The Euro Menace Goes Small

And the trickle picks up... Earl Boykins, a truly useful scoring bench guard provided you can handle over-dribbling and bad defense from a poor man's Iverson, goes for $3.5 million to Italy. Earl's 32 now and really fell off the radar in Charlotte last year, but he's a name that people are going to recognize, if only because Earl's really short for an NBA player.

Nenad Krstic, an actually very good player before recent knee injuries, and someone that the Nets will truly miss, goes for $9 million a year to Russia. Primo Brezac, who used to get a lot of minutes for the Bobcats before they had better ideas, goes to Roma, where he'll join NCAA refugee Brandon Jennings.

That makes 10 in all, and with LeBron James making meaningless news about saying yes for a $50 million payday, everyone is in on the trend. But the more meaningful point to me is this... why does everyone think this is a temporary thing? There's no reason for Jennings to come back after a year, or for any of the other players to be short-listing their new masters. Euro ball is going to be a dramatically better payday, where the ex-NBA player should be a star, and I'm assuming the season and travel has to go be easier... so maybe you get to play longer and be healthier. I'm sure some will come back, but I'm also sure that you're going to keep seeing more go overseas.

Oh, and anyone that thinks that David Stern will blow up salary caps just to remain competitive with the overseas teams? Not a chance, at least not until this actually translates into lower ratings or attendance. I loves me some Earl Boykins, but there ain't nobody deciding to go, or not go, depending on his participation.