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according to brand clippers didn't step up with a competitive offer (81 mil) until he had already committed to the sixers.

if true, the front office made an inexcusable, unforgivable error.

Wouldn't you rather have Josh Smith LAC fans? Younger, more athletic, top 5 in blocks, doesn't get hurt every other year.

Per Elton Booz errrrrr I mean Brand ........ he claims that:

Donald Sterling and the organization made their initial offer under the supposition that nobody else was offering anything. Falk come back with some other ideas for the contract and apparently it fell on deaf ears, sort of a take it or leave it. Morever, it was on speaker phone and Brand over heard that. So then they decided to persue other opportunities (i.e. Warrios and Sixers) and it wasn't until they made offers that Donald Sterling became "available" to negotiate again.

He went on to say that it wasn't about the money, if it was he would've taken the Golden St. deal. He said he talked to Baron throughout this ordeal and Baron told him "to go and get your money man." He said that there were no pre-worked agreements. It was about the love and the Sixers "doing certain" things (he mentioned that a lot actually but wouldn't discuss specifics) with the contract that the Clips weren't doing. Vick the Brick asked him well what about the matching offer the Clippers gave yesterday and Brand responded with laughter, he had already agreed to sign with the Sixers......basically made it sound like too little too late, should've made me that offer earlier.

We still don't know what Falk was asking the Clippers for which they'd respond "take it or leave it" to. Or did they truly low ball and not bend? The Wojnarkoski (however the F- you spell his name) article on Yahoo! Sports seems to indicate that Falk became the angry filter in all of this, specifically because the Dunleavy and the Clips went around him to talk to Brand after the initial conversations about contract demands. Brand never mentioned anything of conversations with Dunleavy though.

Who cares? Eltons a piece of ****

Who cares what Brand says. Actions speak louder than words and he could just be saying all those things in an attempt to save his image.

...........he's on ESPN right now according to KLAC.

How is that different that what has been reported earlier? The Clippers always had the ability to offer more money than they started with- they just chose not to.

killbuckner wrote:How is that different that what has been reported earlier? The Clippers always had the ability to offer more money than they started with- they just chose not to.

I'm just reporting what the man himself said. I'm sure people would like to know that as opposed to 3rd party sources.

There's really no reason to believe what he says at this point. He's not going to come out and say "oh, I played the Clippers so that I could drive up my market value. I never really intended to sign with them. "

dflash3 wrote:Who cares what Brand says. Actions speak louder than words and he could just be saying all those things in an attempt to save his image.

And the Clippers wouldn't do the same thing? The Clipper org has much more image-saving to do than Elton Brand. I trust Elton Brand's word much more than I trust Donald Sterling's.

This seems to have gone down exactly in the same way that the Clippers have dealt with other RFA's, except this time Brand was UFA. They never proactively make any real moves to retain key players, and always play the waiting game to see if a player gets a big offer somewhere else. The big difference here being the Clippers obviously have no right to match any offers, so they lost Elton.

I believe the Clippers lost Elton, rather than Elton bolting.

enigmatics wrote:

killbuckner wrote:How is that different that what has been reported earlier? The Clippers always had the ability to offer more money than they started with- they just chose not to.

I'm just reporting what the man himself said. I'm sure people would like to know that as opposed to 3rd party sources.

Thanks for the recap! I don't think he was questioning your post, he was responding to other posters suggesting Brand was lying.

madmaxmedia wrote:And the Clippers wouldn't do the same thing? The Clipper org has much more image-saving to do than Elton Brand. I trust Elton Brand's word much more than I trust Donald Sterling's.

This seems to have gone down exactly in the same way that the Clippers have dealt with other RFA's, except this time Brand was UFA. They never proactively make any real moves to retain key players, and always play the waiting game to see if a player gets a big offer somewhere else. The big difference here being the Clippers obviously have no right to match any offers, so they lost Elton.

I believe the Clippers lost Elton, rather than Elton bolting.

It's quite clear that it was a Falk power play. We don't know what LA and Falk were in disgreement on in terms of the contract. Of course LA is going to put forth an initial offer, what team doesn't. The question is did something provoke the take it or leave it stance? Falk seemed to take great offense to the idea that Dunleavy had attempted to speak to Brand without him present.

madmaxmedia wrote:And the Clippers wouldn't do the same thing? The Clipper org has much more image-saving to do than Elton Brand. I trust Elton Brand's word much more than I trust Donald Sterling's.

I wouldn't trust either party at this point. There's a lot of damage control going on now. We may never really know what went down.

I believe what he said. I think the Clips thought they had him all wrapped up. They gave Elton a take it or leave it offer through Dunleavy, EB got more offers, Sterling was unavailable to further work out a contract, EB felt betrayed and had no other choice.

The whole thing sucks...hope we get Josh Smith (and soon).

enigmatics wrote:It's quite clear that it was a Falk power play. We don't know what LA and Falk were in disgreement on in terms of the contract. Of course LA is going to put forth an initial offer, what team doesn't. The question is did something provoke the take it or leave it stance? Falk seemed to take great offense to the idea that Dunleavy had attempted to speak to Brand without him present.

No doubt Falk was involved. But the Clippers gave him plenty of ammunition to use against them, and persuade Brand (if any persuasion was necessary) to look to Phila. Falk contacted the Sixers and told them they had a realistic shot, so in that sense you could say he instigated that too.

But EB is not a 8 year old boy. He's a smart guy with a lot of business interests, and a NBA veteran who has been around the block. He doesn't just go to Philadephia because Falk tells him to.

What team doesn't put forth an initial offer? Well, ANY team that is bidding on a all-star UFA.

It doesn't matter if anything 'provoked' the take it or leave it stance. Falk is irrelevant in the long run, the Clippers are paying Elton Brand and Falk is not gonna be on the basketball court. Since Brand is a UFA, it was imperative that the Clippers proactively reached out to seal the deal quickly as possible. Lowballing him was not the way to do that. 'Pay me what you can' does not equate to 'Pay me what you want', but that seems to be what the Clippers thought.

The question is who do you believe- Elton Brand or this guy-

http://www.laweekly.com/news/news/donal ... age/18537/

It's total BS. The Clippers would have absolutely LOVED to give Brand a maximum 6-year deal. No question about it. But Brand and the team supposedly wanted to actually win basketball games. So they had to sign Davis. Now if Elton was serious about winning, he would have taken the 70-75 million instead of expecting the Clippers to dump Q Ross and several other players.

madmaxmedia wrote:The question is who do you believe- Elton Brand or this guy-

http://www.laweekly.com/news/news/donal ... age/18537/

Neither.

madmaxmedia wrote:

dflash3 wrote:Who cares what Brand says. Actions speak louder than words and he could just be saying all those things in an attempt to save his image.

And the Clippers wouldn't do the same thing? The Clipper org has much more image-saving to do than Elton Brand. I trust Elton Brand's word much more than I trust Donald Sterling's.

This seems to have gone down exactly in the same way that the Clippers have dealt with other RFA's, except this time Brand was UFA. They never proactively make any real moves to retain key players, and always play the waiting game to see if a player gets a big offer somewhere else. The big difference here being the Clippers obviously have no right to match any offers, so they lost Elton.

I believe the Clippers lost Elton, rather than Elton bolting.

I gotta side with madmax here, the risk was far too great in dealing with an UFA to play games with a take it or leave it lowball offer. Andy Roeser is probably the guy from the Clipper front office who was involved in the initial speakerphone discussions with Falk and Brand from what I can gather.