I was sitting Pappa Deux’s Mexican restaraunt in Houston waiting for my fajitas and trying desperately to get information about the NBA Draft lottery.  TheLostOgle.com had just launched (it was so fresh that I, as a founding member, didn’t know it was live because I was out of town).  Oklahoma City had no NBA team.  New Orleans had reclaimed the Hornets, but I was convinced that the OKC based investors who had recently purchased the Seattle Supersonics did so with the intention of moving them here.  That’s why my co-worker wondered why I was so antsy at the dinner table.

“I’m hoping the Sonics get the second pick in the draft,” I told him.

“Why?” he asked.  “Why not first?”

Such a simple question with such a complex answer.  It mostly hinged on my fervent belief that two years from then (it turned out to be one) the team in Seattle would be our hometown team.  Otherwise, I could give a crap about the Supersonics.  I had adopted the Hornets simply because they had played their home games here, but before that I had supported the Utah Jazz because I liked John Stockton and Karl Malone.  As a kid, I liked Larry Bird and the Celtics.  It was the perogative of a fan free agent.

At that point, on that day, I expected to make a life long commitment to a team and I wanted them to have the best college player I had ever witnessed.

University of Texas freshman Kevin Durant had been electric in his one season in the Big XII.  During the triple overtime thriller that he played against my alma mater, Durant had lit up Oklahoma State.  It came so easy to him.  Even with defensive lock down artist Marcus Dove hounding him, K.D. found a way to score with such ease and grace that I didn’t even mind he was torching my team.  Hell, I even wanted to see him get the ball more.  After OSU finally won the game on a desperation three at the buzzer, I never missed a Durant appearance on national television.  He was, quite simply amazing.

Meanwhile, Seattle sucked.  Not just the city’s attitude toward the NBA team that headquartered there, but the team itself.  The Sonics had one of the league’s worst records and a serious opportunity to move up in the draft with the luck of some ping pong balls.  My hope was that they didn’t move up too far.

You see, Greg Oden was the expected number one pick.  I’d watched him in college, too, and been underwhelmed.  He was bigger and stronger than everyone else, and seven footers are automatically given overwhelming expectations,  but what others saw in him, I missed.  He didn’t even dominate in high school, and in college all I heard were a lot of apologies for why he seemed so ordinary.  Perception is important, though, so I knew if Seattle got the first pick overall, they would take him.

Anyway, back to Pappa’s Mexican joint, I slipped away from the table just in time to see that Seattle’s ping pong ball had been in the top-3 on a bar television.  When I found out that Portland “won” the whole thing and that the Sonics got the #2, I was ecstatic.  For the rest of the evening, I was happy enough that I stopped thinking about how my brand new job–that I’d taken because my old company moved to Houston and I didn’t want to go with them–sent me to the armpit of America for my first assignment.

Since then, little has made me change my opinion.  The Sonics drafted Durant, the team moved here a year later, and Durant has continued to be my favorite player.  Of course, when I was praying I would be able to watch his every game, it was because I was enamored by his offensive prowess.  Little did I know that he would also turn out to be an excellent role model, teammate, and leader.  Yesterday, in a method 180 degrees different from the man he finished second in the MVP voting, Durant announced that he would remain with the Thunder until at least 2016.  That means he will definitely be around long enough for my young sons to remember him as the first superstar they got to see in person.

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For NBA fans, 2010 is always going to be remembered–for better or worse–because of the free agent bonanza.  In many ways, the availability of a plethora of the league’s best players and the upcoming labor dispute that is bound to derail the league next season, has influenced the entire league for the past three seasons. 

In 2006, the vaunted draft class of 2003 became eligible to sign extensions.  Many of the players taken that year had become superstars quickly in their careers, and–arguably–the three best players chose to leave money on the table rather than take the maximum allowable.  There were many reasons to explain the seemingly odd decision (I mean, how often do you tell your boss you appreciate the raise offer, but you’d rather take less now so you can make more later?  You take the money on the table, right?).  For LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, and Chris Bosh they had the confidence that they could continue building their brand for three more years when they would hit the magic number for years experience right before armaggedon was scheduled to hit the league.

With agents that apparently forecast the Wall Street meltdown, housing collapse, and nationwide reception better than anyone on Capitol Hill, these three players are now in perfect position to cash in before the league owners destroy the player’s union when the collective bargaining agreement ends prior to free agency in 2011.  When that happens, most expect the league’s current financial crunch to give owners all the leverage they need to reduce the size of player contracts and/or even institute a stricter salary cap that would limit player salaries even more.

So, to get paid, players need to get paid now, and as a result, half the league has tanked ever since the big-3 chose to go this route in order to have an opportunity to snatch them away right now.  For those who don’t know, “tanking” is the practice of intentionally making a team worse in hopes of the short term pain leading to a long term reward.  It usually is related to jockeying for a better draft slot that allows the team to get a better college player a few months later.  In this case, though, the spectre of getting an established young star has led to prolonged tanking by half the league.

The New York Knicks, who had a horrible roster to begin with, have been intentionally making lop sided trades against their favor in order to clear cap space to sign LeBron.  The Nets sold part of their team to LeBron’s favorite rapper to get an advantage, and are probably moving the team to Brooklyn to impress him specifically.  Miami, on the other hand, has already had one of the stars (Wade) since drafting him in 2003, but they have managed to shell off every player on their team (aside from him and two low wage earners) with hopes of signing all three of them.  So, if Wade chooses to go elsewhere, they will be looking at a core of Mario Chalmers and Michael Beasley for next season.  Other teams like the Chicago Bulls, Los Angeles Clippers, and Minnesota Timberwolves have also maneuvered their rosters so that they can afford to offer at least one player a maximum contract.

Do the math.  Three players and at least six teams who have gone all-in in hopes of getting one star.  If the rumor that both Bosh and Wade have decided to go to Miami is true, with James potentially joining them after he selects a team by choosing a hat during ESPN primetime on Thursday, that means there are a lot of teams who intentionally got worse who are likely to remain that bad for years.  Did you notice one team not mentioned?

The Oklahoma City Thunder.

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