Team fined $200,000 for using James, Wallace too soon
By Chris McCosky / The Detroit News
PHILADELPHIA — It’s turning into an unusually expensive year for Pistons owner William Davidson.
On top of his normal basketball expenses (not the least of which is a $42 million player payroll), Davidson has shelled out $6 million to hire Coach Larry Brown on top of still paying off Rick Carlisle’s contract, $350,000 to buy Darko Milicic out of his contract in Serbia, and another $3 million to Boston to close the deal for Rasheed Wallace and Mike James.
Now he has to write another huge check. The NBA on Monday fined the Pistons $200,000 because they played Wallace and James in the first half on Friday before the trade had been formally approved.
Thus, technically, the Pistons played ineligible players. It is believed to be the largest single fine the league has ever assessed a team.
“The onus is on the team to verify that their players are eligible to play,” said Tim Frank, the NBA’s vice president for communications. “That was not done in this case.”
The Pistons strongly disagree with that, for several reasons.
One, they were on the telephone with the league at 6 p.m. Friday when Chucky Atkins was ruled physically fit by Boston. They told the league at that point that since Atkins’ physical was passed, they planned to play Wallace and James.
There was no resistance from the league at that point.
Later, at approximately 7 p.m., the Atlanta Hawks — the third team in the trade — were notified by the league that the trade had not been completed and that Bob Sura and Zeljko Rebraca could not play.
The Pistons did not receive a call from the league until halftime of their nationally televised game against Minnesota. At that point, the league told the Pistons they had to stop playing the two players.
“We had completed all of our required paperwork and would never have put Rasheed Wallace and Mike James in the game had we even thought that others had not done the same,” said Pistons President Joe Dumars, in a prepared statement. “We are happy that this unfortunate situation is over and that we can now get back to focusing on basketball.”
The reason the trade was held up was because agent-certification papers were not filed for two players — Chris Mills, traded from Boston to Atlanta, and Lindsey Hunter, traded from the Pistons to Boston.
Mills is injured and hasn’t played all year. He doesn’t technically even have an agent.
Hunter’s agent, Mark Bartelstein, was on an airplane and physically unable to file his certification on Friday.
The paperwork was all in place by Saturday.
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