The Boston Celtics signed Darius Miles to a non-guaranteed contract today, a mere 860 days since he last appeared in an NBA game. Does this make him officially relevant again? Not yet -- he still has to survive training camp cuts. From the Boston Globe: "He's coming to training camp and he's going to try to prove that he can make the team," said Celtics general manager Danny Ainge. "He has come in for a couple of workouts. He'll try to make the team somehow."That's hardly a ringing endorsement, but as Henry Abbott notes, the fact that they gave him a non-guaranteed contract rather than a simple training camp invitation suggests Miles can still play. We'll have to wait and see in the exhibition season if that's really the case.
Even if he makes the team, though, he'll have to sit out the first 10 games for apparently testing positive for Phentermine, an appettite suppressant, at some point over the last two years. Phentermine is a controlled substance, which makes it illegal to possess without a prescription, and is banned by the NBA's drug policy, which Lindsey Hunter found out the hard way in May 2007.
An interesting sub-plot to Miles' story takes place all the way on the other side of the country: if you recall, the Trail Blazers waived Miles after an independent doctor declared his injuries to be career ending.
While the Blazers are still on the hook for paying Miles $10 million, that money was effectively erased from the books as far as salary cap purposes are concerned ... but if Miles appears in just 10 games anytime over the next two years, the $10 million cap hit re-appears. It wouldn't be quite the monkey wrench to Portland's future as it first seems -- the core members of that team are all on rookie contracts -- but it's still a dark cloud looming on the horizon.
