It's all in the planning. From Angel Reyes:
While is has been mentioned that a lot of situations had to break right for Durant to sign with the Warriors, a lot of people are still comparing it to the Heat big three.
A huge difference is that Wade, Bosh and James signed the same contract 3 years before that, with views of reaching free agency together and making a decision together to see if they could play in the same team, they all left money on the table also. In a way they "circumvented/manipulated" the system with the free agency and contracts agreed to. On the other hand, Durant did not plan ahead with the Warriors players, he did not sacrifice money, and the Warriors team developed the talent themselves. I consider them completely different situations and really unfair for anybody to compare.
Fair points, Angel. Let's be clear; Wade, Bosh and James didn't do anything illegal -- they, as you said, planned ahead (and, as Bleacher Report's Howard Beck reported a couple of months ago, the initial plan was for Carmelo Anthony to join them. But Anthony signed a longer deal in Denver, and he was under contract when the SuperFriends came together in 2010). But the unique circumstances created by the spike in TV money this summer meant Durant didn't have to take a financial haircut to be able to play with Golden State.
Son of The Process? From Kyle Forst:
Sixers fan here -- I see the light, at last at last. Is it worth trading Okafor if the return isn't there? Doesn't seem like there's a fit with all the bigs...but giving him away doesn't seem real bright either. What should a good haul be? Can't figure out if the Colangelo Boys have overvalued him.
Well, you're not going to give him away, Kyle. The Sixers could still use a legit lead guard to take some of the ballhandling/decision making pressure off of Ben Simmons (nothing against newly signed Jerryd Bayless, but he's always been as much shooter as distributor and no one expects Sergio Rodriguez to be a long-term solution). The usual suspects -- Phoenix and Boston -- have had numerous opportunities to package some of their guard surplus over the last year, but have decided to hold on to their guys for now. Ultimately, I still think that Okafor winds up on one of those teams.
You Don't Mess With the Boban. From Beverley Giananni:
Please, please answer me one question! Why oh why, did the Spurs let Boban leave?
I am a seventy-nine year old granny from Dayton Ohio and a huge fan of the Spurs! With Timothy leaving and one of my favorites, Boban, leaving, I am not so sure anymore.
The simple answer is you can't keep everybody. Even in this new, money-drenched NBA, there are limits. With $94 million already invested in Kawhi Leonard, $84 million in LaMarcus Aldridge, $40 million in Danny Green and $32 million in newly signed Pau Gasol, something had to give -- in this case, $7 million a year for Boban. Even with Tim Duncan's retirement, Marjanovic was still going to be a minutes-limited backup center, and the Spurs weren't willing to pay that much for him. He will help Detroit, though, just as former Spur Aron Baynes did last season.
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I'M FEELIN' ...
1) It would be presumptuous to assume gold for the U.S. men's and women's basketball teams, but going into the Games, the respective teams look like prohibitive favorites. And in particular, the men's squad represents Jerry Colangelo's vision to turn what had been an All-Star team into a true national program. That LeBron James, Stephen Curry, Russell Westbrook, and several other top players are sitting out the Olympics this time, and that there are multiple levels of players involved and good enough to continue making the U.S. team the prohibitive favorite, speaks to the depth of the program.
2) Props to DeMarcus Cousins, who has gotten himself into great shape for the Olympics with hot yoga. Just typing those words made my fingers sweat.
3) If you want to know why the Spurs will be fine in the post-Duncan era, why they've already gotten a big jump on putting a team together that will be able to compete for championships for another 5-7 years, you need look no further than their hiring of Detroit's Brian Wright to fill one of their assistant general manager spots last week. They don't miss on bringing in the right people to their organization.
4) I can think of uniforms way worse than the White Sox's throwback jerseys if you still feel like taking some scissors to them in the future, Chris Sale.
NOT FEELIN' ...
1) Good for the Liberty and Fever. Their principled stand and willingness to speak out was so simple to understand, the only surprise was that it took the WNBA a couple of days to rescind its silly fine of its players for supposed "uniform violations." Talk about tone deaf. Luckily, wiser heads prevailed, and the league wasn't in the ludicrous position of punishing its players for expressing an opinion.
2) Sorry to hear Marc Gasol will also miss the Olympics as he continues rehabbing his broken foot. A healthy Spain was probably the only team that could give the U.S. squad a real game, but even if older brother Pau Gasol is now saying he's going to play, the Spanish team would need both Gasols, along with Serge Ibaka -- who is also skipping the Games -- to have a realistic chance against the Americans.
3) RIP, Dennis Green. Your Vikings and Cardinals teams were exciting to watch, and by all accounts, you were an astute talent evaluator, both of players (Randy Moss, for one) and coaches (Tony Dungy, Brian Billick, Tyrone Willingham, and others). This will live forever in the Coach Meltdown Hall of Fame.
4) Many of you are too young to remember that, for a time, Garry Marshall was one of the biggest people in television, even though he rarely appeared in front of the camera. In the late 70s, Marshall, who died last week at 81, was responsible for three of the top 10 rated shows on TV -- Happy Days, Laverne and Shirley and Mork and Mindy -- getting on the air as executive producer. He soon joined his sister Penny out in Hollywood (she was Laverne) and became a prolific director, making movies like "Pretty Woman" and "Beaches."
BY THE NUMBERS
4: Previous Olympic Games experience for the U.S. men's basketball team, which began exhibition play in preparation for Rio with a rout of Argentina in Las Vegas last week. Three of those four appearances belong to Carmelo Anthony, who's on his fourth team this year after playing in 2004, '08 and '12. The other Olympic appearance is Kevin Durant's, on the 2012 team that won gold in London. All of the other Olympians this year -- Klay Thompson, Draymond Green, DeMar DeRozan, Harrison Barnes, DeMarcus Cousins, Kyrie Irving, DeAndre Jordan, Jimmy Butler, Kyle Lowry and Paul George -- are on their first Olympic team.
$50,000,000: New amount of the two-year contract for Dirk Nowitzki in Dallas, a bump up by $10 million on what the sides had originally agreed to earlier. The new deal puts the Diggler more in line with the two-year, $48 million valedictory the Lakers gave Kobe Bryant in his last contract.
28: Years since the city of Chicago hosted an All-Star Game. With the NBA's decision to pull the 2017 All-Star Game out of Charlotte, Chicago is one of the potential destinations. It hasn't hosted an All-Star Weekend since 1988, when Michael Jordan and Dominique Wilkins engaged in that historic dunk contest.
-- Pelicans guard Tim Frazier (@Timfraz23), Wednesday, 3:08 p.m., lamenting that when restaurants bring out fare that is "compliments of the chef," it never is, in Frazier's mind, any good. "Why can't they bring out some hot wings or crab cake sliders?," he asked in a previous Tweet.
THEY SAID IT
"I'm writing you now so that you can begin this process immediately, and so that you don't have to deal with the hurt and struggle of weaning them off of the addiction that you facilitated. That addiction only leads to anger, resentment and jealousy from everybody involved, including yourself."
-- Kobe Bryant, in The Players' Tribune, in a Letter to His Younger Self in which he said he wouldn't pay off his family's bills and buy them things as he did when he first came into the league. Bryant told his "17-year-old" to invest in his family rather than buying them things.
"We were the only team in the NBA to beat both (Cleveland and Golden State) on their home court -- the only team in the NBA, the Boston Celtics. We told him that. We played him clips from both games and told him basically the scouting report of how we guarded Steph (Curry) and Klay (Thompson) -- our entire game plan, basically. That's what made me mad. We (expletive) told him everything we do to beat these guys, and we beat them, and he went and joined them."
-- Celtics forward Jae Crowder, to MassLive, describing his frustration with Kevin Durant after being part of Boston's pitch to the free agent forward.
"I'll have a voice in the locker room. I'll say what needs to be said. What I want (those) guys to do, whenever I'm on some (expletive), I want them to tell me. I want you to say my name, man to man. That goes along with everybody. Say my name. And I'm going to do the same to you."
-- Jimmy Butler, to the Chicago Tribune, on his desire for greater accountability on the Bulls next season.
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