Dikembe Mutombo Quotes

And historically the owners have used loyalty to a team or a city to hold players as opposed to always paying their worth.

I can hardly think of any players that have really walked out of their own volition while there were still teams that really wanted them at a fair price.

I don't think it's right to think ahead to free agency.

When I look at our roster, I'm sure all of you have printed that I'm coming up on 35, and given my situation and my salary structure and all that, yeah, I have to wonder if this team is going to make moves and they haven't.

Free agency screws everybody's allegiances up. Whether it be football, baseball, hockey, basketball, whatever it may be. It's really hard.

We protected Andre Johnson, given him long-term contracts. Brian Cushing's got a long-term contract. Arian Foster. So certain key players, core players, we've tried not to tie them up for a long period of time.

Obviously, in the NBA, there's a lot of different decisions that people make. The whole thing in the NBA is that people sometimes have an opportunity to go where they want.

Nobody wants to give up good players.

When you go into free agency and have options, any team is up for you to be on - and the Raiders, obviously with me having been there for so long, have a great shot at it.

I'm loyal to Portland. I want to play my whole career here, but at any moment, they can decide we want somebody else.

That's part of free agency. You can go where you want at the end of the day.

Everybody - come on - everybody is going to get traded at some point.

Some people want to stay with one team but they get traded.

If a player demonstrated that he is the best, and a team decides, even so, we don't want to pay him, as in any other business, he should be able to play elsewhere.

Today, free agency takes away a lot of your heroes, they go somewhere else. Some of them don't but a lot of them do-take the higher offer to go somewhere else. And, it turns the fans off because they get attached to the players.

I've got to play free agency out, and I've got to look at all of my options.

The ability of players to jump teams when their contracts are up has hurt fan loyalty.

I have gone from a player who thought he would spend his whole career with one organization to a player who's been with three organizations in a week. It's like rotisserie baseball.

I am not going to lie: I know that there are clubs that want to sign me and can match Real Madrid's demands. But that's up to my representatives and the club. I will stay if the club wants me to stay.

You see great players, Hall of Fame players that didn't stay with their team.

I've seen players in the past who wanted to stay with their team, and it didn't work out.

I think people have to realize that - and basketball fans do, Lakers fans do - that we have to operate under the rules of the collective bargaining agreement, which means you can't just go and grab every player that you want.

You don't want to get to the point where you play out your contract and you get to those complicated situations where they can put the franchise tag on you and things like that.

In the NBA, you're never immune to rumors and trade rumors and free agency stuff.

There's very few guys that play for one team their whole careers, nowadays, especially in the cap era it's a lot tougher.