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Home | Sports | Timberwolves

NBA turning blind eye

Because trades create excitement, the league is looking the other way as teams bend rules by swapping retired players.

By JERRY ZGODA, Star Tribune

Last update: February 26, 2008 - 12:47 AM

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WOLVES WEEK IN REVIEW

Record: 1-1

• The Wolves returned from the All-Star break Tuesday with a convincing 104-88 victory over Philadelphia that ended both their five-game losing streak and the 76ers' five-game winning streak. Then they rallied Thursday against San Antonio from a four-point deficit with 1:40 left to take a one-point lead with 39 seconds left only to lose 100-99 on Manu Ginobili's shot with 6.2 seconds left.

STAR TRIBUNE'S STAR OF THE WEEK: Al Jefferson, forward/center

Big Al — it says so right on his shoes — just keeps rollin' with a week that included Tuesday's 19-point, 14-rebound game and Thursday's performance when he outscored Tim Duncan 28-24.

THIS WEEK: Four games

Sunday: 5:30 p.m. vs. Dallas. Tuesday: 7 p.m. vs. Utah. Wednesday: 6 p.m. at Toronto. Friday: 6:30 p.m. at Cleveland.

• The schedule speeds up. It starts with Jason Kidd back at Target Center, this time as a Dallas Maverick again, continues with the season's first meeting against the Jazz and concludes with the last of two games against LeBron James and the Cavs.

THE QUOTE

"I can't do that. I'm too good a player." — Veteran forward Antoine Walker on why perhaps he was on Thursday's inactive list after playing eight minutes in the first half and none in the second half Tuesday.

JERRY ZGODA

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Now that the careers of forgotten NBA players Aaron McKie and Keith Van Horn have been resurrected in ink and parchment only, who's next?

Latrell Sprewell? Sam Mitchell? Randy Wittman or Kevin McHale?

"For 4 million bucks, I might be able to get off the couch," McHale said.

NBA Commissioner David Stern once righteously punished the Timberwolves for their dunderheaded, illegal secret-handshake deal with free agent Joe Smith by stripping them of first-round draft picks seemingly in perpetuity.

When first the Los Angeles Lakers and then the Dallas Mavericks exploited a flaw in the NBA's exasperatingly complex salary-cap rules by including players retired everywhere but officially in the books, the league's lawyers hummed a little tune and stamped their approval on deals that sent Pau Gasol from Memphis westward and reunited Jason Kidd with the franchise that originally drafted him.

And Van Horn, the former University of Utah star who hasn't played an NBA game since 2006, flew to New Jersey, where he will cash a $4.3 million check merely for his physical presence.

Well, as they like to say in basketball, no harm, no foul, especially if the transactions serve the purpose of the NBA's well-exercised marketing arm.

"You know what?" McHale asked the other day. "I don't care who you are, guys spend all their time trying to find a loophole in something. That's in the tax laws, that's in everything. There's always going to be something. You take Keith Van Horn and if you prorate that thing for 30 days, he's the highest-paid player in the history of the NBA. So God bless his heart."

McKie was included in the Gasol deal and Van Horn in the Kidd deal to make the salary-cap numbers work after they agreed to sign-and-trade contracts that put a chunk of unexpected cash in their pockets.

McKie and Van Horn are just two names among many retired players whose rights never were renounced because you just never know when something might come in handy. The Wolves' list of such players includes Sprewell's big $14.6 million salary slot or, if you want to go way back in history, the more modestly paid Mitchell and Oliver Miller.

Mitchell, it should be noted, is doing quite well financially coaching the Toronto Raptors, so to be included as a player in a nudge-nudge, wink-wink trade his coaching contract must be terminated and his playing comeback deemed genuine.

Most years, the NBA trading deadline approaches with so much talk and passes with so little action. This year's came and went with a blizzard of moves that included so many big-name players: Gasol, Kidd, Shaquille O'Neal, Shawn Marion, Mike Bibby and Ben Wallace.

"The magnitude of players traded was probably a little unusual," San Antonio coach Gregg Popovich said. "Most years, there might be one deal like that, if any. This year, there were quite a few."

The shuffling has stirred interest in the league and promises first-round Western Conference playoff matchups that will capture both hearts and boffo television ratings.

"Hey, it got the trade done and both teams wanted to do the trade," McHale said of Van Horn's inclusion in the Nets-Mavs deal. "Sometimes, common sense overcomes everything."

McHale predicts the league will modify the language in the rules to address such situations before next season.

"It will be removed from the books," he said. "And you know what? Then they'll find some other funky little thing in there."

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