I still cant understand why Ben does not have a shoe contract. I wonder if it has anything to do with his former agent.

strange, I saw him on some posters for Reebok (not sure, maybe AND1), at a benchpress

His deal with AND1 expired last year, if that's what you mean.

This is just business. There is so little negotiating required in the NBA under what I consider to be the best CBA in professional sports.

And this looks more like a "trust issue" than anything else. Ben didn't like what was either a mistake, or an attempt to slip something by him from his agent.

You have to be able to trust the guy representing your interests. On the eve of what will be Ben's biggest contract to date, you can't have the agent sneaking in hidden markups.

The reason why his agent wanted a cut presumable would be because a max deal is a set amount. There is little to negotiate over, and an extension is also mandated in the CBA by fixed raises.

The Agent wanted 4% to negotiate not an hourly rate, and this was something Ben thought had been made clear that it would not happen that way. The damning part of this for the agent, was his "I was meaning to talk to you about that". Yeah, when hell froze over, or I was locked into my cut. MUWAHAHAHA!

As Pistons fans, this is actually good for us. It likely means that Ben is not anticipating playing hardball or fielding a lot of offers. He's going to pay someone hourly to look over contract offers, not to play one team off another.

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Nov 13 LW Milan Lucic had an active night. He scored his first goal in eight games since his Oct. 25 hat trick and also pounded Michael Komisarek in a third-period fight. Lucic cut his hand in a fight with Michael Komisarek. "I'll be fine," he said. "(X-rays are) negative, but there's so many broken bones in there from before you can't really tell."