Well, after doing a little venting last night, I think I'm starting to get over the loss of FElton Brand. The jersey burning I have planned might finally put it behind me. Anyways, I just need to comment about how confusing this whole situation is. Everyone is blaming somebody different for why FElton won't be wearing Clipper red, white and blue next year. The bottom line is: it's probably a bit of everybody's fault.

Yeah, the Clippers probably should've done a bit more to try to sway FElton to come back. They shouldn't have waited so long between their first and second offers. After all, he was an unrestricted free agent and that gave him and David Falk a chance to explore other offers. I mean, c'mon. Did the Clips really not think that a 20/10 guy would garner a couple top tier offers? I know most of the fan base is oblivious to what this guy has done, but not the rest of the GMs who actually concentrate on what the Clippers are doing from time to time. Regardless of all this however, if it was truly FElton's intention to stay with the Clippers he would have heard them out and taken the 81 mil.

To start shifting the blame elsewhere, I just read Adrian Wojnarowski's latest column and Yahoo! and it had some interesting things to say about Falk's role in all of this:

Negotiations had stalled, management had grown uneasy, fearful of Falk’s influence and the Clips coach brought the franchise’s case directly to Brand. After all these years, the most famous agent of all was back in the game, back on the big stage, back with basketball waiting on his next move.

 

“From that point on,” one NBA GM said, “Falk was going to do everything he could to screw the Clippers.”

 

Along the way, too, everyone else could see what was happening here: The Bald Eagle was emboldened again. Falk was empowered. He was alive again, and the Clippers were done. As it turned out, he didn’t just screw the Clippers. Falk drilled them.

 

I realize that he used to be (and now is again) a big time NBA agent, but did he have to take it this far just because Dunleavy tried to talk straight to Brand. Dunleavy was trying to talk some sense back into Elton, but Falk took some serious offense to that and made it a point to make sure that Elton got and accepted a better offer from any other team.

Incidentally this was the time when the Clippers woke up and smelled the coffee and realized that FElton didn't want that big of a pay cut (Though I don't know what he expected with 65 mil going to B. Diddy), but it was too late. By the time they matched the 76ers offer, FElton's big traitor John Hancock was already on Philly's paperwork.

Whether or not they had a deal (which Dunleavy claims that they did), the Clippers should've known not to let this run for too long. That puts the ball back in Falk's court and we all know what happens there:

“Once they let Brand opt out, they had to know that Falk would come back and bite them in the ass,” one GM said. “Did they think he wasn’t going to turn this into some kind of a drama? He was dying to get back into the spotlight here, to get himself a lot of attention again.”

 

FElton, shame on you for not resigning as you said you would, but an even bigger shame on you for calling David Falk the "best agent...ever!" like a giddy teenage girl on the WWL. If he is the best agent ever for talking you out of resigning with the team that stuck by you all of these years, then every cunning and cunniving criminal is fit to be an NBA agent.

Well, I'm having a hard time finishing this one up, so I'll let Wojnarowski do it for me:

Pity those poor Clippers on Elton Brand’s way out the door, on crossing the most ruthless agent of all. Falked again.