Job Hunting In The Show

Yesterday kicked off free agency, when franchise and player representatives can come to the table and talk business. How much does your guy want, how much ya got, how much is he worth, et cetera et cetera et cetera.

According to the rules of the draft (see June 25th entry), a first-round draftee gets a minimum two year contract with the franchise that selected him, with a team option for two more years. Second rounders aren't guaranteed contracts, but the drafting franchise still own the rights to that player for three years.

But not to put too fine a point on it, the NBA only drafts sixty players a year. I'd have to work it out by hand, but just going by the NBAs list the odds on getting drafted this year were about . . . one in three, one in four. What do you do if you're #61 in terms of potential awesomeness? Or if the scouts caught you in a slumpy phase or while you were sick or hurt? Or your game's still maturing? Or the NBA just doesn't like you?

A lot of the leftover players let it drop right there and pursue other ambitions. The ones who feel they've got a shot become free agents.

Free Agency, or Taking The Scenic Route to the NBA:
According to the Great Yet Flawed God Wikipedia (so if on any point I'm factually incorrect, say so), a "free agent" is a ballplayer with the right to seek their own employment. Once a player signs a contract, they're no longer in control of their employment and may be traded to another team at the franchise's discretion so long as the other team matches the terms of that contract.

Free agents come in two breeds; unrestricted and restricted. Unrestricted free agents are players without a team -- those whose contracts have expired without re-upping, those who've been released from their contracts, and those who were not drafted by the league. They are free to offer their services to any franchise, and to accept any offers made. Restricted free agents are players still signed with a team but are free to solicit and accept offers from other teams. However, if the player's currently signed team matches the prospective team's offer the player remains with their current team.

What this means to the Mavs is we've got several blank roster slots, some critical vacancies in terms of gameplay (David Lord did a magnificent analysis of those needs over at Dallas Basketball dot com), and not a lot of spending cash to work with. However, the field of free agents is good. Of the list of free agents currently on the roster, I haven't heard anything yet about the Mavs making offers.

The word just came down via the Morning News that a deal's been worked out for center DeSagana Diop (please not for the whole mid-level exception). There's also a new guy by the name of Gerald Green -- they're talking a one-year deal. Right now, the Mavs have eight contracted players -- Eddie Jones (exercised his player option), Kidd, Dirk, J-Ho, Jet Terry, Dampier, Jerry Stackhouse, and Brandon Bass. Just-waiting-for-a-starting-time deals in place for Diop and Green . . . five more guys and we have ourselves a team.

An editorial note; Brandon Bass will at times be referred to as the Four-String Motherfucker. It's a nod to my favorite metal band's nickname for their bass guitar. My kingdom for the AAC to quit playing Enter Sandman and start playing For Whom The Bell Tolls.
-BJ

Fresh Meat!

First of the new blood, the future swinging big dicks of the NBA, cannonballed into the talent pool last night. Check out the live blog at Dallas Basketball dot com, or the video clip at the Morning News.

Speculation that the Mavs were planning on buying a first round pick came to zip as the Organization stuck with #51. I hope Mr. Nelson and the rest of the suits know what they're doing. The next few seasons is when the Mavs have to start developing talent ready to take over the team when Dirk retires. I'm all for finding a vampire and making Dirk immortal, but the NBA probably has rules against undead players. They're shortsighted that way.

But, nobody was willing to bite with what the Mavs were offering ($3 million) . . . at least not publicly. As Mr. Fisher points out, the back-door deals are also beginning, teams trading picks for established players, cash, and so on.

For now, our FNG is a young man by the name of Shan Foster. He's a graduate of Vaderbuilt University and that school's all-time leading scorer. He's being considered (how seriously is a matter of speculation) as a backup shooting guard or small forward.

With the draft done, free agency begins to warm up. Negotiations between franchise reps and players' agents begins July 1, players can sign on July 9. I'll look up those particulars later.
-BJ

Drawing Straws and Here Come The Rookies

Tomorrow is Draft Day, so in the spirit of Higher Learning, we're going to have a brief lesson on how the NBA circulates the talent pool:

The Draft, or Oh Shit Here Come The FNGs:
The deadline for declaring eligibility is 60 days prior to Draft Day, with potential draftees given until 10 days before the draft to back out if they change their minds. They must be at least nineteen years old and/or one year out of high school, and if they are not drafted run the risk of losing their college eligibility. That may change in the next year or so; the league is considering raising the minimum age to 22.

The talent pool is evaluated, the NBA processes the data gathered, and the Draft is announced listing players in order of their potential awesomeness. Quick hits; Jason Kidd was a #2 pick in 1994, Stackhouse was #3 in 1995, Dirk was #9 in 1998, Jet Terry was #10 in 1999, Dampier was #10 in 1996, J-Ho was #29 in 2003, and Brandon Bass was #33 in 2005. Teams then get to select from that list, with a lottery system determining who gets first dibs -- see below. The draft is conducted in two rounds of thirty (one pick per team per round), for a total of sixty brand-spandy-new NBA rookies.

List of prospective draftees here.

The Lottery, or Fate as a Bingo Tank:
How it works is the 14 teams who didn't make the NBA playoffs are each given a list of four number codes. The team with the worst record gets the most codes (250), therefore has the best chance of scoring a number one pick (odds are about one in four).

On Lotto Day, a group of NBA officials, team representatives, and some media guys acting as witnesses (check this out for an eyewitness account) enter a room. Cell phones, laptops, and PDAs are left outside. The door is locked. A set of ping-pong balls numbered 1 to 14 are dropped into a lotto randomizer, left to cook for exactly twenty seconds, and four are drawn. The team holding those four numbers (doesn't matter what order they're drawn in) gets the #1 draft pick. Process repeated for picks 2 and 3. Picks 4 through 30 are handed out in inverse order of win-loss ratio.

This year's lottery was held on May 20. The Chicago Bulls (33-49) came away with the #1 pick, the Miami Heat (15-67) #2, and the Minnesota Timberwolves (22-60) got #3. Click for the full list of picks.

A side-effect of the lottery that wasn't anticipated (correct me if I'm wrong on this) is the incentive for teams that aren't doing well in the regular season to delibrately run their record down in the hopes of scoring one of the first three picks. Hence the pissing and moaning in Dallas about how the team should've quit trying to even make the playoffs this year and just taken our chances with the lottery.

Fuck that shit, says I. If there isn't nobility in trying, why bother competing at all? Boring rant for another day.

A more in-depth look at talent rotation, free agency, what about the undrafted, and so on later. Right now Dallas only has one draft pick, #51. The first round pick (#21) went to the New Jersey Nets as part of the trade for Jason Kidd. Word around the campfire is the Organization is going to try and buy our way back into Round One.
-BJ

Sources:
http://www.nba.com/draft2008/index.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NBA_Draft
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NBA_Draft_Lottery
http://www.nba.com/history/draft_evolution.html

Quick Hits, Some Rants, Little Silliness

Believe it or not, this is intended as a scholarly work. So after some quick hits, back to business:

- Yes I'm watching the Finals. Yes it sucks that my guys aren't there. It . . . really sucks, actually. But I'm enjoying the game. It's reassuring to know the game's enjoyable to watch without having someone to root for. Not nearly as much fun though.

- How come I want to hate Kobe Bryant? Is it because of the rape charges from a few years ago? I'm going to have to look into that a little; I don't remember if it ever went to trial. I mean yeah, the family portrait's overposed unless his wife usually wears stage makeup and a little black dress, and his daughters white lace, while Mr. Bryant's working the treadmill. I want to hate this man. I want to loathe him with every cell in my body. But why? Other than being better than Dirk -- big fat hairy fucking deal, Kobe's better than everybody these days.

- Coach Carlisle's on his way to Germany. Is it wrong that I want to be a fly on the wall for this? Or better, a Babel fish in the goldfish bowl. We're all taking it as an encouraging sign that Coach wants to spend extra time with Dirk, but there's a potentially ugly side. I mean, is Coach the kind of control freak that can't let the players out of his sight for more than a week? God I hope not.

- Some encouraging notes concerning new blood. The guys over at the Morning News and D-Basketball-dot-com have said that team recruiting efforts will be focused in Europe this year as the organization works around the salary cap and lack of draft picks. Since the Basketball Gods did not arrange for that bout of ptomine poisoning I asked for, nor the alien abductions, I'm hoping they show us some love there.

- Dallas b-ball fans are spoiled rotten in many ways (most of them wear #41). One of them is the quality of the in-game commentary when it comes to televised games. TXA-21's guys are always informative and interesting. Their talk augments the game without intruding upon it. The same cannot be said for the nationally televised games on ABC. I could give a shit what you pay for a haircut, just please tell me why that wasn't a fucking foul!

- Speaking of fouls, I've said it before and it bears repeating; my yardstick for official sports corruption is a pretty long one. I don't think the International Skating Union even pretends any more. The current brouhaha over ex-referee Tim Donaghy's statements regarding delibrately bad refereeing just makes me tired. Without corraberation, there's no way to verify what he's saying. Corraberation is not something we're likely to get. And nobody's going to propose seriously overhauling a system where everybody pretty much gets screwed over equally in the final wash. So here we are. The gentlemen over at Hardwood Paroxysm say it all better than I can.

- And further on the subject, I find it funny that a few weeks ago there was a bad call on a foul because the fouled party "didn't sell it." At the same time the NBAs taking steps to prevent flopping, it's telling the players to "sell" fouls? Wait . . .

- Halloween costumes, Dirk as Harpo Marx. I'm just sayin'!

-BJ

The Boss Speaks, Field Trips, and Other News

From the homefront:

- Mark Cuban spoke on Randy Galloway's radio program earlier today, giving an extended interview. Among the subjects covered, reputation-rehab for Josh Howard, failures in leadership over the past season, failed trade scenarios (among them one where we gave up Dirk and J-Ho for Kobe Bryant and Pau Gasol, the idea of which has Mr. Fish over at DallasBasektball.com crying into his beer), votes of confidence in Coach Carlisle, and the work between him Jerry Jones to get the NBA All-Star game to the new Cowboys stadium in Arlington (which would be mega-awesome with cheese). Podcast here.

- Coach Carlisle's in Orlando at "predraft camp," checking out the stuff. The Mavs have a second-round pick, 51st overall. There's plans to go to Italy, where the European draftees will be gathered -- because of financial issues, that's most likely where the FNGs are coming from this year. Little help from the Basketball Gods would be good there, neh?

- A remark from Mr. Cuban's interview clarifies a lot to me -- "Guys were breaking plays a lot. They didn’t trust the play-calling . . ." No wonder Avery Johnson was damn near throwing a coniption fit over by the bench, and no wonder the folks on the floor had this bad habit of standing around looking confused. He's also saying that Dirk's the one who broke rank there originally. Good in that the Organization's been screaming for him to take up a leadership role for the last five or six years; bad because such behavior could be construed as childish and counter-productive. I'm erring on the side of goodness, mostly in light of Johnson's actions since he was fired (revisionist and egotistical would about cover it). It could also be inferred that the disconnect between the coach and the players tainted Jason Kidd's adaptation to the team, which made all the other chemistry problems worse.

- The NBA has decided to impose fines on players for "flopping" -- exaggerating impact when one is fouled. Sort of like screaming bloody murder when your sister gets a good lick in during a pillowfight. Discouraging melodrama that doesn't come from the game itself is a good thing. Several years of following figure skating has me good and sick of manufactured melodrama.

- And finally, Dirk landed in Germany last week, prepping with the national team. And get this, the inconsiderate bastard got a girlfriend. Wah!
-BJ