Official NBA OFF-SEASON Thread - 2011: Free Agency Dec. 9th

Nate's stretching is the key to his bounce. An old AAU coach of mines told me you can gain up to 4" on your vertical just by stretching every night.
 
I really, really like both Nick Young and James Hardens games. Both so smooth offensively.

And ya, Ryan Hollins ups are ridiculous. It's too bad his maturity is terrible and he doesn't have the work ethic.
 
Also, the hate for Stern is both unwarranted and overrated.

People act like this wouldn't happen with anyone else.
 
Originally Posted by you big dummy
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THIS COMMERCIAL IS GREAT! 
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The 2's look pretty cool as well.
 
Stern works for the owners, dude is coming in for the kill, and when he gets 50/50 split plus harder cap and shorter contracts, trust me the owners won't be calling him after he bodys bill hunter.
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Originally Posted by JapanAir21

Also, the hate for Stern is both unwarranted and overrated.

People act like this wouldn't happen with anyone else.
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I'm glad to know I'm not the only one who thinks this.  People act like everything they don't like about the NBA is the result of a direct order from Stern and that this lockout is going to continue or end at his whim.  It doesn't work like that.  
 
Stern is doing what he gotta do. Protect the league in it's best interest. I truly don't understand how all of you back up the players as much as y'all do. I mean, I understand the owners aren't angelic themselves, but something has to be done in order to protect the league in it's best interest. These players WORK for somebody. Since when did anyone get to go up to their bosses and say, 'listen here - things have to go like this!'. Yeah....my $+%.

If that means a harder cap, shorter contracts and more revenue sharing - @*@+ ain't coming out of y'all pockets, so why you mad fo?

!!#% the players. I'm with Stern and the owners.
 
anybody know where i can buy tickets to the drew vs goodman game on oct. 9th?
 
Originally Posted by Air Freshh 23

Originally Posted by 0cks

Tim Thomas' still alive?
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His wife isn't well, so he left the mavericks to take care of her.
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Pretty much. There were rumors he might come back at times, but he never did. She has been sick for a while, and all his time away has been because of that. In his short stint with the Mavericks, he said he enjoyed it, and Cuban said he'd welcome him back...

I wouldn't be surprised if Cuban did something special for him since he wasn't apart of the Championship roster. Not a ring, but something.

I mean, I understand the owners aren't angelic themselves, but something has to be done in order to protect the league in it's best interest. These players WORK for somebody. Since when did anyone get to go up to their bosses and say, 'listen here - things have to go like this!'. Yeah....my $+%.


Exactly. How exactly does a salary cap really EFFECT the players? It'll indirectly effect them since teams won't be able to sign as many huge deals and they'll have to balance salaries more, but it's a business. They're your boss. If CEOs and owners want to downsize in the business world, they do. Labor unions are normally very insignificant and non-impactful. And seriously, how can players complain about getting 20 million dollars a  year for playing basketball. You give me 50 grand a year to play basketball for the rest of my life, and I'd be STOKED. And minimum salary right now is like a million dollars a year? And average player is closer to 4-5 million range?

Greedy %!! players. You can say the owners are greedy, sure, but they write your damn check.
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For one they aren't merely "Workers" ... They're more like Independent Contractors so while they both perform task for the company they have the ability to come or go as they see fit once their contract is up. You go to who will give you the highest rate for your services.

%$%% what y'all are talking about its the players that make the game... We Watch The NBA for LeBron , For Kobe , For Wade, For Dirk, For Pooh, For CP3, For Durant & Russy, For those Fassibois in the Tri State... NOT For, Dan Gilbert, James Dolan, The Maloofs, Mike (The Owner not the Player) or Donald Sterling.

So y'all talk about this y'all are with the Owners Bull %!$% if you want. If it wasn't for the players there wouldn't be any league, the owners are getting paid of someone's talents, ability, & marketability. Not because they had the idea and built it from the ground up, its because they had money to invest in an established brand already. This New Breed of Owners, They're More Like Leeches.
 
But the players are the labor and product...

Edit:
Kobe to play in Italy during lockout

Italian club Virtus Bologna said it has reached a verbal agreement with Kobe Bryant for the Los Angeles Lakers star to play in Italy during the NBA lockout.
"We have reached an economic deal," Virtus president Claudio Sabatini told a local radio station. "There's still some things to arrange but at this point I'm very optimistic. I would say it's 95 percent done."

A person with knowledge of the negotiations told The Associated Press on Friday that the sides have settled on a $3 million contract for the opening 40 days of the Italian league season. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because the deal has still not been signed.

Bryant, who spent much of his childhood in Italy, was in the country for sponsor appearances over the past two days but was flying back to the U.S. for labor talks with the NBA on Friday.

Bryant is expected to get a work visa and return to Italy next week.

"Kobe should be in Bologna by Wednesday or Thursday with his visa in hand for medical visits and then we can deposit the contract with the league," Sabatini said. "I want to make clear that right now there are still no signatures. We've got to write the contract, which will then be read over and over again."

Virtus had been due to open the season Oct. 9 against Roma, but schedules now need to be reworked after Venezia was added to the league as a 17th team.

The deal, which would allow Bryant to return to the Lakers immediately if the lockout ends, should last about 10 games.

Sabatini wants to create a special schedule that assigns Bryant's games to Italy's biggest arenas.

"This is an important investment and a unique chance for the city of Bologna and all of Italian basketball," Sabatini said. "I'm hoping everyone wants to collaborate."

The 33-year-old Bryant has three years and $83.5 million left on his contract with the Lakers.

Between the ages of six and 13, Bryant lived in Italy when his father Joe Bryant played with Rieti, Reggio Calabria, Pistoia and Reggiana from 1984-91. The elder Bryant also once owned a small part of Olimpia Milano. He now coaches the Los Angeles Sparks in the WNBA.

The younger Bryant still speaks Italian fairly well, and discussed his memories of his time in the country during an interview with the Gazzetta dello Sport two days ago.

"Italy is my home. It's where my dream of playing in the NBA started. This is where I learned the fundamentals, learned to shoot, to pass and to (move) without the ball," Bryant told the Italian newspaper. "All things that when I came back to America the players my age didn't know how to do because they were only thinking about jumping and dunking."

Bryant added that playing in Italy "would be a dream for me."

Bryant has been bothered in recent seasons by an arthritic joint in his right knee, which has required several minor operations. He sat out a majority of the Lakers' practices last season and saw his scoring, shooting percentage and minutes decrease in his 15th NBA season.

Former USC guard Daniel Hackett, a dual citizen who plays for Pesaro in Italy, said he would give Bryant a hostile reception if he faced the former NBA MVP.

"The only way to stop a player that good is with a hard foul and he knows that," Hackett said. "I've got five fouls to commit and they're going to be the hardest five fouls I've ever committed."

Hackett also criticized speculation that Bologna will ask opposing clubs hosting Bryant's away games to chip in a portion of ticket sales to help pay Bryant's salary.

"I really hope Kobe doesn't lower himself to this level for economic and commercial motives," Hackett said, according to the Gazzetta. "To me, it would be a big disappointment to see him here under these circumstances, and a loss of respect for a player who is too big to dirty his hands in this league."

Bologna president Sabatini replied, "Fortunately not all Italian players think like Hackett."

Turkish club Besiktas and at least one team in China had also expressed interest in Bryant, who has won five NBA championships and been an All-Star 13 times.

Bologna also recently approached Spurs swingman Manu Ginobili, who played with the club before joining San Antonio in 2002. Denver Nuggets forward Danilo Gallinari rejoined his former Italian club Olimpia Milano last week.

The NBA season is scheduled to open Nov. 1 but owners and players have failed to agree on a new labor deal. The two sides are at odds over how to divide the league's revenue, a salary cap structure and the length of guaranteed contracts.

Last week, NBA officials announced the postponement of training camp and the cancellation of 43 preseason games.

Virtus has won 15 Italian league titles but none since 2001, when it also won the Euroleague for the second time.

Bologna did not qualify for this season's Euroleague, although the team has big ambitions after signing former Clemson point guard Terrell McIntyre, who led Siena to four consecutive Italian titles before transferring to Malaga in Spain before last season.

Having mingled with fans in Milan on Wednesday, Bryant also received a warm welcome in Rome on Thursday, where he was brought to the Campidoglio museum to be given a commemorative medal from the 1960 Rome Olympics.


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Originally Posted by JapanAir21
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Exactly. How exactly does a salary cap really EFFECT the players? It'll indirectly effect them since teams won't be able to sign as many huge deals and they'll have to balance salaries more, but it's a business. They're your boss. If CEOs and owners want to downsize in the business world, they do. Labor unions are normally very insignificant and non-impactful. And seriously, how can players complain about getting 20 million dollars a  year for playing basketball. You give me 50 grand a year to play basketball for the rest of my life, and I'd be STOKED. And minimum salary right now is like a million dollars a year? And average player is closer to 4-5 million range?

Greedy %!! players. You can say the owners are greedy, sure, but they write your damn check.

If you would accept that, you'd be a fool. We can all say "I'd play in the NBA for 100,000, these players are greedy as hell".. really? You'd play in the league for 50k when the owners are profiting the way they are off of you? 
If it comes down to siding with either billionaires who invest the money and profit off the work of others... OR siding with the millionaire workers who are actually providing the service and the reason we watch the game, I'm going with the players.

Is the SYSTEM perfect? No. But Stern's trying to spin this lockout as trying to fix the broken league and it would be in the best interest of the LEAGUE... which is a flat out lie. If they wanted what was in the best interest of the league, we wouldn't be in a lockout or it would have been resolved already. If that were true, we would see more compromise on the side of the owners or willing to address logical changes to the system. The owners wanted to crush the players and turn the system into an exploitative league which only pads their pockets more. Oh poor Dan Gilbert.. your team sucks and Lebron left Cleveland completely within the rules, except the money you made off Lebron was ENORMOUS. One man alone made you HUGE profits, and he and many owners like him want to make that system more unfair. If you're not making money off of a successful player or team, that's a problem with the way you run your business. If the owners TRULY have a point that the system is unfair to them and they're losing as much money as they claim, just open your books. Let independent professionals examine you records and we can see for certain how bad of shape the owners are in. 

The owners want protection from themselves, and I do understand that although I don't sympathize with it. At times if you don't overpay for a player, someone else will... but other times the owners and GMs are just idiots. The Magic overbid against THEMSELVES for Rashard Lewis... was anyone going to give Travis Outlaw that idiotic deal he got? I won't even touch the moronic contracts the Knicks have handed out.. that's the players fault?

The bottomline is we want basketball back, and I can't say I'd stop watching the NBA if the players got totally screwed in this new deal, but that doesn't mean I'm rooting for billionaires against millionaires. I have more doubt in the owners, they won't show us their records, they ask us to trust them but why would we? All things equal and the lockout ends, I'd rather the players get a better deal because they're the product, the reason we watch, and because I can know their stories and there's more of a connection to them than owners.
 
Since Kobe was thinking about going overseas, as soon as I saw Italy offered Kobe a deal, it was pretty much guranteed he was going there. Especially since he has roots there.
 
You people riding on Stern's nuts and the owners as well are beyond stupid. 
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Seriously, buy a @#$%^& clue.  It must be so intense watching Mark Cuban sit in a chair.  I know personally I LOVE watching Jerry Buss sit courtside, oooohhhh that's why I tune in. 
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I guess all of you go to your jobs and just hope and pray that your bosses reduce your pay greatly, you probably back those VP's all the way don't you? 
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  That's what you're doing right here, you are rooting for the business decision makers, the VP's the CEO's and the like to take away wages, give no raises, pay less money, while they do what?  STUFF THEIR POCKETS YOU TARDS. 
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  WHY, WHYYYYYYYYYYYYY would anyone back the God damn owners? 
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My God you guys are thick. 

Friggin incredible. 
 
Originally Posted by Seymore CAKE

For one they aren't merely "Workers" ... They're more like Independent Contractors so while they both perform task for the company they have the ability to come or go as they see fit once their contract is up. You go to who will give you the highest rate for your services.

%$%% what y'all are talking about its the players that make the game... We Watch The NBA for LeBron , For Kobe , For Wade, For Dirk, For Pooh, For CP3, For Durant & Russy, For those Fassibois in the Tri State... NOT For, Dan Gilbert, James Dolan, The Maloofs, Mike (The Owner not the Player) or Donald Sterling.

So y'all talk about this y'all are with the Owners Bull %!$% if you want. If it wasn't for the players there wouldn't be any league, the owners are getting paid of someone's talents, ability, & marketability. Not because they had the idea and built it from the ground up, its because they had money to invest in an established brand already. This New Breed of Owners, They're More Like Leeches.
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^^^^^^
All of that
 
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