?QuestionMark?

Well they just lost Chandler, K-Mart and J.R. Smith to China so that really hurts (assuming we have a season this year). Nene and Afflalo should be re-signed. Nene is one of the better centers in the league and Denver is desperate for size. Afflalo is just a good fit next to a guy like Gallinari and Lawson. The bigger problem is that they have no one to build around. Gallinari and Lawson are good players but at best they're second options. This is a star driven league and you need a good centerpiece. To be honest, I don't know if they can make the playoffs as constructed right now considering who they've lost and if they do make it, it'll be a short stay. They need a star. Their biggest acquisition may have to come through the 2012 draft which could be a loaded one.

I agree with BFT. Cleveland was going to suck anyway, might as well wait a year for Valanciunas as I think he's light years ahead Thompson. I think Thompson will have a decent career but won't have the impact Valanciunas or even Biyombo will have. I'm still not sold with Williams. The same reason I didn't like Michael Beasley as the 1st pick is the same reason I'd pass on Williams. To me Beasley was going to be stuck between positions and I don't think Williams projects well as a PF.

No doubt the owners are important, but they can be replaced. A new league may not be as popular as the NBA, but if it has the NBA talent it can be more easily sustainable than an NBA with replacement players. I'd rather watch Chris Paul play for Kitty Hawk Flight than Tierre Brown starting for the New Orleans Hornets. By placing a salary cap and salary limits by definition they're not allowing them to maximize profitability. For every overpaid player in the league, there's also a handful that outplay their contracts. Derrick Rose should be getting a MAX contract, but that rookie scale the players agreed to a long time ago seems to have benefited owners that draft well. They got more. The players are giving them 47%. That's about 300-350 million per year. I agree. But you can also argue that having a CBA is also not sensible when it limits how much a player can earn. A guy like LeBron could surely double or even triple his yearly salary without a CBA. No doubt there are flaws in the system, but I disagree with the owners that the system as a whole is broken. San Antonio won 4 titles with this system, so clearly small market teams can win. IMO, the biggest flaw in this system is that there isn't enough revenue sharing among teams. The biggest disadvantage small market teams haves isn't how much they can spend for players or players not wanting to play there, it's that small markets can't compete with the local TV deals of the Lakers, Knicks, or Bulls. But revenue sharing up to this point is something that hasn't even been seriously discussed among owners, when that should be the biggest change to help teams make a profit. Between revenue sharing and the 4% of BRI the players are giving up, that makes up all of the owners' losses. The rest is up to them based on self control and putting a winning franchise on the floor. But instead, owners want to practically eliminate all risk because they assume they have the right to guaranteed profits. No business has a right to make a profit. For as much crap as the owners are giving the system with guaranteed contracts, it's had several benefits. This past season has been the most interesting because the system allowed the Big Three to team up in Miami. Also guaranteed contracts are like a fixed interest rate on a loan, rather than a variable one. Yeah sometimes owners lose by overpaying a stiff (Eddy Curry, Luke Walton, Rashard Lewis), but they also sometimes get gems on small deals (Billups when he first signed in Detroit, Arenas before he re-signed in Washington, Jason Kidd before re-signing with NJ) and those players don't hold out like the NFL because of the security of guanteed contracts. To me, both sides have a this obnoxious sense of entitlement. But at least the players own it. The owners are trying to BS me into feeling sorry them. I can't when I see teams like the Pistons and Bobcats with three head coaches on payroll, or teams like the Hornets and Grizzlies when they move to cities where people don't care about basketball just because they have a shiny new stadium they could never fill, and I see teams freely giving huge salaries to Rarshard Lewis, Elton Brand, Drew Gooden, Luke Walton, Joe Johnson, Darko Milicic, Tyrus Thomas, Brenden Haywood, Amir Johnson, etc. and then blame the players for their lack of self control. I honestly don't care how either side splits the millions they get, I just want to watch basketball again. Whether Kobe makes 20 million or 2 million or Donal Sterling makes 30 million or 10 millions, they don't pay my rent so I don't care. But to me the owners are the bad guys here because I honestly don't think they've negotiated in good faith as Billy Hunter put it.

Hell yeah it was worth it, especially to beat Boston. Part of the problem in the playoffs for Ron is that he really had no one to guard. When they signed him the tought was maybe LA had to go through Melo, Roy, Durant, and Ginobili to get to the Finals and then face either Pierce or LeBron. Last year we had ron guarding Belinelli and Marion. So Artest's strength was really fully utilized. I don't think LA beats Boston with Ariza instead of Ron. Hell, Ron set the tone within the first minute with his takedown of Pierce. I don't recall Pierce really killing LA except for a stretch is game 4 or 5. Other than that he was quiet, at least compared to when Vlad and Luke was defending him in 08. I don't know that Ariza would have made much of a difference this year either. Would have helped, no doubt, but I don't think they would have gotten past Dallas anyway. LA as a whole just looked slower and I'm not sure if Ariza alone would have fixed it. LA needs to make a lot of changes to get quicker on the perimeter.

We're going to get caught up in semantics by going back and forth about position. You want to say he's a SF, I want to say he's a PF. It really doesn't matter. My point isn't whether Turiaf or Cook should have gotten PT at SF. I would have had Luke and George get the majority of those minutes. My bigger issue is Cook should not have played at all, especially when LA had better players on the bench. All those minutes Cook got that season should have been distributed among the rest of the players, including Turiaf so that he'd get more run even if it's just a few 3-5 minutes spots when Mihm, Kwame, and Odom were healthy and getting most of the minutes. When Mihm got hurt, Phil should have gone with Luke or George to start and Turiaf's PT should have definately been increased. Cook was fool's gold. Yeah he spread the floor and was an excellent pick and pop player. But he couldn't defend, swat, board, rotated, pass, jump, run, got lazy, played outside of himself too often, was a black hole, and gave up more points than he got. Cook should have never gotten off the bench, much less average 19 mpg while Turiaf rotted on the bench. Not when you already have Kwame and Smush out there. Turiaf's energy alone would have been worth him getting PT with that team. But it's just Phil's stubborness that kept him (and Bynum for that matter), benched.

I could do without the NBA on X-mas. I'm tired of the Lakers always losing and ruining my holidays.

Clearly they don't care since the owners were calling for a lockout beginning three years ago. As for the rest, I don't think it's really an either/or situation. If the owners get that hard set on their conditions, the union probably decertifies. The middle class would be the ones getting screwed and since they make up most of the union, they'd be better off then not having a CBA.

My thoughts exactly. I hope Matt Moore completes more passes to the cornerbacks to help the cause.

Kwame, Mihm, and Odom were originally starting together until Mihm got hurt. Cook got the start at the 4. He wasn't chasing SFs on the perimeter. I'm saying Turiaf should have taken all of Cook's minutes and then taken some of Kwame's. Especially when Kwame had no one to defend (Shaq, Duncan, KG, etc.) because then he was a total liability at both ends. At least Turiaf would swat and catch and finish. Cook was NOT a SF except in emergency situations which were rare (I can only think of a game in Houston). I'm not advocating removing Odom (I just said LA needed to go with talent) or Mihm, I said Turiaf needed to take Cook's minutes and some of Kwame's. Turiaf was not better than Kwame when Kwame had someone to guard, but against teams with no inside threat, I'd rather have a big like Turiaf who could actually make a catch under the hoop for an easy bucket. And one who would actually attempt to rotate defensively instead of just watching as teams ran layup drills on them. Cook was not a SF, much less a starting SF. Luke Walton got the start there when Mihm went down. I wanted Cook to be cemented on the bench. Let Turiaf be the first big off the bench and get some run at the 5 with Odom, or play at the 4 with Kwame. Even with a healthy Mihm, Turiaf should have gotten Cook's minutes. Offensively triangles are interchangable. It's why Cook as a PF played like a spot up SG in the tri. But his defense was just soooo horrible, he gave up as many or more points than he got. Turiaf could have found success offensively within the tri. He was one of the only players that would dive to the basket off a Kobe double team in the post. He had a pretty decent jump shot out to 15 feet when he got his feet set. But as I said, he was the only finisher at the rim other than Kobe. Never mind Cook chucking 28 foot three pointers, I'd rather have Turiaf making those easy hoops underneath that LA desperately lacked.

I seriously doubt 22 teams are losing money. No one would by a team under those circumstances, and not at the prices they've been going for. Those "losses" are mostly from the purchase from the team. They show up in a balance sheet but doesn't really mean it's actual money that they're losing. The most important part. Most fans don't go to the arena just to be in the arena. Most fans don't go to watch cheerleaders; they're nice to watch if they're there, but not necessary. The NBA is a marketing machine, but without the best players in the world to market, the brand is meaningless. A start-up league with the best players would actually have a chance of succeeding. The ABA was extremely popular and folded mostly because they couldn't get a national TV deal. There's also a lot of revenue sharing in the NFL. And the lower salaries are a result of the hugh roster spaces. Their popularity also has little to do with their CBA. We can go into all the reasons why the NFL is more popular, but lets just say that one of the biggest reasons is that the NFL is the perfect sport for TV. But also, this point is somewhat irrelevent. If you ask the NFL players which system they would prefer, a probably the majority would take the NBA's system or guranteed contracts. The players aren't negotiating for the best interest of the league and neither are the owners. Each are looking out for themselves. The NBA could overtake the NFL in popularity and it wouldn't necessarily benefit the players. Just like the owners don't care if the league is popular if they can make a profit (Lakers, Knicks, Clippers, etc.).

50/50 is a terrible deal for the players when you factor they started at 57. Since the existence of the salary cap, players have never been below 53 but the league wants 50 after coming of record highs in revenues. It's worse when the owners disguise it as a 50-50 split when really they want to deduct an additional 350 million before and split the rest, meaning the players are really getting 47%. It's also bad when the players get nothing in return for going to 50. It's not like the owners are getting rid of the salary cap or giving them higher % increases in contracts in exchange, or any real trade off. Plus we don't know what gimmick the owners want with the salary cap at 50-50. They could still claim they'll allow the soft cap but they'll gimmick it up in essence working as a hard cap. From the players POV, they might as well not have a union where the CBA limits their earning power if they have to agree to a 50/50 split. The purpose of letting the players have a bigger share of revenues was because they implemented a salary cap. The players have already given up $350 million by going to 53% to help offset the 300 million the league is allegedly losing. The only reason the owners want 50 is so that they don't have to share revenue amongst themselves. If the issue is of disparity between small market vs big market, then that's something the owners need to figure out themselves, not have to take from the players.

It's not impossible for 22 teams to turn a profit now. It's about self control. No one points a gun to owners heads telling them to overpay players. No one tells them to fire coach after coach and then have 3 coaches on the books. Most of their losses are self inflicted. Players have the right to play overseas now. The union looks out for the players, as it should. Just because the NBA is more profitable, does not necessarily mean the players are better off. Plus, the players aren't just employees. They're the product. No one comes to watch Jerry Buss, Dan Gilbert, Paul Allen. Without the players, the owners have nothing to sell. Their advantage in BRI is a result of the salary cap and contract limits. If they didn't have an advantage in BRI and still had those limits, then there's really no benefit to them to have a CBA. The players should decertify and let the owners deal with a free market. The issue here, I guess, is that you believe Stern when he says 22 teams are losing money and I don't. I agree on this part. It's just about being realistic. Here it's the players that have made concessions, the owners haven't. If parity is an issue, then to me that's an issue that should be dealt among the owners through revenue sharing than placing the onus on the players.

There were/are plenty of teams that are well run that don't win. Winning a title is not exclusively synonymous with being a well run organization. The Kings came close to a title in 2002, does that mean they weren't a well run franchise? You want to discount Detroit, fine. The Heat were 15th in the league in spending when they won. The Spurs won a title with a payroll for 48 million. Sure some players want money, but they get paid just the same in smaller cities thanks to the CBA. Otherwise Duncan, Durant, Howard, Paul, Deron Williams would have bolted a long time ago. Small market teams can be sustained if they're winners, when they lose then, yeah, it's tough for them. But that's more of Stern's issue than the players. He's allowed too many teams to move to small markets that can't sustain a franchise because they offered him a shiny new arena. Under an old CBA. Doesn't apply today. LA wouldn't be able to offer more. What power? Players aren't running franchises, and if they are that says more about management than the owner. If you're talking pushing for sign and trades, then yeah that's one aspect of the CBA I've said for years needs to be eliminated. Take more money to stay with your team or take less to go somewhere else, but you can't have both. No it won't. What's to stop Sterling from just pocketing the revenue instead of putting it into the team? He rarely spends profits as is. Besides, what you're talking about isn't what the CBA negotiation is about. You're talking about this from a fan's POV. We'd all like to see 30 teams with an equal shot at a ring to make things more entertaining. The players don't necessarily care about that, nor should they. Their primary concern is their ability to earn money, hence why a hard cap is being rejected. What you're asking is great for the league, not necessarily for the players. That's why the players have gone from 57% to 53% to help the owners cover operational expenses. But again, it's not the players' duty to protect the owners from their own stupidity. The same is true for the owners. Their debt is growing including interest and they have to pay it off. Hence a stalemate. It's about who blinks first. Still not a good enough reason to take a bad deal. They can wait it out or decertify and go to war. My guess, if they play nice the owners win. If they decertify, players have a much better chance.

I doubt 22 teams are losing money. If they were, what moron would pay that much money to purchase a franchise knowing they won't turn a profit? Second, why should the players be held responsible for the owners' own stupidity? In any system, owners will find a way to complain about it. It's all about finding loopholes in their accounting to make profits look like losses. The players have a ridiculous advantage on BRI as a concession for having limits on contracts and salary caps. All these things the owners are proposing would be illegal without a collective bargaining agreement. Owners would start losing money too. In fact, they start out in the red and lose more money than the players. Players at least have the option of going overseas to collect a paycheck, but owners still have expenses. Sure they might get money from tv rights, but if there is no season they have to pay it back with interest. So they'll still have debt to look forward to.

Teams that were well run. Even Detroit when they won didn't spend a ton of money. They were 17th in the league in salary. Does the system need tweaks? Sure, but it works. The problem comes from owners that overspend for mediocre talent. Great teams are built through the draft and through making smart trades. That's been the similarity between all 6 of those teams that have won. The only large market that has really dominated has been the Lakers. We've also seen the Kings be really good, yhe Pacers and Magic and Cavs get to the Finals. The Spurs win 4 titles. I disagree that big markets have dominated. They may have spent a lot of money on bad/mediocre talent, but they haven't dominated. Are some teams losing money? Sure, but that might be resolved by revenue sharing between owners, instead of going after the players. It's not the union's fault that teams are poorly run. It's not their fault that teams are in certain cities. It's not the union's fault that Seattle and St. Louis don't have teams but Memphis and New Orleans do. Considering the players haven't moved off a 53% split, I doubt a majority would agree to it. A lower BRI affects a majority of the players more than the superstars. And a 50-50 split isn't good when it's not a 50-50 split. It's 50-50 after they deduct 350 million, so really it's 53-47 split in favor of the owners.

Disagree. Two blocked shots + Ronny's energy far outweights Cook's single skill. Especially when he gave up as many and often more points than scored. Not to mention Ronny was the only big (besides Bynum who was benched) who could catch and finish. Kwame couldn't, Cook, couldn't, Mihm on the road couldn't, and Lamar for some reason couldn't finish in those days. I don't want a big man whose only skill is shooting. Specifically when it's only spot up shooting; he couldn't shoot coming off a screen or off the dribble, though he tried and it was almost always a brick, might as well just have been a TO. On a team lacking talent like the Lakers did, you have to play your better players. Brian Cook brought a skill that was overrated because he literally could do NOTHING else on the floor. Even Kwame was able to set solid screens (his only contribution offensively), but Cook was worthless if he wasn't catching and shooting.

I like how Stern and Silver try to spin this, saying that the league has given concessions? What concessions? Unless they mean not taking more from the status quo. The only concession that have been reported thus far have been from the players going from 57 to 53% BRI. The owners haven't given anything. What do they give up for the players to come down? More increases to contracts? An extra year on contracts? Raising base year salaries on contracts? The owners haven't "conceded" anything. They've only offered to give the players something they already had. The idea of a 50-50 split in BRI is stupid in a historical context. When Stern and the owners originally wanted to implement a hard cap, the players told the league to screw off. As a trade off for the players accepting the hard cap, the league let the players share in the league's revenue. To have the player's come down to 50% or now 47%, is ridiculous. It's obvious the owners were never serious about negotiating when their initial offer was so laughable and they waited this long to finally try to really get a deal done. The players already have offered to help the owners with their increasing costs of operation, but it shouldn't be the players' responsibility to give up more to cover the owner's stupidity in running a franchise. No one forced them to buy a team way above market value when teams are claiming they're losing money. Players should just go nuclear and decertify. Lets see if the owners blink at the idea of no hard cap, no limits on salaries, no limits on roster spots, no age limit, no drafts. Lets see how owners like Gilbert and Sarver and Jordan like it when the Knicks, Blazers, Mavericks, Heat, Lakers, Celtics, and Nets go out have 12 man rosters filled with all-stars because they have the owners to spend that much. This system the owners claim is so broken has seen San Antonio win 4 rings, while New York has been a laughing stock.

Turiaf should have been given more of Mihm's minutes after Chris got hurt. Instead, they rolled out Puppy Crap, a 6-10 shooting guard, as the first big off the bench. No way that should ever happen. For all his faults, Turiaf would have provided some shot-blocking that LA lacked with Mihm gone, and Bynum buried on the bench. On the other hand, when Cook couldn't make a shot, he was the most useless waste of height. Can't board, can't defend, can't block, can't set screens, can't pass, poor hoop IQ, can't run the floor, can't rotate. He was a one trick pony, that would give up as many points and he'd get. Korver is bad defensively too, but you can hide him with Chicago's defense. Cook just made a bad defense just that much worse. I'm not suggesting Turiaf should have played instead of Mihm. And he shouldn't have gotten more PT than Kwame, but Turiaf should have gotten more run and definately should have been playing more than Cook. Against the Suns he specifically should have gotten more PT. Kwame's strengths (his defense), was pretty much negated since he didn't have anyone to defend (no Amare in 2006). I'd have given Turiaf more PT (and all of Cook's minutes), so that LA would have at least one big on the floor willing to rotate and try to block a shot, instead of Cook and Kwame who literally stood and watched as Nash and Barbosa ran a layup line because neither Kwame or Cook could take one step to their side to cut off penetration. Instead, we had Cook who couldn't defened Marion or Diaw, couldn't rotate, and offensively didn't really do much. At least not enough to justify him being a major defensive liability. Next to a Shaq or a Dwight Howard or even Bynum now, you can keep him out there. But not when you pair him up with Kwame Brown, who doesn't swat either and is a poor help defender himself. And it's especially dangerous when you have Smush Parker playing turnstile defense all series. For all his faults, I'd go with Turiaf over Cook every day of the week. I'd rather have 1 or 2 block shots and have him foul out than have Cook just stand there and watch as LA give up easy layup after easy layup after easy layup.

Is it just me or does Damon Jones and Eddy Curry being listed just stick out like a hooker in church? Like Big Bird says, One of these things is not like the others, one of these things just doesn't belong.

Couldn't find a less annoying video, but this is what Kwame will be remembered for in LA. Granted this was only a span of 5 minutes or so where he was at his absolute worst, but his typical games weren't that far off from this. It's still amazing that Kwame was able to get traded for two seperate all-stars.

I don't care if Ronny fouled out. In no rational universe should Brian freakin' Cook get more PT than Turiaf. Was Ronny bad defensively? Yes. Brian Cook was on an entirely different universe when it came to bad defense. If I had the choice of subtituting a wet spot on the floor for Cook, I'd take the wet spot. At least it'll provide more defensive resistance. As bad as Ronny was, he's nowhere near as bad Cook. Cook is the definition of a defensive liability. Brian Cook is/was the most useless player on the Lakers and probably the league.

Sad, he was the face of the franchise for decades. But I wonder how many Raiders fans are happy because they feel now their luck may turn around.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6onrfJJe_-I .

People forget how HORRIBLE those teams were. Kwame - Starting center is a bench player on a bad team now. Smush Parker - Starting PG for LA and is currently out of the league. Luke Walton - Starting SF who now is developing hemmroids sitting on the bench. Brian Cook was their 1st big man off the bench, he's practically out of the league now. Sasha Vujacic - Back up PG getting a lot of minutes his rookie year, still sucks. It's one thing to be surrounded by bad players, it's another to be surrounded by guys who aren't even NBA calibar. The fact LA even made the playoffs in the West was pretty amazing. But this also shows Phil's stubboness. Turiaf and Bynum were both rookies, so yeah they'll make tons of mistakes, but even then they were so much more talented than Kwame and Cook that they should have gotten way more PT. But instead of putting a shot-blocker like Turiaf or Bynum, we watch the Suns run a lay-up drill against the Lakers.

With the first pick in the 2012 NFL Draft, the Miami Dolphins select Andrew Luck! Suck for Luck! You know how Dolphins fans' kids learn to count? 0-1, 0-2, 0-3, 0-4....