The Marcus Camby salary-dump giveaway is, of course, great news for the Blazers. Combined with the Nuggets also jettisoning Eduardo Najera and their first-round pick, they now appear to be the second team above the Blazers in the standings likely to fall this season, and with high-payroll teams like the Mavs and Suns fading or retooling – our playoff hopes are getting brighter by the day! Just as significant, however, the Camby debacle shows just how onerous the Luxury Tax is. The Nuggets had to pay $13 million last season. They won’t this year. Down here in Miami, owner Micky Arison and President/GM Pat Riley swear, after forking over an $8-million tax payment last month as an extra “bonus” for a 67-loss season, that they will never again put themselves in that position. The Knicks, of course, paid $45 million of tax a year ago and $20 million this time for one of the consistently worst teams in the league, and are desperately, and I do mean desperately, clawing to get out of that rat hole. Money CAN buy you wins, but it carries the great risk that if the guys you decided are worth super big buck fail you, your expectations are shattered, getting out of the hole while still fielding a good team seems impossible, you descend into hopelessness, and you pay and pay and …. In a recent post (“Chips? What Chips?”) I suggested that the new era of Blazer fiscal sanity tends to dictate against the team growing its payroll down the li ...
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