FanHouse Darius Songaila

There was a lot of activity in the NBA this week, and we're not just talking about the draft. Some of the NBA's big names and better teams were in on it.

Here's a quick look at the trades that went down and what they mean:

The Deal: Phoenix sends Shaquille O'Neal to Cleveland for Sasha Pavlovic, Ben Wallace, a second-round pick in 2010 and cash.

The Thinking: The Cavaliers get an aging O'Neal, with the hope that he can have a productive year playing alongside LeBron James. The only way this trade is a success is if the Cavaliers are the 2009-10 NBA champions. For the Suns, trading O'Neal means that they are beyond tinkering and are leaning toward turning over the personnel of a team that missed the playoffs last season.

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Well, who is going to allegedly punch or not punch LeBron James now? Darius Songaila is being suspended because his hand hit LeBron's face in Game 5 of the Wizards - Cavaliers series. I use that phrasing because depending on who you listen to, Songaila didn't mean to slap/hit James at all. Of course, usually those people are Wizards fans.

I watched it go down and saw it several times on replay, and I'm willing to concede that it wasn't totally purposeful and that Songaila might have just been wrapped up with LeBron, causing the contact that ensued.

Of course, if I was Darius, I would probably want to know what all of those Celtics were still doing at the [New] Garden for Game 5 of their series. Lesson: Don't harass the King, please.

At least as far as his teammates are concerned, he will be. You see, the fun-loving party people on the Wizards roster just love busting their rookies' chops, to the point where Nick Young has had enough.

NY's apparently been the victim of some pretty crazy rookie hazing this year, and was looking forward to the end of the regular season where he thought his rookie status would be a thing of the past. According to some interesting logic from some of his teammates though, that won't be the case.

Nick Young .. said: "Ya'll got 11 more games to be punking me like a rookie, then it stops."
Songaila: "What do you mean? The playoffs count too."
Nick: "No man, it's 82 games that's it."
Jamison, (pouncing): "You have to play in 82 games. You've played in what, 27 games? (actually, he's played in 66 games but who's counting?) That means you're still a rookie. In fact, you're going to be a rookie next year too."

This reasoning befuddled Young for a moment and then, right on cue, DeShawn Stevenson walked over and gave him a half-hearted whack to the back of the head.

Ha, leave it to DeShawn to put an exclamation point on things. So it looks like Nick can expect this to continue a little while longer, possibly even into the first few games of next season. Who knows, maybe Gilbert's imminent return and the fact that the playoffs are right around the corner will have the team focused on something other than messing with their rookies.