Wheelin' and Dealin': NBA Free Agents Hit the Jackpot

While the summer sports lull drags on and the baseball highlights play on repeat, many fans tend to tune out until September, when the NFL comes back, or at least tone down their rabid fandom to appease the hordes of wives and girlfriends constantly complaining about sports overload.

Unfortunately for our women, however, there are many of us who are drawn to the offseason by reports of free agent signings, training camp rumors, and "wheelin and dealin" all around the sports world.

For my purposes, I will focus on the recent plethora of NBA free agent signings, and while the available talent does not compare to next year's free agent bonanza, there were a good number of significant moves made to spark interest in the NBA offseason.

Let's begin things with the almighty New York Knickerbockers and their blockbuster headline trade of Quentin Richardson to Memphis (who was quickly unloaded by Memphis to the Clippers for another former Knick Zach Randolph...so Q Rich to the Clippers, Z Bo to the Grizz...both are sure to catapult their respective teams into the pantheon of all-time great NBA teams...or not) for the much maligned Darko Milicic.

While many fans may be skeptical of this move, I was rather pleased that Donnie Walsh managed to unload one of our many shoot-first, pass-later guards, as well as my personal least-favorite Knick.

Darko will most likely never live up to his draft pick status (mainly due to the incredible success of the rest of that draft class, which of course also included Lebron James), but he has been showing signs of improvement and is a definite upgrade to the Knicks front court clusterfuck featuring the likes of the immortal Jared Jeffries, Chris Wilcox, and Eddy Curry.

In keeping with the orange and blue, many recent talks had indicated that Jason Kidd was high on the Knicks target list and would have been a great veteran addition to the team, but at last they could not match Mark Cuban's enticing offer of three years/$25 million for the 36 year old Kidd and he has since decided to stay put in Dallas.

Now that we have discussed the Knicks...let's move on to one of the bigger free agent signings so far this summer. I am talking of course about Shaq going to the Cavs to potentially end his career playing with Lebron and bringing a title to Cleveland (or so they hope).

The 37 year old Diesel certainly has some stuff left in the tank and will provide a much needed front court boost for the Cavs (who had an awfully hard time defending Dwight Howard this past postseason).

This deal also sent Sasha Pavlovic and Ben Wallace to Phoenix (clearly a salary dump move for the Suns, for they will likely waive Pavlovic and Wallace has said he will retire).

I certainly feel for Suns fans lately, it is clear that GM Steve Kerr believes their window to win a championship with this current squad has closed and they have begun the rebuilding process (a long, slow, and painful process for any fan to endure) and as well as sending Shaq packing, they have also been looking to deal both Amare Stoudemire and Steve Nash.

The next major move to take place (actually happened before the Shaq deal, but disregard that for now) was the Bucks sending Richard Jefferson to the Spurs in another similar salary dump deal, while acquiring Kurt Thomas, Bruce Bowen, and Fabricio Oberto.

This deal is a serious winner for the Spurs, who add the dynamic scorer Richard Jefferson to the deadly threesome of Parker, Ginobili, and Duncan. The Spurs believe their window is closing quickly to win another championship with this core and they certainly made the necessary moves to give them as good a shot as anyone this year. Watch out for San Antonio.

Staying with the Bucks, who have seemingly gutted their roster, they also lost Charlie Villanueva via free agency to the Pistons. The Pistons made another big acquisition by signing free agent Ben Gordon from the Bulls, but did also lose Rasheed Wallace to the Celtics, and are likely to lose Allen Iverson as well. All in all, the Pistons have come out on top and should be optimistic about their new potential starting five of Rodney Stuckey, Ben Gordon, Rip Hamilton, Tayshaun Prince, and Jason Maxiell.

Let's stop for a second and reflect on Boston's recent signing of Rasheed Wallace. If this had happened five years ago, the Celtics may have been unbeatable—picture this starting lineup when all players were in their prime—Stephon Marbury, Ray Allen, Paul Pierce, Rasheed Wallace, and Kevin Garnett.

At one point that was a bonafide All-Star team, and currently ain't too shabby either. However, all reports point to Marbury leaving town (which is a good thing for Boston) as Rondo has clearly established himself as the Celtics point guard of the future.

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