FanHouse Kurtthomas

The agent for Ramon Sessions has told FanHouse he does not expect Milwaukee to match Minnesota's four-year, $16 million offer sheet for the point guard. But a new trade rumor leaves open the possibility that Milwaukee is trying to cut enough salary to fit Sessions back into the equation.

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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San Antonio needed a major infusion of offensive talent this season, and it appears the team has found it. Multiple league reports indicate the Spurs have traded for Milwaukee's Richard Jefferson, sending away only bit players Bruce Bowen (age 38), Kurt Thomas (age 36) and Fabricio Oberto (age 34), according to Yahoo!'s Adrian Wojnarowski.

Jefferson has been in Wisconsin for one year, following last June's draft day trade which sent Yi Jianlian and others to New Jersey. Jefferson has always been a moderately efficient scorer, and he should provide some relief for Tony Parker and Tim Duncan in the Spurs starting line-up. He's not quite an ace defender, but he played hard for Scott Skiles last season and hasn't missed a game in two seasons.

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One question for the San Antonio Spurs: Now what?

Sure, it's possible the Spurs can put together a nice effort on their homecourt in Game 5 on Tuesday night and push their series against the Mavericks to a sixth game in Dallas.

And maybe the Spurs could even follow that up with an unlikely Game 6 win on the road and make their first-round series a seven-gamer.

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Though members of the fanbase may think drastic upgrades are needed, it would seem that the Spurs are prepared to primarily hold the course going into next season. The Spurs re-signed veteran guard Michael Finley on Friday, according to MySA.com. Terms of the deal were not available, but his agentreported tht the deal was for more than the league minimum. Considering that Finely is 35, I wouldn't imagine it's a very long deal, either.

Finley rejected offers from the Celtics and from overseas to take another year with Tim Duncan, Tony Parker, and the rest of Greg Popovich's crew. The signing is another indication that the Spurs are more willing to go with an aging version of their championship squads than to pursue what they see as more risky options (*cough* Jannero Pargo).

Finley played sparingly last season, getting his usual share of big shots in the playoffs, but it's clear that the dropoff is increasing. The Spurs lost Brent Barry, who was the most productive of the older crew, while re-signing Kurt Thomas and taking their sweet time with Robert Horry. They did add Roger Mason earlier in the offseason, but one man does not a youth upgrade make. The key to the 2008-2009 season for the Spurs will not only be the health of the big three (Duncan, Parker, and Manu Ginobili), but the ability of the bench's remarkably ancient contingent to provide meaningful minutes.

The logical action when seeking to make your team younger is to sign one of the oldest players in the league, right? Those San Antonio Spurs and their tricky math ...

The Associated Press reports the Spurs have come to an agreement with 35-year-old Kurt Thomas, who played for the team for a few months last season after a wink-nod-wink deal with the SuperSonics involving Brent Barry and Francisco Elson. (The Spurs sent Barry and Elson to Seattle, who is run by former Spurs exec Sam Presti. Presti cut Barry, who returned to San Antonio. Also, it has been alleged Presti left a better deal from Orlando on the table in order to gift Thomas to his old buddies. Sam Presti is one shady milkman.)

The Spurs of 2007-08 were the oldest team in the NBA since at least 2004 (and quite possibly the mid-1990s). Adding Roger Mason to the backcourt made things a little less creaky, sure. And Thomas is nothing to sneeze at: few big men, no matter their age, defend like Kurt. But the 'Spurs get younger' narrative just isn't coming together here. This is still a historically old team, one which got knocked out by the Lakers in five this year.

It's entirely possible that your last enduring memory of Brent Barry as a Spur will be that last shot where he tried to actually hit the shot instead of flopping. Not the way you want to be remembered in a championship city like San Antonio, but that might just be the way it is. Because Barry very quietly opted out of his contract last week .

That means that Brent Barry, Michael Finley, Robert Horry, and Kurt Thomas could all be somewhere besides San Antonio next season. Barry is particularly interesting, though. He's got better legs than the others, and showed in the playoffs that not only can he still create his own shot, which the others cannot, but he also can still play some defense and work within an offensive system. With veterans such a big part of Boston's championship run, it would make sense that a player like Barry can still get top dollar.

Of course, this could be another Brent Barry swerve job by the Spurs. The Spurs traded Barry last year to Seattle to get Kurt Thomas, only to resign him when Barry opted out. Could this be a similar deal in order for San Antonio to put a more competitive offer for Corey Maggette?

And then there were four. In the latest of our continuing series, we look at the Western Conference Finals, Game 1 tonight between the Spurs and Lakers. Be sure to stop by later for our LiveBlog of Game 1.

1. Seventeen Thousandth Verse, Same As The First: Yes, a breath of fresh air in an otherwise stale world. Lakers versus Spurs! Who would have thunk it? Okay, that was my last complaint for this series, I swear. In all honesty, this is a pretty fantastic matchup between the two best teams in the league right now. The familiarity between the two will make for advanced strategy that will make pundits like myself polish their monacles in greedy expectation. Will the Spurs stay with the single man defense against Kobe Bryant, using Bruce Bowen like they have in years past, or has age made that too much of a mismatch, forcing the Spurs into man-help? Will the Lakers bring the curl around double team on Tim Duncan or bring Vlad Radmonovic off of Manu Ginobili? Will the Spurs be able to adjust to Pau Gasol? Will the Lakers be able to adjust to Gasol getting his milkshake drank by Tim Duncan? Questions abound! Who needs different teams?

Biggest Reason You Should Watch: This match-up is the closest thing that the NBA has had to a consistent rivalry this decade. This is the fifth time since the 2000-01 season that these teams will meet in the playoffs: There's history here, people. The Spurs are also still the defending champs, and going through the top-seeded Lakers to get back to the Finals would be a pretty strong accomplishment.

San Antonio Can Win If: They can lock the Lakers up defensively. Since Pau Gasol's arrival, the Lakers' offensive efficiency has been off the charts. For the Spurs to have a shot, they'll have to make the most of their chances offensively and really slow things down to throw the Lakers off of their game.

Los Angeles Can Win If: They don't fall in love with the three point shot. When the Lakers' offense is clicking, it's because of the team's ball movement and their decisions to pass up good shots to get great shots. Sometimes they'll get open threes, and start taking too many of them, often resulting in long rebounds and easy transition baskets for their opponents. The Spurs are going to have a hard time matching the Lakers' offense in this series, L.A. doesn't need to give them any help by taking bad shots.

The Rotation is a weekly study on the NBA by one of our All-Star voices. In rotation this week is Brett Edwards.

The playoff series between the Hornets and the Spurs has been consistently one-sided so far -- the home side. The local team has won each of the six games by at least 11 points, the first time such a statistical anomaly has occurred in NBA history. I think that's likely to change tonight though, because for all of the Hornets talent, the Spurs' collective experience is likely to be the deciding factor.

It's been argued that experience is overrated in the NBA playoffs, and Chris Paul was used as the poster boy and case study to prove the argument to be true. But playing well individually and winning home games is one thing.

The Hornets have really been the better team this entire series. They've largely stuck to what has worked for them all season, while the Spurs have had to make some substantial adjustments from game to game. But now the Hornets will have to prove they can evolve: For an upstart team to eliminate a team with a ring in a Game 7 -- even in your own building -- is something else entirely.