Yeoman beat man Sam Amick of the Sacramento Bee reports the Kings are mulling a trade offer from the Hornets that would send high-priced center Emeka Okafor to Sacramento in exchange for roleplaying, aging forward Kenny Thomas. K-9 has looked spry in early action for the Kings, but his best attribute is his $8.7 million expiring contract. Okafor is on the books through the 2013-14 season.
New Orleans acquired Okafor this summer, committing a grip of cash long-term in the process. The Hornets sent Tyson Chandler -- an expensive center himself, but on a much shorter contract -- to Charlotte in the deal, which came several months after the Hornets tried to unload Chandler for a package of expiring contracts amid the throes of a playoff chase. Chandler, however, failed his physical with the Thunder, reversing the trade.
In other words, this trade would effectively finish the job of losing Chandler's contract, and would set the tone for continued salary cuts from New Orleans. Boo to all that.
It's becoming more and more frustrating as the list of "questionable" players for opening night continues to grow. The case has been made that maybe the preseason is too long -- about four games too long.
Who would have thought that of the past three No. 1 overall draft picks only Greg Oden will start the 2009-10 season with a clean bill of health. Blake Griffin is reportedly sidelined for up to six weeks with a stress fracture in his left knee, while Derrick Rose is questionable after injuring his ankle early on in the preseason. Rose is likely to play on opening night, but his action could be limited as he nurses his ankle back to health. In other news, future No. 1 pick John Wall is not serving much better. Advantage, Oden.
With less than 24 hours to go before your lineups are required to be set in stone for the week, it's only right that we discuss a few of the "questionable" lineup decisions you might need to make based on injuries and matchups.
The Hornets jolted the West in 2008, nearly taking the first seed in the conference one season after missing the postseason entirely. After waxing Dallas in what would become Avery Johnson's final playoff series there, the Hornets went all the way to Game 7 against the defending champion Spurs. The Hornets lost, and didn't get close in 2008-09.
You can believe one of three things. The Hornets' short triumph could be over, more flash in the sky than formation of a new star. The Hornets could have experienced just a brief setback, a defeat at the hands of a bad match-up and an injury-riddled season. Or, the Hornets could have just ran into some structural problems in need of fixing, which they possibly have this summer.
The Bobcats are a playoff contender. I know it sounds weird. If you need to take a few minutes to repeat that to yourself in order to suspend belief in pursuit of finishing this column, feel free. I'll wait.
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Ready? Okay, let's begin. The Bobcats are a playoff contender, and have been since Larry Brown decided to dump his best player (Jason Richardson) to Phoenix for jack-of-all-trades-master-of-awkward-spacing Boris Diaw and older than dirt Raja Bell. When that trade occurred, there was universal questioning of what in the carolina blue blazes Larry Brown was thinking. You don't ditch your best player!
It wasn't as bad as the minor league baseball player who last year was traded for 10 bats. Nevertheless, center Tyson Chandler wasn't too thrilled when he saw last February what New Orleans received for him from Oklahoma City.
Players, you see, are often sensitive about what a team gets back when they are traded. Marcus Camby wasn't dancing the Cha-cha-cha when Denver, in a July 2008 salary dump, got nothing more from the Los Angeles Clippers than the right to exchange second-round picks in 2010.
And Chandler grumbled when he saw all the Hornets, in an attempted salary dump, got for him were Joe Smith and Chris Wilcox, who both had expiring contracts, and the draft rights to somebody named DeVon Hardin.
New Orleans Hornets owner George Shinn has taken a lot of guff for his ownership habits. Notable decisions have included moving the Hornets to New Orleans from Charlotte, making noise about the required attendance threshold to tether the team to the city, and trying to offload Tyson Chandler for peanuts to save a few bucks.
Most NBA experts and pundits (and yahoos like me) will murmur about Shinn's thrifty disposition and hint that he's itching to bust out of New Orleans for a more profitable market. But this summer, he's put his money where his mouth is and wants some return on that investment.
Emeka Okafor was introduced to the New Orleans media yesterday, and in his few minutes at the podium he managed to say all the right things, complimenting his new fans ("Yesterday was my first time actually getting to see the city, and I was surprised at how charming and how warm and receptive everybody was"), the local cuisine ("I actually had rabbit gumbo yesterday, and I wasn't even aware I liked rabbit!") and, of course, his new team ("They're already a contender, so I just hope that I can do my best and make them an even stronger contender").
What he didn't say (at least explicitly) was how happy he was to leave Charlotte, a perennial loser that's made incremental progress at best the last few years. Despite being one of the most consistent players in the game (he's one of three players to average a double-double the last five years), Okafor is one of the most overlooked and underrated big men in the game -- even by his former coaching staff.
The Tim Thomas signing in Dallas makes it official: Free agency is winding down. Yeah, Lamar Odom is still out there and so are David Lee and a few others. But once you get to Tim Thomas, it means that Free Agency 2009 is poised to jump the shark.
Whatever the opposite of a difference-maker is, that's Thomas. Dallas will be the seventh NBA stop for Thomas, who was selected with the No. 7 pick in the 1997 draft. Yes, Thomas is talented, and, yes, he can stretch the floor with his 3-point shooting.
But we've heard those things for 12 years now. The reality of the situation is that Thomas will either be unhappy with limited minutes in Dallas or he'll get plenty of playing time there, meaning the Mavs aren't going to be going anywhere.
When it comes to the Emeka Okafor-Tyson Chandler trade, give the nod to Charlotte. Not that the trade is going to mean a lot one way or the other. But if one team gets a positive nudge from the deal, expect it to be the Bobcats.
Keep in mind, we're not talking impact players here; only players who have had an impact on games at times. And Chandler has had more of those times than Okafor.
Then, of course, there's the other advantage from the Bobcats' side: Chandler has one year remaining on his deal with an early termination option for 2011-12, and Okafor has three more years remaining with an early termination option for 2013-14.
Yeoman beat man Sam Amick of the Sacramento Bee reports the Kings are mulling a trade offer from the Hornets that would send high-priced center Emeka Okafor to Sacramento in exchange for roleplaying, aging forward Kenny Thomas. K-9 has looked spry in early action for the Kings, but his best attribute is his $8.7 million expiring contract. Okafor is on the books through the 2013-14 season.
It's becoming more and more frustrating as the list of "questionable" players for opening night continues to grow. The case has been made that maybe the 
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