Celtics waive malcontent Miles

Injury prone troublemaker and career underachiever Darius Miles was waived Monday by the Boston Celtics.  He’s facing a 10 game regular season suspension for violation of the league’s drug policy.  While it remains unclear why Boston signed him as a free agent in August to begin with, his history of injuries, a bad attitude and poor off the court lifestyle choices make it unlikely that any other team will take a chance on him.

For every Kobe Bryant and LeBron James there is a Darius Miles—a high school hot shot who thinks that he’s more talented than he really is.  In all fairness, Miles didn’t exactly have the Ivy League knocking down his door at the end of his high school career so the NBA might have not only been his best option but his only option for continuing his basketball career.  He was selected 3rd overall by the LA Clippers in 2000, which until that point was the highest a player had ever been selected straight out of high school.

Unlike Bryant and James—who continued to work on their game and became superstars—Miles underachieved bigtime.  He played two seasons for the Clippers and briefly for Cleveland before being traded to the “Jail Blazer” era Portland Trailblazers.  That’s where his career as a locker room cancer *really* took off.  He, along with dogfighting enthusiast Qyntel Woods, also represent the nadir of the Portland Trailblazers when the Rose City—long the most passionate NBA fan base in the league—washed their hands of the underachieving, troublemaking “JailBlazers”.

Miles’ “JailBlazer” career got off to a resounding start when he got into a scuffle with his coach after dropping a few “N-bomb” racial slurs on Maurice Cheeks.  The fact that both he and his coach were African-American was apparently lost on Miles.  He showed some impressive individual scoring skills—like a 47 point game in 2005—but was the antithesis of a “team player”.  Another Miles’ highlight that occurred shortly after the run-in with MoCheeks was a comment in the local media that “he didn’t care if the team lost the next 20 games”.

Miles sat out the next two seasons due to knee surgery, and after his injury was classified as “career ending” the new era Blazers were all too happy to waive him.  The team had to eat the remaining $28 million on his contract, but no longer had to count it against the salary cap. He was given a break by the Boston Celtics in August, who signed him to a non-guaranteed contract after being impressed by his conditioning and recovery at a tryout.  Since his drug violation was known well before the team signed Miles, its curious that team officials are giving it as the reason for waiving him now.

Phoenix had some interest in Miles before Boston signed him, though it’s hard to understand why an NBA team would want him at all.  He averaged 1.8 points and 1.3 rebounds in six preseason games with Boston.  His career line of 10.6 points and 5.2 rebounds isn’t exactly stellar for a one time third overall pick in the draft.