The NBA promotes its stars to the maximum. Let's say, for example, LeBron James will become a free-agent on July 1.
James is the topic of basketball conversation around the hemisphere, if not, the world.
Now, the league fines Dallas owner Mark Cuban and Phoenix general manager Steve Kerr, $100,000 and $10,000, for basically saying they'd like James to play for their teams next season.
That money isn't coming out of my pockets, so that's not the problem.
The problem is those guys were fined, reportedly, for comments about another team's player. They were fined for saying what my four dogs (don't sleep, they are smart as heck) know. Each NBA team, in spite of James' no-show in Game Five of the Eastern Conference semifinals against the Boston Celtics, would love to have the two-time NBA Most Valuable Player on its squad in November.
Certainly, I understand the NBA doesn't want the front-office personnel of teams talking all willy-nilly about snagging the players on other teams. But realistically, the comments of Cuban and Kerr spoke only to the obvious.
James will be the most pursued free-agent in history and for folks to be incapable of merely speaking the obvious suggests the NBA is living in a Stern cruel world.
Granted, I'll probably be fined making said suggestion. But I dare Commissioner David Stern to try to get a million or 10 large from me. There is a saying about blood and turnips. Man, I hate turnips.
By the way, it's almost game time for Boston and Orlando in Game Three. The thought here is Boston and Los Angeles will be well rested for the NBA Finals because it looks like respective sweeps in their conference final matchups.
And yes, I thought Cleveland would defeat Boston. So what do I know?
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