Tonight will see the Cleveland Cavaliers play host to Olympiacos in Ohio and while the game will surely bring in the paying audience – if only to see the monster Shaq-King James tandem – the Greek side could well be leaving America $400,000 lighter.
According to the Cleveland Plain-Dealer, U.S. District Court judge Christopher A. Boyko gave the official OK for USA-based creditors to attempt to collect some $400,000 outstanding due to player agent Tom McLaughlin. It seems that Olympiacos cut former New Jersey Net/Utah Jazz player Chris Morris in 2001, still owing him $1.3 million in pay and McLaughlin another $400,000 atop that.
However, though Judge Boyko has in theory paved the way for McLaughlin to collect his money, there has been no word on whether an Olympiacos club representative in fact appeared in Boyko’s court on Friday, which the judge had ordered “before he [would] rule whether McLaughlin can proceed with the asset seizure.”
McLaughlin has stated that he would like to employ U.S. marshals in confiscating enough property to make up the $400,000, if necessary. One wonders if we’ll be seeing a lot of Olympiacos equipment and gear on eBay before too long … or maybe the Greek powerhouse will be taking on a new sponsor for 2009-10, a sports agency, perhaps…
Morris himself has yet to comment on the situation, but we’re sure he’d prefer to let his jamming do the talking anyway:
Tags: Chris Morris, Cleveland Cavaliers, Olympiacos Piraeus, Tom McLaughin
[...] original post here: Olympiacos to take on Cleveland Cavaliers, US creditors tonight Tagged with: [...]
There is a whole 50% of the story missing here, and it’s the olympiacos side.
Does anyone honestly think that billionaire owners will just let stuff like that happen?
No billionaire gets punked by a player AGENT.
I have no idea what is really going down, but I know from greek media that Oly is perfectly informed and aware of this guy’s moves and have a bataillon of lawyers with them.
I think noone with Oly cares too much about small fish like that, they want the game without any flies distracting them.
this happens in int’l basketball all the time.. literally all the time
@ Teo: Yes, i totally noticed no reportage from the Greek side on this story, though it was reported in Cleveland last Wednesday and spread through the ‘net quickly. I looked all over the place online this weekend and … nothing. Clearly, the Olympiacos folks are treating this like “small fish”!
so si.com has this article:
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2009/writers/ian_thomsen/10/13/olympiakos/index.html
what strikes me as odd is that, again, “some greek cellphone” is mentioned and a man with a greek accent telling someone to do sth. via court.
and a death threat.
And the only official thing we get from here is that the american judicial system apparently turned down to help these agents.
So are they just trying to make noise to get some free PR by SI or what is the meaning of this.
Oly people called this article and everything mentioned there ridiculous and claim to be waiting for a court judgement on the matter (of the money, obviously, not of any alleged threats to someone they have never seen).
As it seems, this far, the agents are playing media games with the generous help of sports illustrated while Oly work within the confines of the law and probably have more and better lawyers. So, why exactly is this an issue? As long as these guys don’t get in court and do sth. meaningful about their claims, all I see is people trying to make noise to put Oly under pressure and put the name of the team through the dirt.
Also, it seems to me, people who have legal representation don’t really appreciate agents calling them directly. If I was a billionaire and someone was calling me continually to bug me about sth. I would also tell him to call my lawyer or piss off, already. Seriously, what are these people thinking? What are courts for, after all?
I am just a fan..but all these american news papers are attacking euro basketball and saying europeans are racist… i am not a journalist but shouldnt european journalists should back up europe..this is getting out of hand..
(sorry for my english being bad)
funny part..he claims…david rivers never got paid..
funny..david visits.. sits and chears on olympiakos at the sef and in berlin..
so what happened to the code of ethics in journalism..
[...] As noted here, Olympiacos allegedly owes McLaughin and former Reds player Chris Morris some $1.5 million in total when the latter was unceremoniously released from the team back in 1999. [...]