What we've got here is failure to communicate
This month's two noteworthy exercises of player power have taken intriguing turns during their lifespans, reminding us yet again of the two central tenets of choosing sides:
One, your first instinct isn't always reliable.
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Elton Brand was willing to talk to the Clippers. (AP) |
And two, if you can't think once, then don't think twice.
Elton Brand, who was castigated (largely in Los Angeles) for not being properly loyal to the Los Angeles Clippers and their peerless, often absent leader, Don Sterling, is coming off more and more as the reasonable one.
And Brett Favre, whose perpetual turns on the retirement wheel once had the Green Bay Packers cornered, is now feeling some backlash.
The differences in the two situations are clear enough. Favre is trying to push in a door, preferably while general manager Ted Thompson is standing behind it. Brand pushed one out. Leaving, obviously, is easier to do.
But in both situations, the player fought the power in the media and found that, over time, their relative positions had changed -- Brand's for the better, Favre's for the worse.
That Favre wants to come back out of retirement seems pretty clear, based on the fact that everyone around him in a position to say so, says so. But that he has been down this road before, and tried to finesse this situation publicly instead of speaking directly to it, has made him look more annoyingly coquettish than forthright, and for someone whose image is based on forthrightness, this game rings hollow.
I mean, a text message? Is the phone that passé? Is the human voice, a far more accurate gauge of someone's sincerity, really too much trouble here? "Ted, I know I said I was done, but I really think I have one more in me. Can we meet face to face with Mike and figure something out?" Is that such a breach of leverage?
Instead, Favre has tried to have his cake and Thompson's too, because theirs is your classic hate-hate relationship. The leaking of Thompson's silly "I'm on vacation" response told you everything you needed to know about how they wanted this to play out -- Favre not just coming back, but coming back over Thompson's lifeless, trampled corpse, a victim of the weight of public sentiment.
That was too much. If Favre wanted back, fine. But this is something you work out in person, face to face, and it doesn't matter where it happens. Thompson, feeling squeezed, got his back up, which is no way to be a general manager, but Favre didn't need to squeeze in the first place.
And the public is sensing more and more that Favre has overplayed his hand. Not fatally, mind you -- one phone call without the spinning of middlemen can change the entire dynamic. If this is about one more year of football, then make it about one more year of football and not about "He doesn't love me enough to come off vacation," or "I talked to Brett the other day and I think he wants to play." Being known for your directness requires being direct, period.
Brand, on the other hand, spent the start of the week being pilloried for disloyalty (to the Clippers of all people, the team whose owner has been laughed at more often than any other since Charlie Finley retired). He allegedly misled Baron Davis, Mike Dunleavy, Shaun Livingston and the great Clipper Nation, not by opting out of his contract but by not signing a new one and doing whatever everyone thought he would do.
