Thursday Bullets

• Owning an NBA team might not be as miserable as some make it sound. University of Chicago economist Kevin Murphy, who is consulting the players union, speaks about the glory of equity in an interview with NBA.com's Steve Aschburner: "There are a couple of things that are really attractive. One is, historically, you’ve seen franchises appreciate in value and that appreciation has more than outstripped any cash-flow losses that you’ve had. And if you’re in the right tax position, it’s actually pretty good because you’ve got a tax loss annually on your operating and you’ve got a capital gain at the end that you accumulate untaxed until you sell it and then pay at a lower rate. So you get a deferred tax treatment on the gains and an immediate tax treatment on the losses, that’s not a bad deal."
• The Milwaukee Bucks never stop working, but they're fundamentally a poor offensive club. If that's going to change, an inefficient Brandon Jennings will need to improve his shot from long-range, learn how to draw some fouls and figure out how to finish.
• A legal battle between Michael Beasley, his former agent and an AAU power broker grows uglier. Beasley's third-party complaint against Curtis Malone, his old AAU coach, reads: "In summary, Third-Party Defendant, in concert with [Bell Sports, Inc.] corrupted every mechanism of honest guidance Beasley had in his life to assist him to pursue the best NBA agent available, which seriously deprived Beasley, both economically and otherwise." Dan Wetzel of Yahoo! Sports has more.
• Do you remember whom the Trail Blazers got for Sam Bowie in 1989? �He wasn't Michael Jordan, but a very, very nice piece nonetheless.
• The sale of the Atlanta Hawks to Alex Meruelo might be on the verge of collapsing because Meruelo doesn't have sufficient resources. How was Meruelo going to finance the sale? By borrowing from the sellers. There's mounting evidence that this a lousy template for the sale of a big-league sports franchise. We present the Los Angeles Dodgers as Exhibit A, but there are others.
• In a piece that cites the $33.5 million in public funds the city of Indianapolis coughed up to the Pacers (termed a "forgivable loan"), but makes no mention of the nearly identical amount the team paid to Mike Dunleavy Jr., T.J. Ford, James Posey and Jeff Foster in 2010-11, Anthony Schoettle of the Indianapolis Business Journal�tells Pacers fans to root for the owners in CBA negotiations.
• Even those who want fewer games on the NBA schedule feel the quality of play suffered during compressed 1998-99 season. Was the frenzied, abbreviated free agency period that followed the settlement also a factor?�Kelly Dwyer of Ball Don't Lie: "The 1998 free agent class, in terms of sheer numbers, was the largest ever; and instead of 29 teams taking their time as they worked through the hundreds that were available, the league and its players were forced to take fewer than three weeks to figure out where about half its workforce was going to play for the next few years." The free agency and player movement blitz that will be launched by a resolution is going to be a blast for NBA fans. General managers will have to recruit, react, pivot, hedge and react again in a split second. Is that a good thing? When you're staffing an office or choosing where you want to work or go to school, is your process better served with a careful evaluation of the candidates or a close consideration of how you think you'll fit in? Or is everyone better off by rushing into partnership? Which model do we think produces better personnel decisions?
• No arguments whatsoever with J.J. Redick's food trinity.
• Evan Turner learns that pet ownership isn't always what it's cracked up to be.
• This could be a fun artistic exercise for Heat haters and lovers alike.
• A.C.L tears: not just for pro athletes and aging amateurs anymore.
• Trey Kerby of TBJ pays a visit to 48 Minutes of Hell to talk about Tim Duncan, Matt Bonner and wedding parties on the 4-Down podcast.
• Riot police and demonstrators clash outside the Oakland apartment of Ethan Sherwood Strauss of Hoopspeak. His account of Wednesday night's events is full of nuanced imagery and observation -- and also this: "A certain neuroses prevents me from subsuming my personality into any collective emotion. It’s rooted more in an intense fear of getting manipulated than any grand, righteous code."

Source: http://espn.go.com/blog/truehoop/post/_/id/32878/thursday-bullets-221

Brett Pill Pat Burrell Jhan Marinez Anibal Sanchez John Baker Brad Davis