bull. They were
offering Campbell and Jones all over the league because they weren't happy
with Campbell at power forward and Jones had been effectively replaced by
Kobe. Their first target was a sign-and-trade for Tom Gugliotta. Remember
that? They were offering Jones and Campbell to Minnesota for Gugliotta, who
the Lakers were willing to give a max contract. So they would have had Shaq,
Gugs and, very soon, Kobe on max deals. They settled for Glen Rice, who they
expected to come to LA, feast on open 3-point shots and sign his own max
deal when the time came. Instead, he didn't fit and they shipped him off in
that three-way trade (a sign-and-trade by the way), where NY got Rice,
Seattle got Ewing and LA got Horace Grant, who was in the final years of his
$10 million contract.

LA made some moves with the players Wallace mentioned, but they weren't
financial moves. They were basketball moves. They were trying to build a
team to win a title and they did just that. Did they let Horace Grant walk
because his salary? Sure. But Horace Grant also was pretty much used up.
Don't think for a minute that if Horace Grant was a younger, healthier
player, the Lakers would have just let him go.

Josh, if that was the line Wallace was feeding you, he is, as my
oh-so-eloquent father would say, "full of s**t as a Christmas turkey." I'll
say this for Wallace, he can talk. Whether it's saying the NBA isn't like
the NFL, then in the next breath saying, "it's just like the NFL..." or his
"we drafted three guys to create competition" crap or his Laker fiction, he
sure can talk. Pokey Reese said this of Jim Bowden, the GM of my baseball
team, the Cincinnati Reds: "You know that man is lying when his lips are
moving." I'm beginning to get the same sort of feeling from Chris Wallace.

Mark