Fool's Gold

In about 600 days, LeBron James could become a free agent.

There are NBA franchises -- yes, plural -- that appear ready to do little more than sit around and wait until that day.

They will, if history is any precedent, be wasting their time.

Yes, LBJ likes New York and the big lights. Sure, he's friends with Jay-Z, who's connected with the Nets. Maybe Brooklyn (specifically, Park Slope) is that hipster-cool that he'd want to be there.

But honestly, if you're going to New York, why aren't you going to the Garden, especially now that Mike D'Antoni has the Knicks running and gunning?

Or, for that matter, Detroit, where Joe Dumars has shown that, so long as Darko Miličić isn't involved, he knows what to do with a draft board?

There's also, of course, Dallas, where Mark Cuban probably isn't going to let the best young player in the world go without a bid... or Portland, where Paul Allen could say the same... or, well, his hometown Cavs, who might not give him the best chance to win a title, but will be able to pay him more than anyone else... and this is all assuming that some European team doesn't just back the truck up and give him an astounding amount of money.

By the way, I'm missing out on at least five other scenarios here. (Bulls, anyone?)

You see, LBJ is a marvelous prize... but putting all of your eggs in his basket is just a bad bet. Tank to get him and clear cap space, and you make your franchise look like a loser. Pretending that he won't just stay home (especially if, say, Mo Williams works out, and he gets any kind of help from his bigs) ignores what any number of NBA superstars have done for years -- which is to say, keep the market guessing, but eventually take the maximum money at home.

Mind you, there are many, many reasons to be clear in 2010 -- it's also the year that you could be chasing Paul Pierce, Dirk Nowitzki, Josh Howard, Yao Ming, Pau Gasol, Kobe Bryant, Dwayne Wade, Amare Stoudemire, Chris Bosh... and that's just the cream of the crop in Unrestricted Land.

But it's funny... the closer you get to the deadline, the more that teams are going to lock these guys up. No one, of course, wants to see big talent walk without a return. Big talent, for the most part, hates the idea of going all the way to the river before getting paid, when a rolled ankle or blown knee at any moment before payday could mean they've outsmarted themselves out of hundreds of millions of dollars. (Especially when the bad economy has to, at some point, start picking off the weaker franchises. Even billionaires notice when they lose big chunks of money.)

And that's why NBA championships are won in the draft, or at the trading table... but not the free agent market. But feel free to obsess over the market year that will finally change all of that.