FanHouse DariusMiles

Every night there are some stupendous, silly, stupid, or downright outlandish individual lines from around the "lig." Doing Lines lets you know which one tops the list.

Blame the Clippers more than you credit Alvin Gentry, but whatever dude. Amar'e Stoudemire went off for 42 points on 20 FGAs, and added 11 rebounds in a second straight massive win for the Suns over L.A.'s stepchild.

Amar'e dominated the ball, taking eight more FGAs and seven more FTAs than any other Sun. That's smart for Phoenix: Stoudemire and Steve Nash (21 points, 12 assists) should be controlling the offense. And that's exactly what happened Wednesday. Cheers.

In case you missed it, Memphis gave Darius Miles some playing time on Friday, cementing his un-retirement and sticking his $9 million per year salary back on Portland's books for this year and next. The story -- so fierce a week ago -- went out quietly as Miles showed there's no controversy in his presence on the floor: dude can still play.

But Yahoo!'s Adrian Wojnarowski, who has been a central actor in revealing some facts of the matter and exposing Portland's unsuccessful attempts to make Miles radioactive, gets off one final flurry of fury at Blazers GM Kevin Pritchard.

If Portland's threat to sue in the Darius Miles saga had any teeth left, Miles himself knocked them out last night. Miles played just under 14 minutes against Cleveland, the league's No. 1 defense. He scored 13 points.

Another day, another cannonball lobbed at Portland. Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! supplies it again, revealing that before threatening to sue any team that signed Darius Miles the Blazers attempted to claim the forward off waivers.

Had Portland been successful, the team would have been on the hook for the rest of his league minimum salary for 2008-09. But the benefit would come in stashing Miles on the bench and keeping him from Games 9 and 10, games that would (err, will) halve Portland's summer cap space.

So you're the General Manager of a small-market team. You've been pretty bad for several years, and even when you were a one-and-done playoff team, the fans weren't exactly clamoring for tickets. In a town where the college basketball team rules all, you have to get a little inventive to make a buck, especially in a recession.

The Memphis Grizzlies are using a veteran with injury issues on the cheap, particularly in a way that is bad for other teams. Let me explain.

On Friday night, news slipped that Memphis signed Darius Miles to a 10-day contract which goes into effect today, giving the Grizzlies three opportunities to get Miles some run. This would not be notable if the Blazers hadn't threatened to sue any team that signed Miles for the purpose of damaging Portland's salary cap standing.

Clearly, no team really had much to fear once the NBA put out its statement Friday morning telling the league any franchise was free to sign Miles.

The Blazers stuck to their guns before Memphis signed D, even in the face of a grievance from the players union.

On Thursday we judged whether or not the potential Darius Miles un-retirement would really hurt the Blazers. For anyone still arguing it doesn't really matter ... well, they might want to explain that to the Blazers front office.

Ian Thomsen of Sports Illustrated has news of a peculiar (read: %@#$ing crazy) threat Portland president Larry Miller sent around to NBA executives this week. Here's the short letter, according to Thomsen:

The Portland Trail Blazers are aware that certain teams may be contemplating signing Darius Miles to a contract for the purpose of adversely impacting the Portland Trail Blazers Salary Cap and tax positions. Such conduct from a team would violate its fiduciary duty as an NBA joint venturer. In addition, persons or entities involved in such conduct may be individually liable to the Portland Trail Blazers for tortuously interfering with the Portland Trail Blazers' contract rights and perspective economic opportunities.

Please be aware that if a team engages in such conduct, the Portland Trail Blazers will take all necessary steps to safeguard its rights, including, without limitation, litigation.

The Blazers have already gone a few steps too far on the Miles situation, badmouthing him around the league and leaking details of his 10-game suspension to keep prospective teams from even giving him a chance. Local fans, however, remain sympathetic to the Blazers cause in this matter. But this is a mile past the line, right?

Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! dropped a bombshell on the whole Darius Miles escapade: those six preseason games Miles played in for Boston counted toward the 10 which would "un-retire" Darius and stick his $9 million back on Portland's 2009-10 salary cap figure. The understanding, furthered by Woj, is that the cap addition would cripple Portland's summmertime spending spree. (Woj's assessment: "Darius Miles is on the brink of blowing up the Blazers' salary-cap space.")

But is that really the case? Are the Blazers screwed if Miles plays two more games this season? Dave Deckard of Blazers Edge doesn't think so. Let's look into the situation in detail.

Shaun Livingston had been reported to be one of the early victims on the traditional early January guillotine. If Livingston survived Wednesday, he'd see his full-season contract guaranteed. But the team told Livingston Tuesday he'd be waived on Wednesday. Miami instead shipped Shaun to Memphis for a conditional future second-rounder. [UPDATE: Memphis waived Livingston.]

Meanwhile in Memphis, Darius Miles saw his shot at a real comeback delayed (at least) as the Grizzlies cut him before his guaranteed contract kicked in. Miles has been with Memphis for a while, serving a 10-game suspension earned for alleged use of banned diet pills before playing limited minutes in two games for the Grizzlies. Portland's cap space gets a last-minute (possibly temporary) pardon from Memphis, I suppose.

The Clips played facilitator over the past two days. On Tuesday, L.A. took Cheikh Samb off Denver's hands in a Nuggets salary dump. (A minor one, at that.) Similarly, Toronto sent cheap swingman Hassan Adams to the Clippers Wednesday. L.A. promptly cut Adams.

Why even do this trade? The Raps could have cut Adams to prevent the guarantee of his full-season contract. But doing so would have set the already paid portion (a few hundred grand) against the team's 2008-09 cap. If Toronto ends up over the luxury tax line (likely), every dollar on the cap figure matters. L.A. is under the tax line, so the few hundred grand tagged as Adams' cap figure won't hurt at season's end (and L.A. isn't paying a dime of it). Team cap figures are calculated at season's end, so you'll see more meaningless moves like this in February.

Every time I sit down to watch a Grizzlies game, I know I'll be getting one of two teams.

The Good Grizzlies are young, athletic, and hungry. They play defense with focus and intensity, they rebound, they rely on terrific plays from Rudy Gay slashing and OJ Mayo nailing jumpers, and Marc Gasol beasting around the interior. Their role players don't turn the ball over, and Hakim Warrick provides the spark off the bench while Marc Iavaroni manages good rotations and timely, effective timeouts.

The Bad Grizzlies make immature decisions, foolish passes, execute poorly, get freaked out on defense when a team comes right at them, fail to crash the boards and let Kyle Lowry shoot a lot.

Today was a Good Grizzlies day.

There's a lot to be said about the Grizzlies' 102-82 win over the Mavericks, which snapped a 13 game losing streak to the division "rivals." And a lot of it has to do with things like Jason Kidd, Erick Dampier, and Devean George, three of the starting five, combining for a whopping five points and six assists. There's surely a lot of negativity on the Mavs' plane tonight, but they should save some respect for the Grizzlies, who put out their most complete performance in several weeks.

And as has become the norm, O.J. Mayo was at the front of the charge.