Preseason and counting

Now I have been saying this all along, since the start of the lockout. Why nobody listened to me, I don't know. Even though the players end up getting less, this stops any stupidly gross amounts of money being paid to people that haven't earned even close to that amount. Annual salary increases for those players with Larry Bird rights (players re-signed by a team without regard to the salary cap), will be 12 percent, and 10 percent for others. So, since Kobe Bryant has re-signed with the Lakers, he could have (and probably did) re-sign for his limit of US$9 million, for seven years, his total contract would be about US$85,384,539.

The grandfather clause that everyone has been talking about is the clause that allows a player to resign with his team for 105 percent of his previous salary, applying to those players already over the maximum US$14 million. Some of the more easier to understand details of the new collective bargaining agreement are things like marijuana and certain hard drugs and steroids will be added to the league's anti-drug program. What niggles at me, is why would they not be included in the anti-drug program now? It would have helped a couple of years ago, maybe Iverson and Webber might not have gotten into alleged trouble. All on court personnel will be subjected to one drug test some time during the preseason. That's really good to hear, but what about during the season? That's when the trouble is. All a person has to do to avoid a drug test at an allotted time, I am thinking, is to stop taking that substance for a number of weeks, and after the test is done with, just go back to pumping the stuff back into their bodies. What they should do to make the tests more worthwhile and not so token, is to have a number of random tests during the season. But hey, that's just me.

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