Lets Talk Basketball

[Colt1861Navy]

This is funny!...Western GMs play game of touché

Friday, July 25

By Frank Hughes
Special to ESPN.com

According to my very exclusive sources with intimate knowledge of the situation, NBA commissioner David Stern received a phone call Friday morning from Los Angeles Lakers general manager Mitch Kupchak, who complained that San Antonio Spurs general manager R.C. Buford made an inappropriate gesture.

Apparently, during a video conference call, Buford sat on the edge of his desk, grabbed his crotch and yelled, "Take that, Mee-yatch."

Of course, the only reason that Buford felt it necessary to make the call, my sources say, was because Buford himself received a similar call from Minnesota Timberwolves general manager Kevin McHale a few days ago, in which McHale labeled Buford and the rest of his championship ring-wielding front-office cronies "free agency chokers."


Kevin McHale had to keep up with the Kupchaks. McHale was referring to his acquisition via four-team trade of Latrell Sprewell, and perhaps his choice of words in taunting Buford was, if not intentional, unfortunate.

So there you have it folks, Summer Time Smack Talk, middle-aged white dude style, as the powers-that-be in the NBA play their own game of oneupsmanship by wheeling and dealing in a $2 billion version of the World Series of Poker.

Who says you can't get that same adrenaline rush once you retire from playing?

Some would argue that this summer in the NBA is more entertaining than its regular season -- and not just because we get to see to what lengths Kobe Bryant will go to restore his good name. (His next three endorsement deals? Chapstick. Tiffany's. And TigerBeat Magazine.)

This reminds me of that stretch in the NFL from 1987 to 1996, when the New York Giants won the Super Bowl, forcing the rest of the NFC to make an adjustment. So the Redskins do, and win the next one. The title keeps volleying back and forth between New York, Washington, San Francisco and Dallas for 10 straight years, depending on who made the best adjustments.

Only, this whole thing is happening in one month instead of one decade, a dizzying whir of activity that makes one ready to end the offseason (also known as: COPS! See the police use a pair of platinum-plated handcuffs and an Escalade paddy wagon with three DVDs and a PlayStation 3) and begin a regular season in which 82 games will be welcomed instead of ignored -- or, at least in the Western Conference.

This all started when Kupchak did his impression of Mike Price, and Destiny and her sister Serendipity dropped in his lap. One day you're contemplating whether or not to keep Robert Horry and maybe contact Jelani McCoy, the next day Gary Payton and Karl Malone call and start asking about where the nice neighborhoods in L.A. are located.

At the time, San Antonio's and Minnesota's responses seemed meek, the Spurs stealing Rasho Nesterovic and the Wolves resorting to Michael Olowokandi. But then McHale went Postal and got Sprewell. Or is that McHale went Sprewell and got Postal? I can't keep these things straight. But it makes me contemplate the possibility of Sprewell and Malone playing together, meaning the Mailman could go Postal.

Maybe we'll get that redundancy next summer. But this summer, Buford's parry to McHale's riposte was to pull off a three-team deal with the Indiana Pacers and Sacramento Kings in which the Spurs got Hedo Turkoglu and Ron Mercer for, well, a rusty old mud-filled can sitting on the bottom of the Riverwalk. Excuse me, I mean, Danny Ferry. The Kings got Brad Miller. And the Pacers got Crow on a Spit because Donnie Walsh has promised his constituents for a long time that he was going to re-sign Jermaine O'Neal, Brad Miller and Reggie Miller, and now Brad Miller is gone and Jermaine has no center.

San Antonio was so desperate to make a fantastic move to keep up with the other SeaBiscuits that the Spurs did the deal with Sacramento. This is kind of like the U.S. providing weapons to Iraq 20 years ago so that Iraq could defeat Iran. Now, 20 years later, the U.S. uses those same weapons as an excuse for invasion.


I find this move interesting for a couple reasons. Foremost is that San Antonio was so desperate to make a fantastic move to keep up with the other SeaBiscuits that the Spurs did the deal with Sacramento. This is kind of like the U.S. providing weapons to Iraq 20 years ago so that Iraq could defeat Iran. Now, 20 years later, the U.S. uses those same weapons as an excuse for invasion. (Republicans, please don't e-mail me telling me what an ass I am. I've already heard it from my father-in-law.)

You'd have to think that at some point over the next five years, the Spurs and the Kings are going to meet in the playoffs, perhaps even the Western Conference finals, and the trade that happened this week is going to go a long way toward determining the outcome of the NBA championship. At which point R.C. is going to take out his Buford Pusser whooping stick on Geoff Petrie, or Petrie might flog Buford with a satchel of poker chips from the Palms.

The other thought I had was that I find it humorously ironic that Larry Bird had a hand in undermining the strong personnel move of McHale. I mean, is there no loyalty any longer, no championship ties that bind? What was Red Auerbach teaching those fellas up there in Boston? What ever happened to Celtic Pride? I guess it disappeared when Vin Baker came to town.

Curiously and conspicuously absent in all this contractual philandering are the Dallas Mavericks, who apparently still are smarting from the rejection of their overtures to Alonzo Mourning. Remember a few years ago when Mark Cuban heard about the four-team deal that was going to send Baker to New York and Patrick Ewing to Seattle and Cuban interceded to block the whole thing by pulling off a meaningless trade with Detroit?

I miss those days of back-alley sliminess, of nefarious negotiations in which Cuban outmaneuvers his opponent only to incur the wrath of David Stern in the form of a monetary wrist-slap, which is akin to taking one of Hugh Hefner's six girlfriends away from him for a night. That's boardroom brawling at its best, and Cuban once was the King of Sports.

Now, he sits on the sidelines and watches while Kupchak, Buford, Petrie and McHale stick out their tongues and nanny nanny boo boo one another in a grand tussle for the next five championships.

C'mon, Cubes, get in the game. We know you have it in you.

Frank Hughes, who covers the NBA for the Tacoma (Wash.) News-Tribune, is a regular contributor to ESPN.com.

http://espn.go.com/nba/columns/hughes_frank/1585596.html