Uncontested Shots: The Latest on Rubio, Aldridge, and Captain Jack

While most of the talk coming from the NBA over the last few days has been about Ricky Rubio and his shunning of the Wolves to stay in Spain for at least two more seasons there are a few other stories floating around the league worth mentioning. As always, here are today’s Uncontested Shots, or should I say, things I was thinking about while wondering if we’ll ever see a better trio inducted from the same Hall of Fame class as Michael Jordan, John Stockton, and David Robinson.

Deadline Looming for 2006 NBA Draft Class

NBA training camps are about a month away from opening and there are still a few names who remained unsigned. In addition to guys like Allen Iverson, Wally Szczerbiak, Desmond Mason, and Flip Murray there are also players from the 2006 Draft who are eligible for contract extensions that will go into effect in the 2010-11 season.

While Brandon Roy and Andrea Bargnani have already received extensions, it is highly unlikely that we’ll see more than a few more 2006 draftees sign extensions before the Oct. 31 deadline. One reason is that the draft as a whole has turned out to be a bit of a disappointment but more likely, it’s because of the economy and the looming expiration of the league’s current collective bargaining agreement in 2011.

With the league’s salary cap expected to continuously decline, teams have the upper-hand in negotiations and waiting until next summer and allowing those players to become restricted free agents will probably work in the owners’ favor since the maximum those players will be allowed to make will decline with the cap.

The only player who is almost certain to receive an extension by the deadline is the Blazers’ LaMarcus Aldrige—the second player picked in the 2006 Draft.

Other players from the 2006 Draft who are eligible for extensions are the Grizzlies’ Rudy Gay, the Bulls’ Tyrus Thomas, the Celtics’ Rajon Rondo, and the Hornets’ Hilton Armstrong.

It should be noted that those owners who don’t extend their players might be playing a high stakes game of Risk by allowing those player to test the open market—even as restricted free agents. With so many teams clearing cap space for next summer there is always the chance that teams that fail in their attempts to sign LeBron James or Dwyane Wade could be willing to overpay for someone like Gay and especially someone like Rondo.

Ray Allen is entering the final season of his current deal. Paul Pierce has a player option next summer for $21.5 million that he could choose to opt out of. Pierce may want to get a long-term deal next summer since he will be 32 and it will be the last summer before the current CBA expires.

Kendrick Perkins, whose contract expires in 2011, will be eligible for an extension with one season left on his deal and will no doubt want a heavy increase from the $4.4 million he’s scheduled to make in 2010-11.

In other words, the Rondo situation is something worth paying attention to as we approach Halloween.

Oh, Ricky!

If you’re a Minnesota Timberwolves fan try not to read Chris Sheridan’s article on ESPN.com today about how it’s more likely that Rubio will stay in Spain until 2012 than in 2011 when his current contract with FC Barcelona expires.

According to Sheridan, NBA rookies are only bound to the league’s rookie scale for three years after they’re drafted—meaning that Rubio would be better off staying Spain until 2012 when he won’t be “boxed into the rookie scale” and can make as much as Minnesota’s cap space would allow.

To stay that Wolves’ GM David Kahn’s drafting of Rubio was a blunder would be the understatement of the year. In addition to taking on horrible contracts and giving away Mike Miller and Randy Foye, Kahn and the Wolves will constantly be haunted by Stephen Curry for the next three years—the player they could have and should have drafted with the number five pick.

The only question now is whether or not Kahn will still be in Minnesota when Rubio decides he’s ready for the NBA.

Considering the about-faces pulled by Spain’s Fran Vazquez, Juan Carlos Navarro, and now Rubio, will NBA teams be reluctant to draft Spanish players in the future?

There is one thing that Kahn did that, had it worked out, would have deserved major recognition. Since the most that teams are allowed to contribute to buying out players overseas is $500,000, Kahn drafted Rubio’s DKV Joventut teammate, Henk Norel in the second round with the sole purpose of having an additional chip to work out a buy-out. Having the additional player would have allowed the Wolves to pay $1 million to DKV Joventut for Rubio and Norel with no intention of keeping the latter.

Also worth reading is Peter May’s critique of the spin coming out of Minnesota regarding Rubio. It seems that Wolves’ owner Glen Taylor is slowly realizing what the rest of us have suspected all along—that Kahn is in way over his head.

Oh Captain, Why Captain?!

Stephen Jackson wants out of Golden State and you can count the number of people who are surprised on one nose. Jackson wants to be traded to a contender and doesn’t feel like the Warriors have the potential to compete for a championship for the foreseeable future.

Isn’t it funny that Jackson played the disrespect card in getting the Warriors to give him an extension with two remaining years left on his deal and now has no problem disrespecting the Warriors by publicly proclaiming his desire to be traded to either Cleveland or any of the three Texas teams?

Don’t get me wrong. The Warriors should have never given Jackson the extension in the first place. The only reasonable explanation is that an unhappy Captain Jack is a potentially combustible Captain Jack. But now that all seems to have backfired since Jackson will have to be traded for the same reason. The difference is that he’ll be traded for expiring contracts since the Warriors won’t be able to get anything of substance for a guy with Jackson’s checkered past.

Memo to all NBA players seeking a trade: going public with your trade demands does nothing to help you get traded—that goes for every one of you.

Check out Tim Kawakami’s article from the San Jose Mercury News about the Jackson situation. I know a lot of people in the Bay Area can’t stand Kawakami’s constant criticism of the Warriors (and the Giants for that matter). But if they took the time to realize that Kawakami is absolutely right and got behind him instead of defending the Warriors then there might actually be some change with the team.

Quick Hits

• NetsDaily has a great FAQ on the Nets potential sale and all of the probabilities and likelihoods surrounding it.
• Dime Magazine’s list of cities that deserve an NBA team (including Mexico City!)
• Dan LeBatard’s great story on Tim James journey from the NBA to Iraq.

In Memoriam

This week’s Uncontested Shots was written with a heavy heart. For the second time this summer I lost a friend. This time it was Adam Goldstein, also known as DJ AM.

While many might only know Adam as a celebrity DJ, I knew Adam for the better part of the last 15 years—before he was featured on the covers of tabloids for his relationships with Nicole Richie and Mandy Moore or the plane crash last September that he miraculously survived.

While Adam and I didn’t stay in contact much over the past six years, when we did see each other, we always seemed to pick up where we last left off. He was one of the greatest people I’d ever met—the guy I couldn’t believe I hadn’t met earlier in life because of all the mutual friends and passions we shared.

I don’t know anybody who knew more people than Adam and perhaps that’s why his death made national news.

Back before the Internet was what it is today, Adam and I used to try to one-up each other in discovering breaks—the songs that became samples for hip-hop tracks. Since a lot of samples weren’t cleared by record companies (so they wouldn’t have to pay royalties for them) you wouldn’t see them in liner notes. DJs and music aficionados would either have to dig through record crates to find breaks or rely on either word-of-mouth or unmarked records called White Labels to find samples.

Every couple of weeks I would head over to Adam’s apartment and we would play each other tapes (yes, I said tapes) of the breaks that we’d found. I’ll never forget the look on Adam’s face when I played him Buster Williams’ “The Hump”—the original break used on a rare song from A Tribe Called Quest called “Mr. Incognito”.

I used to joke with Adam about how all of the weathermen in Los Angeles had names that sounded like Wu-Tang Clan aliases. If you don’t know, L.A. has weathermen named Fritz Coleman, Johnny Mountain, and Dallas Raines (for real!). Every time I saw Adam he would do my imitation of Method Man calling out L.A. weathermen as if they were members of Wu-Tang.

I remember when Adam got Serato Scratch Live, the software that every DJ in the world now uses on their laptops so they no longer have to carry around crates of records to perform. He was so excited to show me how it worked because it re-ignited his passion for DJing—practically made it new again.

Why am I telling you all this? Because I want people to know that Adam Goldstein wasn’t just a guy who pushed a couple of buttons and was lucky to date famous women. He was a guy who was passionate about everything he loved—whether that was music, sneakers, his friends, his hometown of Philadelphia, or the Lakers.

I looked up to Adam. He was a guy who was pulling in models even when he weighed 300 pounds and before he was famous. He was the most honest person I’d ever met. Whether that came to dealing with his own personal demons or family tragedies he laid it all out on the table. It made it easier to open up to him about your own problems.

I am one of the tens of thousands who will never forget Adam Goldstein. A phenomenal DJ and an even better human being.

RIP AMG