Turn the heat off Webber

Sporting News, The, Jan 2, 1995 by Mike Lupica

Mark Messier had the right to renegotiate his contract if the Rangers won the Stanley Cup. He did not have the contractual right to skip training camp, which Messier certainly did. We all cheered Messier anyway and told the Rangers to pay him whatever he wanted. Messier had the hammer and we told him to use it, even if he was in violation of his contract.

Then, you have Chris Webber. He exercised a legal right in his contract, becoming a restricted free agent after one year with the Warriors, and he is supposed to be an example of everything that is wrong with sports? The NBA season, in fact, seems to be open season on Webber and not just because his new team, the Bullets, seems to belong in the same weight class as the Clippers since he showed up in Landover. The fact is, Chris Webber didn't break any contracts, or any laws. Webber just embraced traditional values in professional sports sooner than most people do.

Webber may turn out to be dead wrong about all of this. He may be wrong not to want to play for Don Nelson and the Warriors and it may end up costing all of them a run at the championship this season. But if you don't want Webber to use the hammer, don't hand it to him in the first place. It is a little late for Nelson and the Warriors to be the injured party here, because they left the door wide open for Webber when they signed the kid out of Michigan.

Chris Webber played by the rules, and you don't fault somebody for playing by the rules. It was all right for Messier to effectively walk away from his contract with the Rangers even when he didn't have that right. The reason we all gave? Messier had delivered a championship. Webber delivered no such championships for Golden State. That is a fact. His contract didn't say that he had to. Anyone who still believes you have to win championships in sports to be rich and famous and powerful is living in the past.

Webber did what he did with the Warriors because he could, and he knew he could. He said all along this wasn't about money, and it turns out he was telling the truth.

When Glenn Robinson held out from the Bucks, that wasn't very interesting. That was just a straight money grab. Robinson was another kid who wanted his whole career guaranteed before he even began the career. Something needs to be done about guaranteed careers and NBA Commissioner David Stern knows it. His league is supposed to be the model for everybody, but even big fans of the league know the contracts better than they know the players.

Webber came out of Michigan after his sophomore year and signed a contract with the Warriors that was worth $70 million or something well into the next century. But he could leave after one year. So it was a one-year contract with an option into the next century. Nelson knew it, the Warriors' owners knew it. Webber had all the leverage. Then, he used it. He chose not to have his career guaranteed into the next century, at least not yet.

He briefly became a free agent. Even after Webber re-signed with the Warriors, he had the right to leave after this season. The Warriors decided to trade him to Washington, one of the places where he wanted to play, because the Bullets had drafted his Michigan pal, Juwan Howard. The Bullets took a risk by acquiring Webber, knowing he can walk away from them. Webber risks some kind of terrible injury, a point that was accentuated last week when he suffered a dislocated left shoulder in his first game against the Warriors and is out six to eight weeks. It is interesting that he is suddenly the personification of sports evil when he walks away from a fortune in guaranteed Warriors money.

If Webber had stayed at Michigan, he would be in his senior year. Instead, in his second year, he has rendered the idea of the NBA draft obsolete, at least in his case. So he's not some insolent punk. He's just doing what the NBA Players Association has tried to do for years, which is throw the draft right out the window. Webber just had to do a year of time -- his view of things -- under Nelson. A lot of players hate the coach. Webber had the right to do something about it.

Remember: Chris Webber was drafted by the Magic and traded before the draft was even over. The Magic traded him to the Warriors. Then, Webber traded the Warriors. He had the hammer and he used it. Magic Johnson, in his third year, got Paul Westhead fired as coach of the Lakers. Magic had the muscle because he had won a title. Sports doesn't work that way anymore. You don't need the championship. John Elway wouldn't play for the Colts when he came out of Stanford. This season, there were NFL teams thinking Deion Sanders could win them a championship. So Sanders didn't try out for them. The teams auditioned for him.

Everyone knows that the trade of Webber to the Bullets has turned out dreadfully for both teams, at least so far. Even before Webber's injury, the Bullets were playing like a team not even ready to break training camp. The Warriors, after seeming to have such great possibilities the first month of the season, have fallen apart. Nelson recently ended up in the hospital with a case of viral pneumonia and, it has been reported, exhaustion. There is the feeling that if the Warriors do not play better, and soon, Nelson may step down as coach, may even be fired.