Can't Buy Me Love

Teams with definite cap space:
Memphis
Their payroll is $44.2M next year, +$4-5M for the lottery pick and the Lakers pick (gasol trade) and that leaves them with $9-10M in cap room.

Philadelphia
Iggy's qualifying offer + a draft pick brings them to about $45 m (13-14 million left over)

Too many Variables:
LA Clippers
Without Livingston, Brand, Maggette: 30 million under the cap
however they would need to sign SIX players and their draft pick

Washington
A returning Jamison and Arenas would gobble up all the cap space. Blatche's extension barely leaves them under the luxury cap.

Possible Cap Space:
Atlanta
No draft pick (phoenix)
Payroll $39.9M, not including:
Josh Smith qualifying offer $6.7M
Josh Childress qualifying offer $10.9M
These two offers would bring over the projected cap

Miami
if Marion opts out, they will have over $20 million in cap space
but it's equally, if not more likely, that he'll stick around and hope for yet another late season trade

Suspiciously Missing:
Seattle
When it comes to spending your money in the NBA, they avoided the usual route and aqcuired a stable of 6-7 million dollar per year players to waste air. After signing their draft picks they'll have <3 million to manuever

Minnesota
Two Words:
Juwan, Fatoine

Charlotte: an average back up point guard,New contract for Matt Carroll and Emeka's qualifying offer give them little room under the cap

You still have a chance to sex Mutombo

Dikembe Mutombo said Thursday he would instruct agent David Falk to negotiate with the Rockets on a contract for another year. Having Mutombo back for an 18th NBA season would not seem to be progress on change. It would be. Mutombo, at this stage of his career, is insurance. His return would allow the Rockets to spend their summer allowance on the perimeter, rather than on a Mutombo successor. Big men are expensive. The Rockets did not want to empty the mid-level bank account on a guy that - again, assuming the Yao-McGrady foundation to be sound - would only play 12 to 14 minutes a game at most behind Yao.

Houston Chronicle

Someone should tell Stern the entire league is smoke and noise...

...just ask sheed

Canadian Press

CLEVELAND — On the subject of the NBA's infatuation with pre-game pyrotechnics, smoke and noise, commissioner David Stern was loud and clear: He's had enough.

"I think they're ridiculous," Stern said Monday before Game 4 of the Cavaliers-Celtics second-round playoff series. "I think that the noise, the fire, the smoke, is a kind of assault that we should seriously consider reviewing in whether it's really necessary given the quality of our game."

A tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing

Sprewell, the stereotype reinforcer

Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel

A River Hills house belonging to former NBA star Latrell Sprewell was foreclosed on Monday after he failed to show up in court to contest the action brought by a bank that held his mortgage.

The holder of the mortgage, RBS Citizens Bank, told Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge David Hansher that Sprewell owed $320,284. According to Energon International records, the house is assessed at $610,000 and has an estimated fair market value of $667,980. Sprewell bought the house in 1994 for $405,000.

Sprewell, 37, a Milwaukee native and Washington High School graduate, has had other financial difficulties lately. In January, his 70-foot yacht, "Milwaukee's Best," was sold at auction by the U.S. Marshals Service. The yacht, said to be worth $1.5 million, went for $856,000 after Sprewell failed to make the $10,322 monthly payments.

In March, HomeRule Strategies Bank Group obtained a $72,698 judgment against Sprewell; in September 2007, the state filed a lawsuit against Sprewell for $72,102 in unpaid taxes. Neither judgment has been satisfied.

And if you didn't know

Sprewell, 37, once turned down a three-year, $21 million contract extension with the Minnesota Timberwolves, saying, "I've got my family to feed."