He was bounced out of Utah after the 1985-1986 season following an awful negotiation with Jazz brass. It would take Dantley three years of crossing guarding just to earn enough to pay the fines he got while holding out ($44,000) for that last Jazz contract, a three-year, $2.85-million contract that was big for its day. Just before trading Dantley to the Pistons for Kelly Tripucka, Jazz head coach and general manager Frank Layden pulled one of the all-time management dick moves in pro sports history by fining Dantley $3 and making him pay it off in dimes—a figurative “30 pieces of silver” for an alleged betrayal, like Judas before the Last Supper.
Had Dantley actually been invited to that Biblical meal, chances are good he would have brown-bagged it: According to a Washington Post profile written after he retired, Dantley kept food per diems in his pocket. Jazz president Dave Checketts, picking up dickishly where Frank Layden left off, slammed Dantley after the trade: “We knew we had to get rid of him and we were never so happy to get rid of a guy in the history of the franchise.” Dantley left Detroit steaming, too, traded to Dallas for Mark Aguirre in 1989 amid reports of altercations with head coach Chuck Daly and evil choirboy Isiah Thomas. Dantley’s departure from Detroit came a year after leading the Pistons in scoring during an NBA Finals loss to the Los Angeles Lakers, and months before Detroit’s Bad Boys would win a championship.
Dantley never got that ring, but he played hard wherever he was, and he never hid the fact that he appreciated the fruits of his labors. “One of my goals, when I was young, was to be a millionaire,” he told the Los Angeles Times in 1986. “Not a millionaire with assets, we’re talking liquid millionaire. I’m there. So that makes me feel pretty good.”