In this (pointless) blog I will determine who is the poor-man's someone else.

Joe Johnson is a poor man's Kobe Bryant

Andre Igoudala is a poor man's Lebron James

Brian Scalabrine is a poor man's Brian Cook

Ramon Sessions is a very, very poor man's Chris Paul

Al Jefferson is a poor man's Kevin Garnett

Greg Oden is a poor man's Marcus Camby

Travis Outlaw is a poor man's Lamar Odom

Trevor Ariza is a poor man's Ron Artest

Kyle Weaver is a poor man's Bruce Bowen

Jordan Farmar is a poor man's Deron Williams

James Jones is a poor man's Jason Kapono

Tayshaun Prince is a poor man's Lamar Odom

J.R. Smith is a poor man's Jason Richardson

Those are all of the ones I can think of for now.  If you have any ideas or disagreements please tell me.

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"Odom played the role of scapegoat for angry Lakers fans after L.A. lost to the Celtics in the Finals. He didn't help his cause by showing up at camp out of shape. And he seemed to dig himself an even bigger hole when he criticized Phil Jackson for suggesting Odom might best help the Lakers by coming off the bench this season. In the past few days, Odom has backtracked and said he'd do what was best for the team, but most in the league think it's only a matter of time before the Lakers find a new home for him.  The team spent some time this summer looking at a few deals, but nothing materialized. Look for the Lakers to restart those talks sooner rather than later. Jackson's triangle offense is notoriously hard for recently acquired players to learn, and given Odom's impending free agency, now seems to be the right time to move him.  A Marion-for-Odom swap might make the most sense for both parties involved, though I've heard there's interest in Odom in quite a few cities, including Cleveland, Chicago, New Jersey, New York and Orlando." - Chad Ford

While Lamar Odom claims he's fine being a 6th man, its only a matter of time before he starts getting angry with the organization.  And since he isn't Kobe Bryant, the Lakers wouldn't think twice about trading him to the highest bidder.  There is always the chance that Odom won't cause any problems and everything will be all right, but if it isn't I have some trade scenarios invloving some of the teams interested.

Cleveland Cavaliers and New York Knicks

The only person on either of those teams that I would want for Odom would be Lebron, and thats impossible so I won't even try to come up with a good trade invloving those teams.  Even if we did a 3-way deal there is no way we would get equal value for Lamar.

Chicago Bulls

1) Lamar Odom and Jordan Farmar for Andres Nocioni and Kirk Hinrich

2) Lamar Odom, Jordan Farmar, and Vladimir Radmanovic for Andres Nocioni, Kirk Hinrich, and Drew Gooden

3) Lamar Odom, Vladimir Radmanovic, and Luke Walton for Andres Nocioni and Larry Hughes

4) Lamar Odom, Vladimir Radmanovic, and Luke Walton for Kirk Hinrich and Larry Hughes

5) Lamar Odom and Luke Walton for Kirk Hinrich and Drew Gooden

6) Lamar Odom and Luke Walton for Andres Nocioni and Drew Gooden

New Jersey Nets

1) Lamar Odom and Jordan Farmar for Devin Harris, Sean Williams, Stromile Swift, and Chris Douglas-Roberts

2) Lamar Odom and Jordan Farmar for Devin Harris, Brook Lopez, and Stromile Swift

Orlando Magic

1) Lamar Odom and Jordan Farmar for Hedo Turkoglu, Jameer Nelson, and Brian Cook

2) Lamar Odom for Hedo Turkoglu, Tony Battie, and Brian Cook

This blog took me a couple of days to write, so unless you really want to I wouldn't expect you to read it all at once.  I split it into 5 parts so that you can read whatever subject you want to read about, or just have a spot to stop and continue later.

Part 1: Referees

If I was the NBA Commissioner I would change a lot of things about the NBA.  First of all I would personally look into fixing the reffing.  I would raise the ref's salary by $2,000 a year to hopefully make them less likely to bet on games.  Also I would make them send me a document telling me of all their vacation and travel plans so that I can approve them.  If they are going to Vegas, or somewhere else they can gamble I would have the hotels tell me if they go to any sports betting places.  I would also have them sign a contract that states that if they bet on any sport, or attempt to bet on any sport that they have to pay the league $20,000.  Even though that would be nothing to the league, it would be a large amount of money for the ref.  Also I would have a website that people can go on and rate the refs after each game.  If they get a good rating then I will give them a small bonus for the day.  If they get a bad rating I would have some officials look at the game tape to see if he purposely made some bad calls.  If he did then he would be fined and suspended by the league.  If not, then I wouldn't do anything.  I wouldn't fine them for getting a bad rating because some people might just be mad at the refs because their team lost and give them a bad rating, even if the officiating was perfect.  If a ref was involved in multiple games that had terrible reffing, then I would suspend them for a few games to see if the reffing improved.  I would also add 2 refs that sat on side court looking into 2 different monitors displaying the game.  One monitor would have the TV view, and the other one would have a floor view.  These referees would have whistles so they can call fouls, but they wouldn't be able to use rewind, unless it was during a timeout and they were reviewing a call.  Also I would have fans vote for the refs that they wanted to officiate the NBA All-Star game.  During the playoffs, I would mix and match the reffing combinations and tell the refs their officiating jobs the morning of the game.  That would make them less likely to be able to work with other refs, and it would give them less time to bet on games.  During the playoffs I would take the best refs from each round and keep them until later rounds, while letting the rest of them have the time off.  There is no way to make the reffing perfect, but I think these methods would help improve the state of reffing in the NBA. 

Part 2: Salary Cap

The next problem would be to fix the financial system of the NBA.  Since it would be bad to get rid of the cap, I would just raise the cap.  Right now the cap is at $58.68 million and the luxury tax threshold is at $71.15 million.  I would raise the cap to $80 million to allow teams to be able to sign better players since every team in the league, except for one is over the salary cap, but I would set the luxury tax threshold at $92 million to keep team from signing multiple all-stars.  I would make the teams pay the league $1.50 for every $1 they went over the luxury tax.  I would also add a new super-luxury tax that starts at $110 million on the cap.  This would make the teams have to pay the league $3 for every $1 they went over it to keep mega rich teams from signing the best players in the league to be on their team.   This would keep teams from abusing the raised caps too much.  The super-luxury tax would probably never be used, but it would just be precautionary, because if Bill Gates and Microsoft got obsessed with an NBA team and decide to buy it then they could sign anyone they wanted even with the super-luxury tax, but it would make them less likely to and make the NBA super rich.  With the new cap there would be less chance of any players going overseas, because they would be getting paid the same to play in the NBA.  With the new cap system the teams would be more likely to stay under the cap.  I would get rid of all the special exceptions (mid-level, bi-annual, etc.), because the teams would have more cap room, so if they go over the cap it would be their problem to pay the extra money instead of getting a special exception.  The new maximum salary would be $27 million per year and the new minimum salary would be $800 thousand per year.  I would also allow teams to re-sign their players to 7 year contracts while other teams could sign players to 6 year contracts.  These changes would be radical, but I think it would improve the NBA and make it into one of the richest companies in the world. 

Part 3: Expansion

I would want to add more teams to the NBA, but that would have to wait until after all of the rest of the changed.  I would also look into starting the EABA, or the Europe-Asian Basketball Association.  It would be just like the NBA, just in Europe and Asia.  They wouldn't play any teams from the NBA, except for in preseason.  The EABA would start out with 12 teams and 2 conferences with no divisions yet.  I would try and get some of the big European and Asian teams to put into the league and I would also try and get some investors to start some new franchises that could sign some of the free agents that haven't been picked up by NBA teams.  The playoffs would consist of 8 teams and 3 rounds total.  The salary cap would start at $20 million and the luxury tax threshold would start at $30 million.  There wouldn't be an all-star game for the EABA, since there wouldn't be any stars in the league yet.  I would also start the SABA, or the South American Basketball Association.  It would include the teams in Central and South America.  I would use some of the teams that are already in the countries there and use them to make a league.  This would attract more players from those areas that might have the talent to be stars but didn't want to go to the NBA.  The SABA would be like the EABA at the beginning.  I think that would help the NBA's dream of reaching around the world even more.  With these new leagues I would also add new TV channels.  There would be the main channel called World Basketball, and then the individual league channels, NBA TV, EABA TV, and SABA TV.  With the new leagues, basketball would have a chance at becoming the most popular sport in the world.  The other issue that has been recently discussed by the NBA is the age limit.  If I could expand to other countries I would lower the age limit to 17, because in other leagues in foreign countries players can turn pro younger so I wouldn't want those leagues stealing some of the future stars. 

Part 4: Programs

I would also start some programs to help the players in the league.  I would have a tutoring program for some of the players that went straight from high school without passing it, or just went to college on a basketball scholarship and didn't do any work.  The tutoring program would have DVD's and audio tapes that were made to accommodate the lifestyle of an NBA player.  Even though there are already brands of DVD and audio teachers, these ones would be created specifically for the NBA players.  There would be some homework for the players to do that would be due at the end of each month.  It wouldn't be a lot since an NBA player is busy, but it would be enough to give them something to do in their free time.  The only NBA players to do this program would be the ones that volunteer for it and the ones that didn't pass high school.  The players would also get to choose which subjects they wanted to work on.  Since a basketball player is able to memorize whole playbooks because it interests them, I would make the DVD's and audio tapes use basketball for examples in some of the subjects.  There would also be classes that the players could attend during the offseason to help them learn.  Another program I would have is one that employs NBA players after they are retired just in case they are low on money and need a job.  They would get jobs in team managment and in broadcasting doing various thinks that require basketball knowledge.  This program would be created because a lot of sports players go bankrupt after they retire because they didn't make enough money as a player to support their lifestyle, and they weren't fit enough to play more years in the NBA.  There is already a charity program connected to the NBA called NBA Cares, so I wouldn't need to make a new one.  I would continue to have NBA Cares running, but I would try and get more workers for it and I would also make an EABA Cares and a SABA Cares to help the communities in their areas.  Another program I would start would be a support program for the families of NBA players that died.  The league would give $5 million dollars a year to the program, and the rest of the money would come from fans and players that wanted to donate money.  I would also make each team hire their own psychologist to help keep the players in check.  They would keep the sad ones (Eddie Griffin) from getting even sadder, and they would keep the drugees from doing more stupid things (Josh Howard).

Part 5: Punishments

I would keep having random drug tests done regularly to make sure that players weren't using drugs, and if they were then I would fine them and suspend them.  Also for every ticket and fine a player receives from the police or other government company, they would have to pay the league double that amount, unless it exceeded $10,000.  If it exceeded $10,000 then they would have to pay the league $20,000.  Then they would be suspended a game for every $2,000 worth of fines after that.  If a player had a record of killing and violence, they wouldn't be allowed into the league.  If a player was found in possession of a weapon at the team facility, an arena, or on the team plane then they would be suspended for 40 games, and they would have to pay a fine of $200,000.  If they were able to prove that they were guilty and that it was just a mistake then they would only be suspended for 10 games, and only be fined $50,000.  If a player got into a fight in a game, then they would automatically be suspended 1 game and fined $20,000.  If the fight was really bad, then each player involved in the fight would be suspended 1 game for every 30 seconds that the fight was going on.

That's the basics of what I would do as commissioner of the NBA.  It seems like a lot, and a lot of it probably wouldn't happen but it could help the league in many ways and make it greater than it ever was before.

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