Not sure if that’s the same thing as my clumsy “slow-payout” line. I’m obviously not a lawyer.

I think it might be worth looking at KA’s recent Truehoop article which contrasts (re:Olshey) quite a bit with the Wojnarowski blog:

http://espn.go.com/blog/truehoop/post/_/id/14157/the-clippers-move-on

I appreciate our dialogue but I’m just stating my opinions. You seem to be pretty argumentative. I don’t want to argue, and I think it’s ok that we can have opinions, biases, etc., without being called out for it. Maybe you’re defending John R again, who knows.

Turning to this particular post, to be clear, there is no “clause” typically requiring employees to look for work in such contracts, it’s just part of the common law in California and surely most if not all states.

I don’t know whether there is something unique about the NBA where the law is ignored – but that could be the case I suppose. Or maybe there’s a provision in this contract that basically constitutes a liquidated damages clause whereby the general law wouldn’t apply. I don’t know.

To me, it’s not unfair in a contract paying out $ 5 M a year to require the employee to look for alternative employment to offset the huge payout under the contract for which the employee is not doing anything. If the law were the contrary, that woud discourage people from looking for work, which is not productive in our society.

Employment contracts, aka personal service contracts, are funny things. Often the parties decide not to go forward with the relationship for the full balance of the contract term and parties are free to breach such contracts by walking away from the company or terminating the employee. Here, if MDSr wanted to leave (breaching the contract), he’d certainly be allowed to do so, and he couldn’t be sued most likely for whatever damage that his decision to breach the contract would have caused. If the law were to the contrary, he’d be an indentured servant, which is contrary to public policy in this state. So there is inherently some freedom built into the employment relationship in California under the law on both sides, subject to contractual limitations in many cases (to the extent not contrary to public policy).

Can you please point me to your sources for suggesting that “it’s not done” when referring to owners arguing that the employees have to go find alternative employment instead of sitting around doing nothing? I would be very interested in reading that. I suggest that you are perhaps oversimplifying the matter.

Finally, I find it laughable that you think that the fact that no one from the Clippers has gone out there to defend themselves is somehow an inference that MDSr is telling the truth. Why would they want to engage in such a dialogue or feel like they have to defend themselves? MDSr did this before with the EB / David Falk thing – coming out forcefully to defend himself by making false statements ("I"m just the coach talking to a player"). Falk skewered him over that one, but here there is absolutely no dispute that the Clippers were well within their contractual rights to let him go and they did so.

 To me, it’s your response that reflects more of a bias than anything I said, with all due respect of course. :-)

And I don’t think it supports anyone’s argument here, but the reason Sterling was ridiculed for his attempt to renege on Fitch’s payout wasn’t so much that no one tried to enforce it before but because Fitch was over sixty-five when was sued by DTS and the Clippers for not earnestly looking for a new job. It was, of course, from my point of view, an extremely sleazy move on DTS’ part. I believe there was also a lawsuit involving Bob Weiss involving salary owed.
Of course his dismissal with money owed does bring up the interesting question of what Mike Dunleavy’s future might actual be… it will be interesting to see if anyone thinks he still has a place in the NBA.