Surprised a thread wasn't made on this yesterday (unless I missed it).
LaMarcus Aldridge walked out of the lobby doors of the Montage Beverly Hills in early July and found a familiar face in a most familiar repose: Gregg Popovich busting chops. In the hotel’s valet lane, the emperor of the San Antonio Spurs playfully jabbed Toronto general manager Masai Ujiri for signing Atlanta’s DeMarre Carroll to a $60 million free-agent contract. Spurs family is Spurs family, and Ujiri had punctured a protégé’s program in Atlanta.
Sixteen million dollars a year, Popovich proclaimed with Aldridge approaching them. “Hey, Masai ought to pay you $35 million a year!”
“If he could, he would,” Aldridge said with a laugh, a nod of respect toward the relentlessness of Ujiri’s pursuit.
There was an inherent awkwardness to the moment, with Popovich and Aldridge understanding why Toronto’s top executive lingered outside the hotel. From far behind, Toronto still chased the biggest available free agent on the market, the Raptors’ general manager endearing himself to Aldridge, selling the starry free agent on a visit that would never materialize.
Nevertheless, Ujiri stepped aside now. His brief, spirited run was over, and he knew it. Aldridge had come downstairs to accompany Popovich to lunch on July 3. They needed to talk again, and LaMarcus Aldridge needed to find a final connection with the coach, a franchise, to make that final leap of faith.
Aldridge, a 6-foot-11 power forward coming off a season in which he averaged 23.4 points and 10.2 rebounds, had transformed into the most pursued player available on the free-agent market. The Blazers had the third-best record in the NBA when guard Wesley Matthews crumpled with a torn Achilles’ tendon in March, and suddenly Aldridge began to think more and more about leaving Portland. He didn’t love living in the city, had two young children living in his home state of Texas, and Portland was slowly, surely losing a grip on its franchise player.
As much as anything, Aldridge, 30, needed to decide who he wanted to be in the NBA, and where he wanted to become it. Did he want to be the face of a franchise, surrounded with talents who wouldn’t overshadow him? Did he want the glamor market of Los Angeles? Did he want to blend into this generation’s best franchise and chase titles with San Antonio? Did he want to return to Portland, become the franchise’s greatest player, transition back into an outstanding core of talent and accept a fifth year on his contract that would pay him $27 million more than the rest of his suitors were allowed under the collective bargaining rules?
The power structure of the NBA hung in the balance of that lunch meeting on July 3, hung on how Aldridge could connect with Popovich. Together, they walked down the sun-splashed sidewalk on North Canon Drive in Beverly Hills, and the rest of the league awaited the outcome.
Across five days in June and July, LaMarcus Aldridge’s free-agent recruitment changed the landscape of the Western Conference and the NBA. Aldridge returns to play the Portland Trail Blazers on Wednesday at the Moda Center, and finally does so as a San Antonio Spur.
NBA free agency commenced at 9 p.m. Pacific Time on June 30, and six suitors had a chance to make a case to Aldridge about leaving the Blazers. Here’s the story of those 120 hours, told through interviews with those who engaged in the process that ultimately delivered LaMarcus Aldridge to the Spurs.
____________________
Here’s how free agency started: At 9 p.m. Pacific time on June 30, the Los Angeles Lakers’ organization walked into the conference room and the faceless suits kept coming and coming through the doors. Thirteen people marched into the second-floor conference room of the Wasserman Media Group room and surrounded Aldridge and his agents with Wasserman Media Group. Lakers star Kobe Bryant sat down in the chair next to Aldridge.
The process of meetings appealed to Aldridge, with Portland – the only franchise he had known in his nine NBA seasons – remaining heavily on his mind as his only point of reference. The Lakers were an enigma of the process, a historic franchise in the NBA’s most desirable market torn between the twilight of Bryant’s legendary career and talented but young prospects D’Angelo Russell and Julius Randle. Aldridge owned a home in nearby Orange County (Calif.) and was intrigued with understanding the Lakers’ murky organizational landscape and plans for bridging its peerless past through its bottomed-out reality.
For most of the first hour, polished business vice presidents and AEG officials and Time Warner television executives and marketers delivered corporate platitudes and clichés. Several times, Aldridge asked questions, pushing for the direction that he wanted to steer the presentation – only the Lakers never veered from the script. What Aldridge wanted out of these meetings was to engage in a high-minded basketball discussion – on his role, on winning and the franchise’s plans. Everyone else seemed to understand that, except the Lakers.
“I was trying to ask more basketball-related questions,” Aldridge told Yahoo. “I just had things that I wanted to know, to understand, on the basketball side. I get why they did what they did, coming from a small market, going to L.A., a whole different world, and they just wanted me to know about that world. I did try to bring it back toward basketball a couple times.”
The Lakers were falling flat, squandering the opportunity. Through it all, Bryant and Aldridge were engaged, sitting side-by-side and quietly talking basketball. For Aldridge, the most real, resonating part of the Lakers’ presentation would come when Bryant spoke passionately about what it meant to play for the Lakers, what it was like to play in Los Angeles and how Aldridge’s talent and serious-mindedness made it perfect for him, too.
Lakers general manager Mitch Kupchak and coach Byron Scott offered unspectacular but solid visions, yet nothing had come close to commanding the kind of detail and depth that Aldridge had wanted. The Lakers were pitching faith and history. Aldridge had come hoping that the Lakers would blow him away, but he left with more questions about the franchise than when he walked into the room.
When it was over, Aldridge bristled over reports that somehow Bryant had been to blame for the Lakers’ debacle. “Kobe was the best part of the meeting,” Aldridge told Yahoo. “I’ve known Kobe for years, living out in Newport Beach. He knows my kids. I’ve seen him with his daughters. We’ve always had a cordial relationship. I was kind of mad about how it got spun around that it was him that I had problems with – when he was actually the best part of it.”
____________________
Once Les Alexander stood before LaMarcus Aldridge at 11:10 p.m. PT on the night of June 30, finally it felt like the pursuit for the heart and mind of a free-agent basketball star had begun. All alone, the owner of the Houston Rockets made his entrance and introduced his franchise from the purest of basketball perspectives: Our history spoke to a commitment to winning championships and bonds with his retired players. Clyde Drexler. Hakeem Olajuwon. Yao Ming.
After Alexander, Rockets coach Kevin McHale talked on team building, on how as a Hall of Fame power forward himself he'd be ideal to bring out the best in Aldridge. General manager Daryl Morey and assistant GM Gersson Rosas laid out how Aldridge, James Harden and Dwight Howard could prosper together.
“We think the Big Three is the way to go,” Morey told Aldridge.
Aldridge asked Morey and McHale specific questions about how the Rockets would use him offensively, and Morey returned empirical evidence to show where Howard gets his touches and shots in the system, how they believed it wouldn’t interfere with Aldridge’s offensive productivity.
Houston’s team president, Tad Brown, spent a few minutes explaining how Houston’s television deal in China would make Aldridge one of the globe’s most watched basketball stars – allowing him to tap into that Far Eastern marketing dollar.
The Rockets had been far more impressive than the Lakers, but Aldridge remained uneasy about the prospect of a partnership with Harden and Howard. The Rockets knew that Aldridge wanted to be the face of a franchise, and that would never happen with Harden there. They could share a marquee, but Houston would never belong to Aldridge.
Before they broke for the night, Aldridge huddled with agent Arn Tellem and Wasserman Media’s George David. The Lakers had been unimpressive, and Aldridge couldn’t see himself fitting into a Big Three with the Rockets. In his mind, the Portland Trail Blazers still lingered. A long day of meetings awaited Aldridge in the morning, beginning with San Antonio Spurs, but he told his associates: Hey, I could still return to Portland. The Blazers are still there for me.
____________________
A little more than a week earlier, Portland Trail Blazers owner Paul Allen and general manager Neil Olshey had traveled to Dallas for a meeting with Aldridge, Tellem and Tellem’s son, Michael, an agent with Wasserman Media Group.
When the rest of the teams would come promising Aldridge everything they would do for him, Olshey had a different advantage: He had done it. And could keep doing it. Under Olshey, Portland’s moves, his upgrades, had delivered Aldridge the best years of his career.
Above everything, Olshey gave Aldridge what every star power forward ought to want: a dazzling, young point guard, Damian Lillard, with the promise of performing at an All-Star level for years.
“As much as you’ve done for us, we’ve done for you, too,” Olshey told Aldridge.
As much as anything, the Blazers' meeting was a strategy session as opposed to a recruiting presentation. Portland's plan had been to incorporate Aldridge into the franchise's planning prior to his meetings with competitors.
For Olshey and coach Terry Stotts, one of the profound challenges was persuading Aldridge to separate the resounding success of their three-year partnership together versus the hard feelings that Aldridge had over his first six years with the Blazers. Aldridge held grudges on slights – real and perceived – in those seasons before Olshey arrived as the general manager.
Olshey is one of the NBA’s true self-made executives, a gym rat out with New York roots who made his way to Los Angeles as an actor. He never did get basketball out of his heart and worked his way to Clippers general manager after starting out as a pro workout coach and high school assistant at Artesia High School in Southern California. As Clippers GM, he drafted DeAndre Jordan at No. 35 and Eric Bledsoe at No. 17. He orchestrated the franchise-changing trade for Chris Paul and played a part in the drafting of Blake Griffin. Olshey reshaped the Clippers and had done so again with the Blazers.
Yes, Olshey drafted Aldridge an All-Star point guard, traded for a rim-protecting center in Robin Lopez, and hired a coach, Stotts, who brought offensive innovation and hellacious player development to complementary players surrounding Aldridge.
Off the floor, Olshey consulted Aldridge on every move the franchise made – the practice facility, the travel, the charter meals, everything. Aldridge had made the All-Star team once in six years; and now had done so three straight times under Olshey’s regime. Aldridge made second-team All-NBA – something else he had never done. He had gone to the playoffs two straight years, including the Western Conference semifinals.
“Neil was great,” Aldridge told Yahoo. “I’m thankful for everything he did. The organization wasn’t really bad [before him], but it wasn’t player-oriented. He came and really made it about the players. He re-did the practice facility, re-did the arena. He wanted to make the focus about the players being happy. He finally listened to my voice and made me feel like I was the franchise player.”
... hope they know most of the kids haven't even been born yet......
