Tripping Balls

I haven't written much, yet, about this new NBA. I love basketball. I've loved basketball since the 1994 baseball strike left a hole in my young heart and I filled it playing games of NBA Jam in my basement until Toronto's own franchise was born. And together we've stood. I'm older now. I have precious fewer minutes to watch, to read, to consume, to debate the team and the sport. But I felt the absence this lockout brought . I missed the peaks and valleys of the free agent hot stove. The waiting. The wondering. After all, how can I play armchair GM without a team to generally manage?

And I don't really care about the BRI, contract length or whether luxury tax teams can offer the same mid-level exception. I'll learn all the new rules eventually. I prefer my sports leagues as un-capped as possible, but, as the kids are saying, "whateve-sies."

What I do care about is that the league isn't FUCKING BONKERS. Sorry, for the caps, for the swearing. I'm calm. I'll stop.

While I maintain that free agents should be able to sell their wares to the highest bidder, one thing that's always goaded my tail-feather is when players demand a trade, especially a trade to a specific team. Because when it happens, it makes every other interaction and consideration, trade and signing, impotent. Players sign contracts. Teams make trades. Stay in your corners, gentlemen.

But what David Stern (and Cleveland's finest, Danny Gilbert) has done in vetoing last night's Chris Paul trade is so much worse. It's the NBA's death penalty.

It's like sitting down to a friendly game of Monopoly with your best friends on a cold, rainy Sunday. You land on properties, buy, sell, trade, land on chance, go to jail. After an hour or so, someone's going to be ahead with Boardwalk and Park Place, someone's going to be putting hotels on the Oranges, someone's going to be mortgaging Baltic Ave. to buy that one remaining railroad. There's winners and there's losers. Eventually someone gets mad and someone gets sore and someone gets gloat-y. It's a game, that's how it works.

Then, imagine if you will, one buddy pulls out a gun, points it at your head and announces: "give me all your cash and hotels." Suddenly, it's not a game anymore. Nothing that came before that moment matters. "Here. Take it. It's yours. I never liked this game anyways."

The lock-out was a Monopoly stick-up. So is the league owning the Hornets and treating that franchise like a Goodwill dumpster. Scola? Kevin Martin? Lamar Odom? I'd trade the entire Raptors roster for those three dudes. Chris Paul is the greatest point guard to ever play the game and I don't think the Lakers, barring more trades, end up on top of that deal.

The most thrilling part of perusing Dan Gilbert's leaked email to the Commish is as follows:

Over the next three seasons this deal would save the Lakers approximately $20 million in salaries and approximately $21 million in luxury taxes. That $21 million goes to non-taxpaying teams and to fund revenue sharing.

This is why we had a five-month lock-out? Because the Lakers aren't spending enough on player salaries?

This isn't highway robbery. It's a stick-up on the B&O Railroad.