Freaky free agency

The sports world is obsessed this summer with the NBA free agency. It is the biggest news story around and ESPN is going nuts and getting freaky with it's coverage. But I guess now we can all relax since the big domino has fallen. Timberwolves president David Kahn said signing Milicic was his first priority of the summer and locked him up with a 4 year 20 million dollar deal! Who needs LeBron James when you can overpay one of the biggest draft busts in recent history! Who exactly was Kahn competing against anyways? May be a couple of teams from Turkey and Greece? God help the Twolves. Despite all the big names in the NBA free agency, what we have so far for headlines are a bunch of bad signings. Milicic's contract is not that bad if you stack it up against Rudy Gay's five year, $82 million deal and Joe Johnson's ridiculous $119 million over six seasons.

Both players are decent and I actually like them, but neither of them is a true superstar who can be a number one guy in a championship team. NBA salaries are such that you gotta overpay at times for talent and both these guys can be legit number 2 guys and sometimes this is the going rate for such guys. But the problem is, it's OK to pay them if you already have a stud on your roster. Example - Orlando paid a ridiculous amount for Rashard Lewis, but they had Dwight Howard on the roster and as long as they could afford to sign both, it was OK. If you don't have that number one on the roster, the problem with these contracts is that it cripples the team's ability to get those number ones and these teams are basically now stuck with what they have and have hit their ceiling and the ceiling is not that high. May be Memphis can sign another big contract, but the Hawks are pretty much stuck where they are if Joe Johnson accepts this. The shocking part of this is, Joe Johnson has not accepted this offer and is apparently even tempted to play for less at Chicago or NY.

Now on to the real big names. The only thing that sounds concrete right now is Amare to NY. I am disappointed as a Suns fan, but I like the Suns signings of Hakim Warrick and Frye. They overpaid a little for Frye, but not too bad. I have always liked Warrick since college and it should be interesting to see him play with Nash. I just hope the Suns pick one more mid-level talent with some of the money they saved with Amare. The penny-pinching owner is going to lose one of his best players and the least he could do is bring somebody to fill some of the gaps. He already lost Steve Kerr as the GM because he tried to cut his pay after one of the best seasons the Suns have had in a few years. Amare may or may not be worth the max, but you gotta pay him, period. He will get 100 over 5 years from New York and I wish him good luck. He is now saying Melo and Parker will join him in 2011. Interesting!

We are still waiting for the top 3 free-agents to make up their mind - LeBron, Wade and Bosh. Many teams have already visited Cleveland to court LeBron including the paper clips. Now it's time for LeBron to make up his mind. He has more talent in Chicago, but he still can make the most in Cleveland. So it will be interesting to see what he does. There are also several crazy scenarios involving Miami and Chicago where all 3 will end up in the same team. I don't think that will happen. I don't think it even makes sense for LeBron to join Wade. LeBron needs his own championship and can't be a co-winner with Wade. Bosh is a big guy and he can join either one of them to help out, but looks like he is more likely to join Wade may be in Miami. Toronto refuses to sign and trade him and I think that makes it interesting. All said and done, LeBron is the king of this free agency period and he will get this thing really moving when he makes his call. There is a lot of second and third level talent in this free agency including Carlon Boozer and Tracy McGrady that nobody is even talking about. I liked the Lakers picking up Steve Blake. Smart move.