PeterHilton

He should do the announcement wrestling style: Lebron James walks to the podium. After a few tearful words, he announces that he's staying at home with his friends and family. Lebron James has re-signed signed with Cleveland!!! Cleveland owner Dan Gilbert appears from the crowd and hands Lebron a jersey. but just as Lebron is about to put the jersey on... JR: BAHGAWD IT'S D-WADE AND CHRIS BOSH!!! 'Welcome to Miami' plays and the two stars walk down the aisle towards the podium. The are accompanied by Pat Riley, wearing a blonde and black beard/fu-macnhu moustache combo JR: BUSINESS IS ABOUT TO PICK UP! Gilbert and Riley begin trading insults..when out of nowhere...LEBRON BLASTS DAN GILBERT WITH A STEEL CHAIR!!! Lebron steps into the aisle, throws the Cavs jersey aways, takes off his dress shirt and...HE WAS WEARING A HEAT JERSEY THE WHOLE TIME!!! JR: DAMMMMNNN YOU LEBRON!! DAMMMNN YOU TO HELLLLL!!!

Naw..I was being facetious (shoulda thrown a winky face in there) The point I'm making is that they are going to have to fill in the cracks with some pretty questionable names. Any 'talent' that comes to Miami to chase a ring are going to be broken down vets or headcases no one else will touch (ie "hey...wonder what Steve Francis is doing these days???")

That would be awful and stupid for the TWolves. But since it's David Kahn that's pretty believable. Love would be a perfect fit. Hed rebound, play D, hit open jumpers, and is a terrific passer to start the break. Like a younger Brad Miller. I think you HAVE to dump Beasley because he's valuable to teams looking to re-build and there are quite a few reports that paint him as a total jack ass that can't get along with teammates.

Don't think the fact he was "in Miami" was what generatd the speculation. I mean..he's got a private jet. He attended his camp in Cleveland and the studio he's doing the show from is 7 minutes from the Knicks practice facility. So it's not his location. Apparently the Buchers and Broussards of the world are getting info from in his camp and from teams that have already admitted they're out of the running.

Heywood signed with the Mavs already. I think its "possible" to put a decent team around these guys ( I mean the Heat's last title came with guys like Gary Payton and Antoine Walker and Zo all clinging on for the ride). You could possibly get TMac or AI or hell call Stephon Marbury and see what he's up to. But until I see the complete roster I don't think signing Lebron guarantees the Heat anything more than being a 2 or 3 seed in the East.

Most comics are written for people in their teens and early 20s. You know those kiddie comics where all the superheroes are infants or whatever? That seems to be closer to what they're going for. Which can be incredibly frustrating when they have guys like Edge and Jericho who are at their absoulute best working with more mature material. Even Miz and Morrison have shown on their web stuff that they can be incredibly funny playing off of grown up pop culture references.

Bill Simmons makes a couple nice points in today's article about why a Lebron-Wade-Bosh trio isn't a guarantee to win a title: That's my opinion basically. Unless they get some guys to accept far, far, far below market value, I don't see that team being a title team. Gator has mentioned Jermain O'Neal and Haslem and even TMac..so maybe they can get some people around them, but that's a huge if and until those questions are answered this Heat team still has a lot of work to do.

Beyond the points lazor and other have brought up, I'd like to add this: If you look at the rosters that Heyman had to deal with in ECW, and consider the fact that he had to deal with his biggest stars constantly being poached, he has WAAAAYYYY more talent in TNA to work with.

True. But if you take away his lucha style or character I think you take away what makes him realyl special.

I honestly don't think so. I think they'd need a decent C and back up PF and an above average PG. Unless you find 3 or 4 vets willing to take waaay less than their market value to chase a ring, I think they win a ton of regular season games and then bog down in the conference finals.

So do I. If Mistico had been even a slightly better English speaker he would've made a great addition a couple years back.

Yeah...thinking exactly the same thing (even about adding Mike Miller) Im a huge Lakers fan, but even I can see how good that line-up would be. Boozer and Noah are perfect compliments to each other,, and Lebron would be that much harder to deal with when Rose i on the floor because both men are good distributors. What's interesting to me is that Deng and Taj Gibson give the Bulls a lot of line-upflexibility because you can play big with Lebron at the 2 and Gibson up front with Noah and Boozer, or go small and flip flop Deng and Lebron at the swing positions to take advantage of match-ups. And Miller would be a no-brainer. A career 40% 3-pt shooter who would take the midlevel and slide in as your primary scorer off the bench instantly? that's perfect.

That signing has me thinking Lebron goes there. It gives Chicago a crazy good roster. The dollar amount leaves enough for Lebron to sign for the max (esp with the announcement that the cap is like $2 million more than expected). And everyone is young enough that Lebron could conceivably make several runs at a title with this core group.

Better is a relative term. Better to who? I'm sure you see how hard it would be to please the always changing tatses of the net fan. I get what you're saying. I do. I'd love to see a little more Lucha or indy hustle style, or edgier storylines, or more hardcore matches. I mean...the product is so predictable that I can literally go weeks w/o watching and be completely caught up after one episode of Raw. But if you're a billion dollar company with stockholders to answer to and a public image that has been brutalized in the last few years, how willing would you be to try something different? Would you sit there and try to create risque characters and storylines in order to push the envelope in order to please a target audience that is just as likely to watch UFC and has -for the most part - very little disposable income? Or would you do everything you could to put togethera safe product that you know will please a segemtn of the viewing audience that are proven spenders? Take your example: Burger King vs McDonald's. You say that McDonald's is 'too mainstream' and BK has a better variety. Probably true. (i think McDonalds food is awful) But look at it this way: Too Mainstream McDonalds generates roughly twice the annual profits as BK and is so far ahead of them in the fast food industry that magazines like Forbes don't even bother comparing the two ..(McDonalds is generally examined alongside other 'industry leaders' like Starbucks or whatnot) If 'too mainstream' equates to an extra 3 billion dollars a year, would you turn that away if you ran McDonald's? Do I personally think it's a great product? No. (referring to both the WWE and McD's) But I GETwhy the WWE does what it does. And I'm not sure a lot of fans try to see that point of view. (not saying that you don't...just a general statement about the concept of profit vs creative integrity)

Don't disagree with anything you're saying. But - again - I'm sure that the people running WWE would say that everthing they've done was done in order to make their business stronger and more stable. They dumbed down the product, simplified the storylines, and gone with incredibly generic characters, which all pissess off the net fans. To the WWE, those decisions were made specifically to cater to a younger, easier to predict, easier to please(and much less fickle) audience. They also spent a decade buying out competition, purchasing video libraries, and diversifying the revenue streams. That means the E will get much less low points and - admittedly - much less high points. So there you go: everything you said is true and valid and to the people running the E I don't think they care. They probably don't thinks its possible to spend too much time catering to the mainstream I'm not saying I think its a great idea. I'm just saying that's what it is.

That's a totally fair complaint, but the people running WWE would tell you that they need to be able to create a certain amount of predictability for business purposes. They know - in general - what works and what's always worked and that's what they're trying to create.

<blockquote data-ipsquote="" class="ipsQuote" data-ipsquote-username="GatorBait19" data-cite="GatorBait19" data-ipsquote-contentapp="forums" data-ipsquote-contenttype="forums" data-ipsquote-contentid="27836" data-ipsquote-contentclass="forums_Topic"><div><p> Gortat, Bass, Carter, Nelson, TPE and future picks</p><p> </p><p> for</p><p> </p><p> Paul, Peja, Oakfur or Posey.</p><p> </p><p> This would rid the Hornets of some crappy contracts while keeping them contenders next year with two guys who started of a 59 win team and two Big Men, plus future picks.</p><p> </p><p> Magic could then trade Redick, Anderson, and maybe Shard (it's been rumored for a week now) to Utah for Boozer and Kirlenko</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> Ah, how I love offseason trade rumors <img alt=":D" data-src="//content.invisioncic.com/g322608/emoticons/biggrin.png.929299b4c121f473b0026f3d6e74d189.png" src="<___base_url___>/applications/core/interface/js/spacer.png" /></p></div></blockquote><p> </p><p> I actually like the second deal more than the first...but I think the Magic would actually be improved just by starting a real PF (either Bass or Gortat) next to Dwight and running more of a traditional offense and cut down on those 3s. </p><p> </p><p> I agree Paul would be a no-brainer, but you're taking back a lot of flotsam and jetsam in that scenario to make it work.</p>

The simple answer is that people/the media cover everything as if everything today is the greatest thing ever. I think the reason the 96 season isn't as 'memorable' is because not many marquee players actually changed teams. Shaq was a HUGE deal but there were just as many historically bad deals signed (Juwan, Houston, Jim McIlvaine) as any big movements. So that sort of detracts from it. To be fair, 2010 is going to be a lot of empty hype unless James or Wade move to different teams. So we'll see..decades from now no one will be looking back at 2010 and talking wistfully about Drew Gooden and Steve Blake signing new deals

http://sports.espn.go.com/new-york/nba/news/story?id=5356502 Well it's being reported as being 'official' but the deadlines and whatnot mean nothing can be signed for a few days.

I would say that you're overstating how bad these owners are. Look, we don't really know if these teams are losing as much money as they say they are (if any). And there's a HUGE difference between 'a bad contract' and gross negligence. If you're going to dummy proof the league and the cap rules, then you might as well take away all control from the teams and just allow the league office make all roster decisions.

And I'd disagree The cap is meant to ensure competitive balance. The loopholes are there so that teams have some flexibility when it comes to signing players. But after that..barring some kind of gross incompetence or intentional negligence, I'm not going to agree with the idea that "hey we need to change the cap rules/CBA because the owners are too dumb to control themselves."

??? I'm sorry ..still don't really understand your point. It's the league's job to protect the owners from themselves?

This. Plus the Bucks just gave Drew Gooden a 5 year, $32 million deal and the TWolves gave darko a 4 year $20 million deal. THAT'S why i find it so hard to listen to anyone who wants to blame the "cap structure" for the financial troubles of some of these teams.

DUN DUN DUN!

Yeah, you are. You're pretentious cynicism comes out every time you talk about the WWE In terms of recent history, TNA has been pretty solid since about two weeks before the move back to Thursdays. The stoylines are still paced incredibly quickly (which leads to a lot of rushed heel/face turns) but it's not a total clusterf*** like when Hogan first came aboard.