Keith Van Horn hasn’t played a minute of basketball since 2005-06.  He has enjoyed being retired and being a dad.  For whatever reason, Dallas still has KVH’s rights as a player even though he isn’t under contract.  As a result, they can (apparently) sign him and trade him (and his salary) to another team to make sure that they measure up.

As a result, KVH signed a $4,000,000 deal to be traded to New Jersey and apparently he only has to report for duty for about 30 days.  That works out to an unbelievable $133,333.33 per day for 30 days so that someone could send their best player to another team.  Someone tell me why this makes sense to run a league this way?

I don’t have my thoughts together on this yet, but here are a couple of thoughts.

• How is this good for the game of basketball to have worthless players attached to deals?
• If the owners “locked out” the players in the late 90′s and they had all the bargaining power, how is it that the players seem to be winning out BIG TIME right now.
• Even if this is technically within the rules of trading, it isn’t good for the game for one team to basically trade their best player to clear out cap space.
• When transactions get this complicated it isn’t good for the fanbase to try and follow.

Maybe when I get a cohesive argument together and a possible solution I will write more.  For now, I wish I was Keith Van Horn and that is about all I know.

That’s right. A piece about the Olympics that is six months away. Not only that, but it is a canned piece that you know ESPN was sitting on so they could fill their pages with something (ANYTHING) during this down period in sports.I am not biting on this one. I will not read about Chinese athletes and their plight to participate in the most boring part of sports the world has to offer. I will not read about it six full months before this boring exhibition takes place.

This should be viewed as an opportunity. Someone needs to take this time and fill it up. The NHL or NBA need to think about putting together a mid-season mini playoff or something. The UFC needs to put in a two or three week tournament putting all their belts on the line in their varying weight classes. A sport like golf, tennis, or even badminton needs to step up and create some kind of interesting multi-week event to capitalize on all the bored eyes sitting out there that are fiending for some decent sports action to follow.

Let’s have a summit. I want David Stern, Gary Bettman, Bud Selig, Don King, Mark Cuban, Dana White and Vince McMahon to sit down and hash this thing out. I need something to be done about this now.