Deng Traded to Cleveland Cavaliers

[throatybeard]

First, let me congratulate Gthoma for inventing a new word, "recouperate," for reclaiming money. I see a lot of uses for the word, and maybe it will enter the English lexicon.

Just wait until the Yankees misrecouperate all that money they committed to Alex Rodriguez.

[Gthoma2a]

Just wait until the Yankees misrecouperate all that money they committed to Alex Rodriguez.

As a Yankees fan, that money has been "misrecouperated" for a while now.

[ice-9]

Wow...where to start?

My employer certainly wouldn't be involved with my hospitalization. Would yours? They also wouldn't likely come see me in the hospital, though who knows?

Well, I visited an employee who had dengue fever for one. I also visited another employee in the maternity ward after she gave birth.

My company isn't big enough to have doctors on staff, but if it did, I assure you those doctors would have paid more attention to my $100 million dollar hospitalized asset. It's the smart thing to do, and it also happens to be the right thing to do.

And as cato pointed out, it's not just the misdiagnosis or even the lack of attention -- it's about challenging Deng's manhood in the press. Why would you do something like that to the league's leader in minutes? Of someone who's done everything that was asked of him? Hasn't Deng earned a certain level of respect?

Huh? The trainers made a diagnosis. Based on that diagnosis, the team (and Deng) thought he would be able to play. It was later found that the diagnosis was wrong. Why should heads roll? Sometimes docs make mistakes. It stinks, but it happens. They didn 't knowingly suggest he play through a stress fracture.

It's not about the misdiagnosis, it's about the lack of respect. I don't know why you're not seeing this.

But the reality is that - while they aren't warm and fuzzy - the Bulls organization not the evil, heartless organization depicted by the romantics but is basically just a typical business running with the goal of making money.

The point here is that they didn't treat Deng well -- Deng of all people! The ultimate teammate, a superlative individual contributor, a humanitarian for God's sake; if you can't do right by such a person (and I'm NOT talking about a huge contract), I don't know what that says about the character of your organization.

They certainly value their employees - so long as those employees help them make profit and/or win championships. The ones that get caught up in emotional loyalty generally wind up making bad deals that hurt the team.

It's about treating Deng like a person and not just an asset. Visiting him in the hospital; not challenging him in the public press to play through his injuries; putting him on the roster as possible to play on the day he got a spinal tap; being straight with him about his contract situation instead of the complete lack of communication; for not giving lowball contract offers and then pretending to the press they tried to keep him; etc. etc.

You can run a business without making emotional, bad deals and STILL treat your staff like human beings. I don't know where you work CDu to make you think this is not possible.

I think this was a sensationalist piece by an SB Nation contributor. Not a true reflection of the Bulls' feelings toward Deng. They've taken a couple of unfortunate incidents over a 10-year period and spun them into this image of a heartless organization. And the average reader has bought it.

I'm struggling to understand your intent here. By calling the author an SB Nation contributor, are you saying he doesn't have credibility? And that you the above average reader knows better? CDu maybe you should post an article on SB Nation too and put your views on record.

I don't know enough about the situation to get into a detailed debate -- but your replies have failed to sway me from the premise that the Bulls' organization mistreated Deng. The SB Nation contributor and the various authors he linked to (and the authors they linked to) have put forward a MUCH more compelling case.

I'm open to be convinced otherwise but remain unconvinced.

I mean, if the Bulls as an organization treated Deng as bad as this article suggests, why would he be upset about leaving them? Why would he have said he wanted to retire as a Bull, and that he wanted to discuss an extension? Seems like the first thing he'd want to do is get out of there, right?

Easy answer - Deng loves his coach and his teammates. And having had a nomadic childhood where he constantly moved from place to place, Chicago is also the only place he's been in for more than five years.

"You will hear a lot of can't and a lot of won't, but you give it everything you can because you believe in yourself and your teammates. You push yourself with your heart, mind and soul, and smile every night knowing you put love and passion into it. Thank you, Chicago."

Third, it is really bad for external relations (and ticket sales) to treat a player shabbily, esp. a figure as sympathetic as Luol, who gives so much to other people. Therefore, I am pretty skeptical of the article referenced by the OP.

sagegrouse, I encourage you to explore the links within the article, and the links from those links, to see what others have said of the topic. There's little to no dispute as to what factually happened, just how to interpret from it.

[throatybeard]

As a Yankees fan, that money has been "misrecouperated" for a while now.

I think so far, it's only been misappropriated. Only when MLB suspends him for 211 games do they get to misrecouperate it.