forbidden activities and contracts

[dockingsched]

with the recent speculation over the nature and cause of monta ellis' injury, i was curious as to what the rules are as far as fines, suspensions, or even termination of contract. besides the commonly referred to motorcycle riding, what other activities can be banned? whats the process when a player is found to have violated his contract? can they void his contract 2 years down the road if the injury causes significant loss in skill?


apologies if this has been covered somewhere. couldn't really find anything.

[FGump]

The rules in EVERY contract (unless a specific exception is added) ...

12.OTHER ATHLETIC ACTIVITIES.
The Player and the Team acknowledge and agree that the Player's participation in certain other activities may impair or destroy his ability and skill as a basketball player, and the Player's participation in any game or exhibition of basketball other than at the request of the Team may result in injury to him. Accordingly, the Player agrees that he will not, without the written consent of the Team, engage in any activity that a reasonable person would recognize as involving or exposing the participant to a substantial risk of bodily injury including, but not limited to: (i) sky-diving, hang gliding, snow skiing, rock or mountain climbing (as distinguished from hiking), rappelling, and bungee jumping; (ii) any fighting, boxing, or wrestling; (iii) driving or riding on a motorcycle or moped; (iv) riding in or on any motorized vehicle in any kind of race or racing contest; (v) operating an aircraft of any kind; (vi) engaging in any other activity excluded or prohibited by or under any insurance policy which the Team procures against the injury, illness or disability to or of the Player, or death of the Player, for which the Player has received written notice from the Team prior to the execution of this Contract; or (vii) participating in any game or exhibition of basketball, football, baseball, hockey, lacrosse, or other team sport or competition. If the Player violates this Paragraph 12, he shall be subject to discipline imposed by the Team and/or the Commissioner of the NBA. Nothing contained herein shall be intended to require the Player to obtain the written consent of the Team in order to enable the Player to participate in, as an amateur, the sports of golf, tennis, handball, swimming, hiking, softball, volleyball, and other similar sports that a reasonable person would not recognize as involving or exposing the participant to a substantial risk of bodily injury.

The consequences of injury from those activities would fall under the physical condition clause, and obviously can be imposed for every game a player is unable to play due to such impaired physical condition ...

7.PHYSICAL CONDITION.
(b) If the Player, in the judgment of the Team’s physician, is not in good physical condition at the date of his first scheduled game for the Team, or if, at the beginning of or during any Season, he fails to remain in good physical condition (unless such condition results directly from an injury sustained by the Player as a direct result of participating in any basketball practice or game played for the Team during such Season), so as to render the Player, in the judgment of the Team’s physician, unfit to play skilled basketball, the Team shall have the right to suspend such Player until such time as, in the judgment of the Team’s physician, the Player is in sufficiently good physical condition to play skilled basketball. In the event of such suspension, the Base Compensation payable to the Player for any Season during such suspension shall be reduced in the same proportion as the length of the period during which, in the judgment of the Team’s physician, the Player is unfit to play skilled basketball, bears to the length of such Season. Nothing in this subparagraph shall authorize the Team to suspend the Player solely because the Player is injured or ill.

[Dekko1]

IIRC it is pretty common to have an exception in the contract for pick-up BBall during the of season, as long as it is on a floor not pavement, so they can workout and attend camps.

[LarryCoon]

Actually the most common exception is just that -- it's called "love of the game" and allows the player to play pickup basketball. I don't think I've seen any contracts without that exception.

[dockingsched]

thanks for the complete info, not just a cheap summary.

[shrink]

Yeah thanks! Yao's been ducking my invites to sub on my volleyball team, saying his contract wouldn't let him. I've got him now!

[Dekko1]

Yeah thanks! Yao's been ducking my invites to sub on my volleyball team, saying his contract wouldn't let him. I've got him now!

Yao's NBA contract or another contract in addition may ban more than the usual contracts...he has two CBAs to deal with... one being the Chinese Basketball Assoc.

On his rookie contract it had to be agreed to by nine entities before he could play.

* Yao Ming
* Yao's parents
* The Shanghai Sharks
* The Chinese Basketball Association
* The Shanghai Municipal Sports Management
* The Chinese National Basketball Agency
* The Chinese National Sports Commission
* The NBA
* The Rockets

"If you ignore the rules, people will,
half the time, quietly rewrite them so they don't apply to you." -
Terry Pratchett

[Sleepy51]

At this point on the Warrior board, the biggest concern is that much as we enjoy watching Monta play, and want his life and career to be a success, fans really don't want the team on the hook for his recovery risk, because of the lying and the prohibited activities issue. No one relished the idea of throwing dude out in the cold, but we are very concerned about the team's future compeitive ability being constrained beyond this season may be a career impacting injury. All the informed reports on this type of injury to not bode well at all for full recover of agility or explosion. If he's not the same player, we don't want to be buried under an inapropriate contract.

The big question we're looking for answers to on the Warriors board is the timeframes and CBA ramifications applicable to the various punitive options the team has avaliable.

Our basic understanding is that we can:
a)give him a stern lecture and no desert
b)fine him
c)suspend him
d)terminate his contract

1) What are the parameters for suspension? How long can the player be suspended for? Does imposing suspension imapct the ability to opt for termination later based on the same incident?

2) For termination: for how long can we reserve the right to choose to terminate (both under and not under suspension)? How long can we monitor healing and rehab progress before losing our abililty to make an informed decision on Monta's ability to recover to an appropriate $11mil per ability level?

3) If we terminate his contract, what free agent status does he revert to? Do we retain Bird rights? Do we retain matching rights?

The consensus "ideal" scenario is of course full recovery and a character building life lesson learned. But, assuming he can not be the same player our best case would seem to be to basically "restructure" his deal based on a prohibited activities termination and re-sign him to a smaller shorter contract which funds his rehab efforts and some future financial security, but puts the onus on him for extablishing his post injury value. The reports and analysis of the injury comming in makes this sad discussion pretty necessary.

Any guidance?

Any other cap considerations we should know about this process?

[LarryCoon]

Precedent is probably the best guidance. A very similar circumstance happened recently with the Lakers and Vlad Radmanovic, who went snowboarding during the all-star break and injured himself, and lied about it to the team. He missed a big chunk of the season, and ended up being fined $500,000 by the team.

The Warriors could certainly *try* to terminate Ellis' contract, but it would certainly be grieved by the league and litigated. It probably wouldn't be worth it if Ellis is expected to fully recover. If the injury is going to have long-term consequences, then I think there's a pretty good case for the Warriors to try to go this route.

[Sleepy51]

Thanks for the precedent info. We've though about the Laker situation and the fining option is all well and good IF he projects makes a full recovery. But we have actually been getting some fairly well informed medical opinion on this particular type of injury, and "full recovery" is a BIG question mark at this point in time. Again, we're talking about a foot injury to a franchise player who's game is based specifically on a unique speed advantage. It's a scary possibility that no one on our board is really armed to discuss on any informed basis right now.

I realize that voiding a contract is an unlikely and extreme step, but for discussion purposed, we'd at least like to know how it actually works. I'm not asking for you to endorse the prospect as likely or even preferable, but a lot of Warrior posters would like to at least know how it actually works.

What I was looking for here was the devil in the details about the more severe responses to a more severe impact from the injury. If the Warriors NEED to consider voiding the deal, how does that actually work CBA wise? Is he UFA or RFA? What rights do we retain?

[LarryCoon]

His status and rights might be a gray area as well. I believe the contract would be voided (as opposed to GSW going through the waiver process), but I don't think anybody (least of all me) is sure exactly what that means. Again, we can look at precedent -- the only other case of a contract being voided I can recall is Joe Smith with the Timverwolves, where the league voided not only his current contract, but also his previous (already completed) contract with the team.

My contention at the time was that with all Minnesota contracts voided (hence treated as though they never existed), Philadelphia became his "prior team" and thus Philadelphia inherited his Bird rights. We even spoke to Philly GM Billy King about it, who hadn't considered that, didn't know whether he was entitled to Smith's Bird rights, but considered it a moot point since he wasn't interested in signing Smith or working out a sign-and-trade.

So my guess is that the contract would be voided and treated as though it never existed, and GSW would find themselves in the exact situation WRT Ellis as before the contract was signed. But that's just a guess, and the league & NBPA might not have figured it out for themselves.