FanHouse Nba Transactions

Update: Hedo may not be headed to Portland after all -- reports now suggest he ended negotiations abruptly and will sign with the Raptors.

Henry Abbott of TrueHoop is reporting that the Blazers have landed top free agent Hedo Turkoglu for the princely sum of $50 million (or more) over five years. Hedo had been the expected target of Portland's largess before the Magic acquired Vince Carter. That move made this move rather logical from every perspective.

... well, except the perspective that it's unclear exactly why Portland needs a ball-dominant small forward. After all, the Blazers do have one Brandon Roy, eternal All-Star, under contract. And with Roy dominating the ball this season, the Blazers finished with the league's finest offense. In terms of offense, this is a bit like the Lakers adding Ron Artest: sounds good on the surface, but when you look at the details, you get a bit worried.

There is a reason nothing stays the same in the NBA. It's never good enough -- even at the top.

What the Los Angeles Lakers learned from the previous four NBA champs – Detroit, Miami, San Antonio and Boston -- was that the status quo will just get you beat the next season.

It's why there have been no repeats lately.

By landing Ron Artest to replace Trevor Ariza -- a huge upgrade -- the Lakers did what others before them didn't do. They got better after they won.

The Boston Celtics aligned their three stars and rode them all the way to a NBA championship in 2008.

The Houston Rockets hoped to do the same when they added unpredictable yet talented Ron Artest with their superstar duo of Tracy McGrady and Yao Ming last summer. But a year later, their dream has unraveled.

McGrady and Yao are sidelined with potentially career-threatening injuries and Artest left Thursday in free agency, heading to the world champion Los Angeles Lakers to join forces with Kobe Bryant for a three-year deal.

Bloggers knee-jerking on the phone + roundtable style = RoundCast.

One of the biggest moves of this free agent season went down on Thursday, when it was learned that Ron Artest will be heading to the Lakers. Matt Moore and I break down what is effectively going to be L.A. trading Trevor Ariza for Artest, as it was also announced that Ariza agreed to a deal with the Rockets.

After plenty of Artest talk, we also review some of the other deals that have gone down, and ponder the fates of some other would-be contenders like the Cavaliers, Pistons, Magic, and Celtics.

Free agent talk at it's finest, after the jump.

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. That's the mindset that Ron Artest has apparently taken following today's news that he's agreed to join Kobe Bryant in Los Angeles. Artest was instrumental in helping the Rockets take the eventual champion Lakers to seven games during the Western Conference semifinals. Instead of serving as Kobe's antagonist, he'll become Kobe's sidekick.

According to Ken Berger of CBS Sports, Artest met with Lakers owner Dr. Jerry Buss and spoke with Phil Jackson on Thursday before instructing his agent to get a deal done. Details of the agreement -- both the length and the amount -- are still unknown, but from the sounds of it, Artest isn't about to quibble over the details.

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The Cavaliers traded for Shaquille O'Neal a week ago, but his introductory press conference didn't happen until Thursday afternoon. And for the most part, it was worth the wait. As we've come to expect when Shaq gets in front of a microphone, there were plenty of interesting and entertaining quotes that came out of his first meeting with the Cleveland media.

Shaq kicked things off by flashing the picture to your right, claiming that when he received the initial call from Cavs' GM Danny Ferry, he had to Google him, and when he did, this was the one of the first things to pop up.

Nice way to break the ice, Big Fella. Here are some more highlights from Shaq's first official day as a Cavalier.

As you take in the NBA's free agent period and try to sort out which players are going to which teams and what is a report as opposed to a rumor, you can't help but think of that cartoon Hall-of-Famer Foghorn Leghorn, who once said: "You're doin' a lot of choppin' but no chips are flyin.'"

Sure, there's stuff going on. Charlie Villanueva and Ben Gordon are going to Detroit. Dallas wants Jason Kidd back, but the Knicks are making a run at him. The Blazers want Hedo Turkoglu big-time, but the Raptors may yet appear.

Ron Artest is out there and so are Mike Bibby and Lamar Odom. Not to mention Trevor Ariza, Andre Miller, Shawn Marion, Allen Iverson and plenty of others. Some of these players are sure to be nice acquisitions for some club, even their own ones.

Free-agent time should be like Christmas for these under-30 former first-round picks. If they had played better, stayed healthy or fulfilled their potential, they would be cashing in on new contracts or contract extensions. Instead they are fighting for their NBA lives, afterthoughts in free-agent time, hoping to find one interested team for another opportunity to stay in the league.

The alternative might be Europe or perhaps even the NBDL. With each NBA team holding on tight to free-agent dollars because of the economy and the 2010 free-agent class, contracts -- especially lucrative ones -- will be difficult to procure. So while names such as Ben Gordon, Charlie Villanueva, Trevor Ariza and Hedo Turkoglu will fill the offseason newswires, these 10 players will be searching for work in virtual obscurity.

Here is the list and their stories:

Well, that was fast. Free agents can't officially sign with new teams until July 8, but that doesn't mean they can't make verbal commitments before then. And so, after Joe Dumars had both Ben Gordon and Charlie Villanueva in town to discuss the possibility of joining his team, it appears that he was able to convince them both to agree to terms with the Detroit Pistons.

The deal is said to be in the neighborhood of five years and $55 million for Gordon, and the one for Villanueva is for five years and $35 million.

While there are plenty of NBA followers out there who don't think that Gordon plus Villanueva will turn out to be all that great for the Pistons in terms of a full-fledged rebuilding, it is possible that these two could pay dividends in the more immediate future.

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Kobe Bryant could have opted out of the final two years of his contract on Tuesday, which would have made him an unrestricted free agent. But since Bryant has no intentions of playing anywhere else, the only reason he would have done so would have been to secure a brand new, max deal with the Lakers.

Bryant decided not to terminate his contract, but fear not: he'll still be just fine financially. Kobe will make in the neighborhood of $23M next season, and the L.A. Times is reporting that he'll likely sign a three-year extension on his current deal sometime this summer.