New Jersey will only save about $1 million in payroll for the 2009-10 season. But Carter is the only player in the deal with a contract extending into the 2010-11. (There are cheap team options on both Anderson and Lee. Cheap, as in $1.3 million.) With this trade, the Nets now have less than $20 million committed for the 2010-11, giving the team some $40 million to offer up to multiple free agents, or to use in trades. Yes, the Nets can pull two max players in the vaunted summer of 2010.
All NBA awards are completely subjective and usually debatable. None registers moreso (on both counts) than the Most Improved Player award. There are a million arbitrary, unwritten rules about who can be eligible for consideration. Some voters reject all All-Stars, others think second- or third-year players shouldn't be valid. It's a mess, really.
Never mind the lame duck status -- Thorn rightfully dismisses that potential issue, which always hovers in the NBA but rarely bites. (Coaches get canned in the middle of a contract just as frequently as in the final year of the contract.) But there is a problem here: Thorn's declarations last week that the players might have tuned out Frank. Admission is the first step to acceptance. Does this mean the Nets accept that Frank's voice isn't getting through to everyone?
Every night there are some stupendous, silly, stupid, or downright outlandish individual lines from around the "lig." Doing Lines lets you know which one tops the list.
Suddenly, Dallas' offense is clicking like a metronome. That bountiful output to (virtually) eliminate Phoenix on Sunday hardly shocked -- it was Phoenix -- but pitching two 60-point halves on Utah ... even away from Salt Lake ... name me impressed. The Mavs racked up 130 points. The Jazz, only 101.
Dirk Nowitzki and Jason Terry did the damage, with 31 and 21 points respectively. Deron Williams tried to shoot the Jazz back into it, but 5-14 from the field didn't quite cut it. Josh Howard is still struggling with consistency on offense, but seven steals always help. Always!
There used to be a time when professional athletes could take part in a friendly game of basketball and, should they be embarrassed, only have to face ridicule from the few hundred onlookers in the stands.
Now, with the ubiquity of hand-held video cameras and those series of tubes, all posterizations are local. After the jump, Cowboys wide receiver Roy Williams, taking part in Michael Huff's celebrity basketball game, gets dunked on by some gent named Margues Haynes.
The Rockets visit Louisiana in a truly handsome match-up for fans of speedster point guards running slow-like-poison offenses. At some point in the near future, perhaps April or next Christmas, pockets of bastardly revolution calling for the ouster of Byron Scott in the name of a fully unleashed Chris Paul will sprout. I'd join, were I a revolutionary bastard. But I'm cool with the mundane Paul-to-Peja so long as cohabitation with Paul-to-Chandler is plausible.
New Jersey had a tough go of it Sunday night in Los Angeles. The team lost Devin Harris to a shoulder injury early in the third quarter, but despite getting 41 points from Vince Carter and leading with five seconds left, they lost the game at the buzzer thanks to this three-pointer from Steve Novak.
NBA Essentials provides the must-see links, quotes and videos of the day.
* "Two days after the 5-7½ Robinson spectacularly won the Slam-Dunk competition during All-Star weekend, the NBA announced plans to release a green Krypto-Nate T-shirt for sale at the NBA Store and NBA.com. One day later, the NBA scrapped its plan because of intellectual property issues with DC Comics, the originator of the Superman comic books.-- Marc Berman, NY Post
Yes, the Bulls and Nets are a combined 12 games under .500, but that doesn't mean this game won't be fun. For starters, the Bulls haven't actually been that bad of late -- they've won eight of their last 12, including an 18-point blowout last night in Orlando -- and they figure to get even better as Brad Miller and John Salmons settle in.
We already knew there was a geeky side to the Nets' Brook Lopez, after seeing him in attendance at one of the nation's largest comic book conventions. But in this post-game interview (via Awful Announcing; Lopez's bit starts at 0:20) where he talks about Devin Harris' game-winner over the disbelieving Sixers, Lopez really takes it to a whole new level. Just ... wow.
Orlando certainly got the best player (Vince Carter) in its deal with New Jersey today, and new Magician Ryan Anderson is a real catch, too. But beyond stellar youngster Courtney Lee, serviceable big man Tony Battie and solid point guard Rafer Alston, the Nets got another big asset: tons of cap space.
All NBA awards are completely subjective and usually debatable. None registers moreso (on both counts) than the Most Improved Player award. There are a million arbitrary, unwritten rules about who can be eligible for consideration. Some voters reject all All-Stars, others think second- or third-year players shouldn't be valid. It's a mess, really.
In an announcement overshadowed by the playoffs on Wednesday, Nets boss 
Every night there are some stupendous, silly, stupid, or downright outlandish individual lines from around the "lig." 
There used to be a time when professional athletes could take part in a friendly game of basketball and, should they be embarrassed, only have to face ridicule from the few hundred onlookers in the stands. 
FanHouse's 
