1) Any team LeBron comes to will play defense, no matter who the coach is. Doc Rivers didn’t establish the defensive mentality in Beantown – Garnett did. And the importance of the games themselves lend more urgency & gravitas when your’e a contender rather than a pretender.

2) Donnie did a good job executing what he was brought in here to do….sweep the decks clean. At the very least he will be able to hand a clean slate to a new regime, something that Layden, Isiah & Walsh would have KILLED for.

3) There’s no backdoor deal. This is just a balls of steel roll of the dice. It will most likely fail, but still has far more possibility to bring us a chip than hanging onto Isiah’s crowd & drafting Jennings and Brooke.

4) Lee, Harrington, Duhon, S-Rod & T-Mac have zero chance of being here next season.

5) I am happy to see Nate go to Boston, he has all the physical tools to be an average defender. The players AND coaches AND game importance will all conspire to force him to play the best defense of his life….it’s on Nate to rise to this challenge. After all the grief i have given him for his disinterest in playing “D”, i’d like to see him “man up” and better himself.

6) Goodbye, Marcus Landry…you filled the “hungry glue guy at the end of the bench” role quite well. Good luck to ya!

7) i would like to see D’Antoni play a very big lineup moving forward:

PG: T-Mac
SG: Chandler
SF: Gallo
PF: Harrington
C : Lee

Bender, S-Rod & Douglass off the bench. Without JJ we’re gonna need to play a lot more zone & switching – but our length will cause some problems.

Thomas supposedly went to Charlotte right?

All the pundits, dont really know what’s gonna happen all of them are paid to talk and many just ramble to be contrary or to drum up responses.
I believe LBJ will definitely consider NY… with that said I am sure Donnie and Co. have a plan B.. so we will see

I think they HAD to do this…

Wonder if the salaries match up to trade Al for Ty Thomas. Probably not. Ty Thomas is probably still on his rookie contract.

We got further under the cap, but all I heard today was that LeBron was going to the Nets. Do people really think LeBron is going to play in Newark for two years while the Brooklyn building may or may not ever be built?

I think the Knicks take precedence over the Nets if both teams are under the cap. Can’t read D-Wade’s mind, can’t read LeBron’s mind, but I think NYK is priority #1.

KD you excited about the game on Saturday? I wonder if all those guys will make it here and pass the physicals by then?

2008-09 season: A full-court point guard on a half-court team, Rodriguez was a fish out of water in Portland and vented his frustrations in the middle of last season. That didn’t get him very far, though — he averaged only 15 minutes a game.

But the number to look at is the 37.2 under assist ratio. Even playing in the worst possible system for his skills, he managed to post the league’s eighth-best mark in that category and finished 13th in pure point rating. Rodriguez chipped in a strong rebound rate as well, and though he shot poorly (39.2 percent) and struggled to make 3s, he did improve his horrid free-throw rate from the previous season.

Scouting report: Rodriguez is tall for a point guard and quick for any position, but he’s a poor defensive player nonetheless. The Blazers frequently yanked him for defensive errors, including wandering off his man, conceding spot-up jumpers, and taking bad fouls on the perimeter; his rate of nearly one foul every nine minutes was the fifth highest among point guards.

Offensively, he has shown flashes of brilliance. Not only does he have an outstanding burst going to his right and can see the floor extremely well, he likes to push the ball in transition and feed others for layups and dunks. While he can get out of control and start firing the ball all over the gym (he was 65th in turnover rate out of 69 point guards), he’s one of the rare players who can consistently create shots for others without needing many for himself.

Rodriguez is a poor perimeter shooter and is no great shakes from close range either, but he finally hit the 50 percent plateau in the immediate basket area last season and began drawing fouls with more regularity. Since he achieved all these numbers in a system that seems diametrically opposed to his skill set, it’s possible he could improve on them significantly in a different setting.

2009-10 outlook: Portland traded Rodriguez to Sacramento in the offseason, placing him on an up-tempo team that seems largely devoid of other talented passers. While it’s unclear whether he’ll start or come off the bench, the potential for a breakout season is certainly here. He is 23 and has enough experience under his belt to know the league, but now he’ll have the freedom to push the ball and generate offense without the threat of a quick hook.

It’s doubtful he’ll shoot much higher than 40 percent and he may not score much more than a dozen points per 40 minutes, but Rodriguez will post one of the highest assist rates in basketball and could end up on the league leaderboard if he starts.