Words by Phlip

4 days after the tentative deal is in place, we get news that teams are already trying to deal for players, that Deron Williams’ jersey will be retired by his Turkish team despite playing only two games and that THIS morning (Wednesday the 30th), players can show up to team facilities to workout.

Yes, I got my wish and the lockout is over.

Down to business, why don’t we?

Boston Celtics shopping Rondo…
The rumors have gone from weird (Rondo for Perkins back), to those that make good sense (Rondo for Chris Paul). Of these, the one that KIND OF makes sense is to bring in Chris Paul as a PG who is mature, can run a team in the dearth of superstar support once the Big Three is inevitably gone to the Hall of Fame and doesn’t shoot free throws worse than Shaquille O’neal. Sending your starting point guard away for a your former starting center is a terrible move.

The Chris Paul deal is still a long shot and will require a third team to get involved because of the over $16mil that Chris Paul is due this season and $17.7 next year.

Knicks fans can kindly sit down and be quiet about any superstar player joining them, as it is now more costly to go into the Luxury Tax in the new collective bargaining and with Carmelo and Amar’e already on max contracts, they would have to gut their bench in favor of veteran’s minimum players, and a superstar player like CP3 would STILL have to take a major paycut. In other words, they would be worse off than they are now, and at that worse for wears than last year’s Heat team found themselves as far as bench depth goes.
 
The other crown jewel of this season, Dwight Howard…
The New Jersey Nets, one of three or so teams who ARE under the cap and CAN afford to deal, are said to be putting together a package including one of the Lopez twins, whichever one plays there now and some draft picks to bring D12 into the fold. This MIGHT be enough to draw Deron Williams into extending his own contract ahead of the teams move to Brooklyn. I have no real doubts to cast on this one, given the Nets’ salary cap situation (they’re under it) and eccentric Russian owner.

Again, Knicks fans can stop licking their lips [||] over this one too, for the same reasons as the Chris Paul deal not working.
 
NBA Players, if you chose China over the summer, you lose…

The latter four have been said to be acting out to try and get waived, but a China Basketball official has gone on record as saying…

“They can play, get paid (in China) and return to the NBA in March, or they cannot get paid and return to the NBA in March.”

They call that a “hard line stance” and it seems that these idiots are stuck now.
 
I am pleased as can be that we will have a season now. This all commences with the begining to the rest of business next weekend and leading up to TWO pre-season games for each team. The games, as I heard on ESPN will both be between the same teams and will be as geographically favorable to ease travel considerations. The scheduled games from Christmas will be as they were, and the rest of the schedule will be massaged to make it so no team plays too many consecutive games or even too many in a week. The season will extend 10 days longer than normal, and the latest the finals could end would be June 26th, 2 weeks later than they have in recent years.

All of this, naturally, is still contingent on the legalities and signing to ratify the deal, which could take up to about a week (that would be this weekend, as I understand it) and the deal is still “tentative” in nature until papers are filed, but the fact that facilities are opened to players is a good sign for us all.

Words by Phlip
@CallMePhlip
callmephlip.blogspot.com