Danny Ainge is actively trying to trade Rajon Rondo. No matter what Ainge said during his joint press conference with Doc Rivers, no matter how many times he carefully tried to avoid saying he was openly shopping Rondo, no matter what a Hornets source told Gary Washburn about Ainge not shopping Rondo, it’s becoming evident that the truth is otherwise.

Ainge is not actively trying to trade Rondo for just anyone. He is trying only to trade Rondo for Chris Paul, widely believed to be the NBA’s best point guard, or for Stephen Curry, who would then be swapped for Paul. The proposed end result of Ainge’s madness always ends with Paul in green and white, teaming with Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen for at least one season of what-if, then re-signing (or not re-signing) with the Celtics when his free agency arrives at year’s end.

Ainge is willing to acquire Paul without any promise the All-Star will remain in Boston beyond 2011-12. Whether Ainge believes that strongly in his own persuasive powers — that he will be able to convince Paul (and maybe someone else, possibly named Dwight Howard) to become Boston’s future — or he simply believes Paul is the key to maximizing the Big Three’s NBA title chances in the coming season, Ainge would reportedly roll the dice without any assurances. Ainge is willing to trade Rondo, whose ridiculously-below-market-level contract expires after the 2013-14 season, for one season of Paul, one season to try to convince Paul to make Boston his permanent home. In other words, Ainge is willing to trade Boston’s lone building block for the future in exchange for what might amount to a one-year rental, but has the (however slight or strong) possibility to leave Boston with the world’s best point guard for the foreseeable future.

What we know for sure, or what we believe we know for sure based on what the world’s top NBA reporters can agree on, is surrounded by a layer of questions, all equally as perplexing as the next. Allow me to take a stab at answering some of them.

Why is Ainge pursuing Paul so aggressively?

I’ve thought about this question a lot and narrowed it down to two primary reasons: 1) Paul’s a better player, and 2) Ainge would make out with his mother if he felt it would improve the Boston Celtics. Ainge has come to the conclusion, right or wrong, that Paul’s talents outweigh Rondo’s and are worth risking the possibility of entering the 2012-13 season with only Paul Pierce and Avery Bradley under contract.

Would trading for Paul, then losing him to free agency, kill Boston’s immediate future?

Yes or no. But probably yes. If the Celtics enter the summer of 2012 with just Paul Pierce and Avery Bradley under contract, there’s no attraction for Dwight Howard. Nor would there be one for Deron Williams (unless the pair miraculously decided to join Boston together, despite the fact that no superstar free agent has ever signed in Boston). The second-tier unrestricted free agents in 2012 are Andrew Bynum (whose knees are made of Jermaine O’Neal), Tim Duncan (who will be approximately 84 years old), Steve Nash (who will be even older), Jason Kidd (who could be Duncan’s grandfather), Gerald Wallace and Jason Terry. All are decent players. None would make the Celtics’ future seem much less bleak.

Assuming that neither Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen retire after this season, the two would be free agents who the Celtics could presumably sign and give the Big Three yet another chance. But if you think the Big Three could contend as a nucleus in 2012-13, without Rajon Rondo, you probably need to wash the rust that’s accumulating on your brain. Basically, if the Celtics trade for Paul, it’s re-sign or bust.

Why is Boston’s offer for Paul considered second-rate?

I still don’t understand this. The Hornets reportedly value Stephen Curry more than Rondo. A package of Curry, Klay Thompson and Ekpe Udoh reportedly holds more value than a package of Rondo, Jeff Green and two first-round picks. Huh?

Rondo’s resume: two All-Star appearances, two-time All-Defensive First Team selection, one championship, the best playoff performer (by far) for a team that went to Game 7 of the NBA Finals, Boston’s best playoff performer for the past three seasons (marred only by his elbow injury this season), second in the NBA in assists last season (just 0.2 behind Nash), occasionally inconsistent production, tough hombre who normally rises to the occasion of big games

Curry’s resume: zero All-Star appearances, zero playoff appearances, a terrific shooter, average playmaker, candidate for Tim Kawakami’s annual All-NBA No-Defense Team (Kawakami, a Warriors beat reporter, should know as well as anyone) and someone whose presence actually made the miserable Golden State Warriors defense worse, albeit very slightly

Keep in mind, Rondo’s just two years older than Curry and already has NBA Finals experience. I realize Curry’s a better shooter and scorer. Far better, even. But considering how much more Rondo has accomplished in his career, understanding Rondo improves by miles every season and realizing that the Celtics’ reported deal is even sweetened by multiple draft picks, how is Golden St.’s package better than Boston’s? I’m confused. It just doesn’t make sense. Of course, for all I know, the rumors might have been leaked by a New Orleans front office executive looking to extract more talent from Danny Ainge’s pocket. Who knows?

I could do the same comparison using the Hornets’ reported infatuation with Eric Gordon and DeAndre Jordan. Am I crazy, or is Boston’s reported offer simply better than either of those teams’?

Why might any potential Chris Paul trade be controversial?

The NBA currently owns the Hornets. If Paul ends up in Boston or any other big market, conspiracy theorists will soon be shouting through megaphones, picketing with signs and throwing bricks through windows.

How will Rondo react to all the rumors?

Let’s pretend the Celtics don’t trade Rondo. At this point, it seems like the likely outcome. Ainge will try to explain the rumors by telling Rondo something to the effect of, “But at least we tried trading you for Chris Paul and only Chris Paul, not anyone lesser.”

But here’s the thing: Rondo considers himself the league’s best point guard and has for years. Trying to trade him for a player Ainge considers better isn’t just likely to hurt Rondo’s feelings. It also attacks Rondo’s supreme self-confidence, one of the pillars on which Rondo has built his career. That confidence won’t go away anytime soon. But his trust and appreciation for Ainge (and perhaps Doc Rivers) sure might. Rondo can be an emotionally fickle guy. These rumors, even if that’s all they amount to, won’t help.

The difference between the current Rondo trade rumors and the 2009 Rondo trade rumors is this: Then, the Celtics were shopping Rondo because he misbehaved too often. Now, they’re shopping him because they think they can acquire a better player. Should Paul be traded elsewhere, the effect of these trade rumors on Rondo might be far greater (and worse) than they were two years ago.

David Stern does not act like a plantation owner, nobody should ever argue that he does, but he assuredly sits high upon his throne, staring at his subjects from afar with condescension beaming from his eyes and a smirk, always a smirk, scarring his face. The NBA is Stern’s league, he’s governed since 1984 as the head honcho, and now, in David Boies, he might finally have met his match.

Boies has been on the NBA scene for one day, and already he stated a plan to use Stern’s own words against him. Judging by his prodigious track record, by his famed work ethic, Boies has already pored over each word Stern uttered in the past two years and will highlight every legal mistake that slipped out of Stern’s mouth. Boies is the man who beat Microsoft, the man who once said Microsoft’s bushel of lawyers didn’t scare him because they didn’t look as tired as he did, and Stern and the NBA are his latest targets.

Stern has forged a reputation recently by steamrolling everybody in his way, threatening and strong-arming the NBA’s negotiations at every turn. But Boies does not scare. Asked by Vanity Fair how he would prepare another lawyer to try a case against himself, Boies exuded self-confidence.

“You’d tell him that Boies is smarter than you may initially think, he’s more careful than you may think—don’t underestimate him,” he said. “Don’t try to play games with him, because you’re going to lose those games and make yourself look bad. He is not going to forget whether or not you’ve answered his questions.… You can’t impress him. You can’t make him mad. You can’t discourage him. You can’t embarrass him. None of the techniques you use generally to deal with people are going to work with him.”

In other words, none of Stern’s bullying tactics will work, not anymore, not now that the union has dissolved and the world’s most well-respected trial lawyer leads the players.

The NBA players are now following someone they should trust, which may or may not have been the case when Billy Hunter reigned supreme. Hunter is still technically the figurehead behind the players’ new trade association, but these negotiations have moved to the courts, where David Boies cracks the whip.

Boies is a dyslexic, did you know that? Still, he graduated second in the Yale Law School Class of 1966. When he left the Cravath law firm in 1997, the move made the New York Times’ front page. “In the legal industry, it’s like it’s 1956 and Mickey Mantle is suddenly a free agent,” Steven Brill, the founder of Court TV, said at the time. If you want to read more about Boies, I suggest you read this Vanity Fair profile from 2000. You will find that he dresses like an every-man, yet is actually anything but. He jumps from high-profile case to high-profile case, doing his job and then moving along to the next courtroom, and people who know him note that every word he says, everything he does, is calculated.

“I don’t believe anything David does is an accident,” said one lawyer who knows him well. “They say of great trial lawyers that they eliminate to the extent possible accident and uncertainty and surprise in the courtroom. David is not a great trial lawyer by accident. He has the ability to anticipate every possibility and permutation and prepare himself for it, perhaps without seeming to have done so. David thinks more moves ahead than anyone I’ve ever met.”

“To understand David, you have to understand that you may not understand him,” he concluded.

I don’t know exactly where the NBA players are going and I’m not sure exactly how they got here. You can easily argue that disclaiming interest was a tactical error, that Billy Hunter never should have let it get to this point, at least not this late in the game. Even if you choose to argue otherwise, the state of the NBA is pathetic — the league should be two weeks into its season,  but instead it braces itself for legal warfare.

I don’t claim to be a lawyer and I don’t know very much about these terms I now must familiarize myself with, phrases like “summary judgment” and “the Sherman Act.” I’m not sure whether the NBA will win or lose the court proceedings, I don’t know whether owners will reopen negotiations due to fear, and I have no idea whether the disclaimer of interest is only prolonging the inevitable, which is that the players will sign a lopsided deal. These NBA labor talks have entered uncharted territory — this is the first time the players union has ever dissolved, and nobody really knows what will happen from here.

Wherever this convoluted battle goes, for better or worse, David Stern finally has a competitor equal to the task. The smirk remains, for now, but surely Boies aims to smack it off.

The NBA players union is ready to decertify, and could begin the process as early as Friday. If the players do not accept the owners’ revised proposal, expect this negotiation (can I call it a negotiation if neither side really does much negotiating?) to get uglier than the form on Kevin Martin’s jump shot. (CBS Sports)

Another outcome likely will begin to unfold Friday before the union even decides whether to accept the proposal — and would continue to progress regardless of the outcome of next week’s player rep meeting: Agents dissatisfied with the deal the union has negotiated and the intransigence of league negotiators already have more than 200 signatures on decertification petitions which are ready to be submitted to the National Labor Relations Board requesting a vote to dissolve the union, according to a person familiar with the plans.

Such a move would threaten to torpedo whatever support there is among the union membership to approve the owners’ offer, and if it resulted in the players deciding not to vote on the proposal or voting it down, could throw the 2 1-2 year negotiations into the chaos of an anti-trust lawsuit — virtually guaranteeing that the 2011-12 season would be lost.

Regardless of whether the owners moved on many key issues (and reports say they didn’t budge much from their last offer), the players must consider accepting the proposal. Yes, the owners are predatory creatures designed to suck the players’ blood. Yes, the players have lost this “negotiation,” if you can call it that, by a landslide. Yes, free agency might be slightly restricted and the cap would remain hard-ish, or at least a lot harder than it used to. But the alternative is scary: the owners will cut back their offer, causing a long legal battle during which the players will use a tactic that, according to Ken Berger, hasn’t worked in the history of professional sports.

Right now, the players can either pass to Joel Anthony posting up, allow Rajon Rondo to launch a three pointer, or bring Bruce Bowen out of retirement to run an isolation play. In other words, the options are not good.

Reasonably, as long as they are trying to make a deal with the players rather than pancake them, the NBA owners would accept the 50-50 BRI split players offered on Tuesday, make system tweaks by Wednesday, and David Stern and Billy Hunter would shake hands with a tentative agreement Wednesday evening.

In a negotiation that was initially expected to come down to money, players have already agreed to $330 million worth of givebacks per season, according to Ken Berger, more than exceeding last year’s reported NBA losses. The problem is, NBA owners have been portrayed as far from reasonable, and David Stern may not hold any more power among them.

Hunter was the latest to question whether Stern is anything more than a puppet for the owners at this point. He actually wondered aloud whether Stern is now a “hostage” of NBA owners. (CBS Sports)

I asked Hunter, knowing Stern for as long as he has, how he expected the commissioner to react to having his bluff called Tuesday.

“I don’t know that we’ve ever called his bluff,” Hunter said.

“I think you just did,” I replied.

“It’s yet to be seen,” Hunter said. “My concern and what I’m trying to determine is whether or not David may be a hostage in his own camp. That’s what kind of concerns me, what’s going on over there. He may not have the sway that he once had. He’s been a hell of a commissioner, but I’m not sure.”

This thought is scarier than Rajon Rondo dribbling the ball thirty feet from the basket, Celtics down three, Game 7 of the NBA Finals, no time left to pass to anyone.*

What if Stern really isn’t calling the shots anymore? What if Dan Gilbert, Paul Allen and Michael Jordan have somehow seized control of the negotiations? What if the NBA owners really won’t budge from the proposal they made this weekend, which the players already decided they could not accept?

What then?

A prolonged legal battle centering on decertification of the union? The owners reversion to offering players 47% of the BRI split and a (mostly) hard cap, which the players would never accept? One year lost? More?

Hunter has already moved the players farther than they reasonably could have been expected to move. It’s David Stern’s turn now, unless he is nothing but a tool for the owners to boss around.

If Hunter’s worries are well-founded, if Stern is really being controlled, these lockout negotiations could soon resemble what Kobe Bryant called “nuclear winter.”

*Who am I kidding? At this point, if you told me the next NBA season would come down to one play, Celtics down three, Game 7 of the NBA Finals, Rondo shooting a thirty-foot jumper, I would A) call you a liar, and then B) jump for joy at the possibility you might be telling the truth.

Paul Pierce indeed led the NBA players’ push for decertification, but he did it with the consent of players union chief Billy Hunter.

Despite being the Celtics’ player representative, Pierce was the only team rep not present at the mandatory union meeting yesterday. ESPN cited sources who said Pierce did not miss the meeting as a boycott.

Pierce’s decertification push has succeeded, or rather, it has advanced to the next step. Hunter said the league garnered enough petition signatures to force a decertification vote, which would take place 45-60 days after the players association officially files the decertification with the National Labor Relations Board — if, that is, the players decide to file the motion. The players are waiting on the results of Wednesday’s negotiations, when David Stern’s ultimatum looms like an approaching tornado. (CBS Sports)

“I think Paul is kind of frustrated with the process,” Hunter said after a news conference in which the players said they were rejecting the league’s latest take-it-or-leave-it proposal. “Paul has been at the bargaining table and he doesn’t feel that we’ve been making any kind of progress. And so he thought that maybe that’s necessary. We don’t have a lot of options and that’s the option Paul was pushing – still is pushing.”

Asked in a small group of reporters if he’s cool with that, Hunter said, “Of course. Listen, I’m cool with Paul and all these guys. I think it’s very important. I’m happy that Paul and the others are involved in the process. That’s always been the problem with athletes, that a lot of stuff is foisted on them and they have no input. Paul has been actively engaged, he understands, he’s been in five or six of our negotiating sessions, he talks to me, and when they had the (decertification) calls, he called and let me know that they were having the calls. And I said, ‘Hey, I’m not at all opposed to you doing that.’ … I endorse what Paul did.”

If nothing else, the players themselves have remained strong during the negotiations. David Stern has been pummeling them with haymakers and ultimatums. Reports have this hardline owner demanding one thing and that hardline owner demanding another. But the players themselves have remained strong. Other than JaVale McGee’s brain fart (vintage McGee), when he told reporters players were ready to fold, then subsequently denied the comments despite video evidence, and a few tweets or text messages here and there, most players seem banded together willing to follow Hunter and Derek Fisher’s lead.

Of course, the players BRI split request has dwindled to 50% down from last year’s 57%, owners haven’t made any concessions whatsoever relative to the prior CBA, and according to Ken Berger the players have already conceded more money ($330 million) for the coming year than the owners claim to have lost last season. So maybe I’m giving the players too much credit.

Wednesday’s negotiations (assuming the two sides meet) are likely to lead to a resolution, or a cloudy future of legal maneuvering and hardline stances. I vote the former, though I wouldn’t bet my (admittedly minuscule) life savings.

Decertification isn’t the only option to dissolve the NBA players association and apply pressure to the owners, according to Ken Berger. There’s also a slim possibility Billy Hunter could step aside as executive director of the union, in a legal maneuver called a disclaimer of interest.

The legal term for this would be a disclaimer of interest, which would only require a letter from Hunter to Stern advising him that the National Basketball Players Association no longer exists as the bargaining unit for the players.

The advantage of this for the players would be that, once the letter is sent, their attorneys would not have to wait 45-60 days for the National Labor Relations Board to authorize an election to formally dissolve the union. With a disclaimer of interest, the players could almost immediately commence an anti-trust lawsuit against the NBA, said Gabe Feldman, director of the Sports Law Center at Tulane University.

“The owners have threatened to, in some ways, end the negotiations if (the players) don’t agree by Wednesday, because 47 percent is a non-starter — we all know that,” Feldman said. “So the owners have given the players an ultimatum with an artificial deadline, and it may force the players to respond with their own ultimatum. But both are destructive of the negotiation process.

“Clearly, what David Stern has said is designed to push the players to make a concession with the threat of essentially ending the negotiations,” Feldman said. “And that’s what the players would be doing by threatening to dissolve the union.” …

The question of how Stern and the owners would respond to the players’ own ultimatum is a risky and unknown game of roulette that union leaders will have to decide if they want to play.

“It could go either way,” Feldman said. “It could cause enough owners to be skittish and want to avoid the risk of anti-trust litigation — because if they lose there, it’s a huge loss. … The other side is that it could cause Stern and the owners to say, ‘We’re not going to let you manipulate labor law by threatening us with an anti-trust suit and we’re going to take a stand.

“The question becomes: Do all of these threats bring the sides closer together,” Feldman said, “or push them further apart?”

In the case of decertification, the NBPA would remain functional during the 45 or so days between a petition for decertification and an actual election. A disclaimer of interest would dissolve the union immediately, although — due to the possibility it is being used strictly as a bargaining tactic — it would have a lesser chance of holding up in court.

Another thought I had, which wasn’t addressed in Berger’s report: If Billy Hunter steps aside, he would probably be forfeiting his job and remaining salary. While he might consider doing that for the sake of the union, this option seems like a slim one that would only be used as a desperate recourse to Stern’s ultimatum. Then again, times might call for a desperate recourse.

Ugh.

UPDATE: Against my best advice, Mr. Walker has re-signed with the Idaho Stampede.

Unfortunately for Antoine Walker, the Polish Basketball League does not recognize four-pointers. But Walker is nonetheless interested in making Poland the next step in his basketball journey, according to a report.

Considering the NBA’s lockout, the move makes sense. A maximum D-League contract only pays $25,000. For a player like Walker, the incentive for playing in the D-League is the ability to showcase your skills in front of NBA scouts. Since the NBA season does not currently exist, neither does the potential for being called up. Plus, it wasn’t like Walker — who is 35 years old, played last season at least 25 pounds overweight and still doesn’t know the true meaning of “intelligent shot selection” — was making NBA scouts salivate anyway.

Walker should head overseas, make as much money as he can while he still can, and maybe, just maybe, if he gets into better shape and shows a willingness to become a role player, hope for an NBA call-up.

The D-League is a lot of things. But one thing it’s not is the proper location for a 35-year old, overweight, former NBA All-Star with nearly a million dollars worth of debt.

Kevin Garnett’s first huge contract helped cause the 1998 NBA lockout. His second huge contract brought his career earnings to more than $270 million. He could lose as much as Antoine Walker did, twice, and still be a millionaire fifty times over.

But he’s also wise with his money. According to a report from NBA.com, Garnett deferred portions of his contract so he will earn $5 million per year for seven years even after his current contract ends.

In fact, Garnett’s self-funded pension (apart from his NBPA one) will be pretty plush. Two sources told NBA.com that the Celtics forward will still have $35 million coming after he retires. He’ll be due $5 million annually for seven years, the result of deferred salary Garnett and agent Andy Miller got in each of his last two contract extensions. Whatever portion is due from this season might be affected by games lost to the lockout, but it’s not as if Garnett’s financial spigot gets turned off next spring.

Garnett has made more than $15 million in each of the last twelve seasons. And that’s just from basketball. Add his endorsement deals, like Gatorade, Adidas and now Anta shoes, and Garnett is the Michael Phelps of money — just swimming in cash.

Money-wise, he can obviously afford to sit out this year in exchange for a fair Collective Bargaining Agreement. Money-wise, he can afford just about anything. But from a competitive standpoint, Garnett doesn’t have a lot left. If the NBA cancels this season — and I hate to think like this — Game 5 against the Heat might have been Garnett’s last game. After a full year off, at age 36 by then, would Garnett even attempt a comeback?

That’s why this NBA lockout sucks. We’re not just losing basketball games. We’re losing the end of Kevin Garnett’s career. We’re losing some of Kobe Bryant’s finals days as a dominating force. We’re losing Tim Duncan’s twilight, Lebron James’s revenge, Dirk Nowitzki’s title defense, Blake Griffin’s ascension to greatness and Dwight Howard’s prime. We’re missing John Wall growing up, Ricky Rubio’s debut, Kevin Love gobbling rebounds, Kevin Durant’s run at the throne, and Amare Stoudemire and Carmelo Anthony trying to co-exist. We’re missing portions of arguably the best era in NBA history, a three-tiered layer of stars, one attempting to defy age, another attempting to come of age, and another entering its absolute prime.

The amount Garnett is deferring for retirement represents 35% of the yearly difference between the players association and the owners. At least this lockout isn’t absurdly foolish or anything like that. Then this would really be a brutal time for an NBA fan.

Rajon Rondo is spending a lot of time this offseason working out at the University of Kentucky, where he once showed occasional signs of greatness but nothing near the (mostly) consistent brilliance he now displays in Boston. At Kentucky, Rondo has been under the watchful eye of John Calipari, who, truth be told, might be trying to recruit Rondo back to the sschool (wink, wink). Hey, why not? He’s probably just as eligible as most Calipari recruits.

Anyway, Calipari predicted a big season from Rondo after seeing how hard the C’s point guard works. (Kentucky Sports Report via Green Street)

“Right now, I can’t tell you how hard Rondo is working. It’s incredible. As this thing comes back, Rondo will have a knockout year, no question in my mind. They are going to look at who the heck is this guy in Boston because of how hard he’s working.”

Yeah, who the heck is this guy? He kind of looks and plays like that dude who averaged 11.2 assists per game last season, but, um, better.

Calipari could sell water to a well, so it’s best to take his comments with a grain of salt. It’s still good to hear that Rondo’s working hard, although, considering the way he improves every season, I kind of figured he works out like a fiend.

The only good thing about the NBA lockout? Writers are stepping to the plate and launching tape-measure home runs.

Adrian Wojnarowski, Yahoo! Sports:

For all the talk about the Robert Sarvers, the most strident of the hardliners thrust himself to the forefront of fear that this could be a lost basketball season. For the past 15 years, Allen’s been the wildest of wild spenders, the salary cap-buster hell-bent on buying an NBA title. Outrageous contracts, $3 million a pop to purchase late draft picks. And now, the NBA’s board of governors found him the perfect candidate to be the bearer of gloom and doom in Thursday’s meeting, even when a union attorney Jeffrey Kessler said: “I thought we were making progress toward a deal.”

These are the mind games the owners will play with the players, all the way to a January deadline to cancel the season. They’ll be Lucy to the players’ Charlie Brown, pulling that ball away again and again. This is a high-stakes game full of backward agendas and hidden motives. Here’s the scariest part of it all for those who want labor talks to have a puncher’s chance at saving the season: Allen appears to be checking out on the Blazers, and there’s suspicion that his motives center on saving as much money as possible in this CBA to eventually ready his franchise for a sale.

“He’s gone the other way, the complete other way,” a high-ranking league official told Yahoo! Sports. “He’s been the most vociferous lately that [the owners] have given up too much to the players, that they should be holding out for a hard cap, for 40 percent to the players [on the revenue split]. No one has gone after the labor committee harder about this than him.”

Ben Golliver, CBS Sports:

[Paul] Allen is Garnett on steroids.

You want stubborn? Allen rode his pipe dream of running a cable company all the way to the ground, losing billions of dollars and eventually declaring bankruptcy.

You want off his rocker? He’s currently being sued by his own ex-military bodyguards for allegations of illegal activity, his helicopter recently crashed during an excursion to Antarctica and, oh yeah, he’s gone through two general managers and a vice president of basketball operations since the 2010 NBA Draft. He passes his time, including on Thursday morning, exchanging tweets about what rock song the Seattle Seahawks, his NFL franchise, should play at practice. Carroll plays along, of course, because he, like every Allen employee, knows his job depends on it.

You want “uninformed” on the state of the negotiations? Allen deputized team president Larry Miller to attend Board of Governors meetings and labor negotiations on his behalf. He put exactly the same amount of blood, sweat and tears into the possibility of a labor agreement as Garnett: none.

You want emotional? Allen recently wrote an autiobiography that included many unflattering stories about, and a recounting of decades-old grudges towards, his Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, one of the world’s greatest philanthropists. The book led to a falling out between the two men, who had been friends since high school, with Allen admitting during a television interview that Gates had stopped talking to him.

Kelly Dwyer, Ball Don’t Lie:

Guaranteed profits for poor basketball businessmen should be guaranteed no more thanRashad McCants’(notes) second NBA contract. The owners are flat wrong, in every way. Wrong in the way they purchased their teams, wrong in how they’ve run them, wrong in how they’ve handled this lockout (even to their own hoped-for ends), and wrong in the way they have not bargained in good faith. The owners never wanted to play in November.

And you have made concessions, real concessions, NBA players. And this isn’t coming from someone dying to start writing about NBA games again. Frankly, I’m burned out, even with no games in four months. I could use the break I didn’t get during the offseason. The owners are being prats. I get that, players. You’ve given in, and they haven’t; despite their talk of “concessions.”

It’s time, though. Because it’s only going to get worse. No, David Stern didn’t technically break the union; but he did unofficially. Just in the same way that Derrick Rose(notes) doesn’t really break Andre Miller’s(notes)actual ankles — he just gets to waltz in for the easy lay-in, while his team goes up real, real big.

And there’s no coming back from this deficit.

Andrew Sharp, SB Nation:

Anyway, there you have it. If you want to understand what’s driving the lockout and why it could last all year and why the owners are willing to jeopardize the future of the league to keep this going, it all comes down to a handful of issues that are misleading at best and in some cases downright lies. But David Stern and the NBA owners think you’ll believe. And whether you believe or not, they think the players will cave.

And as someone that loves basketball more than just about anything on earth, it makes me sad. Not even because we’re going to miss a lot of great basketball. It’s because if there’s common thread to all the issues above—other than greed, dishonesty, and ignorance—it’s the owners’ fundamental lack of understanding of the NBA.

That’s what’s killing the league right now.

Tom Ziller, SB Nation:

Dan Gilbert’s company, Quicken Loans, was one of the worst offenders in the housing bubble, offering scores of subprime loans to unqualified buyers, pumping up the real estate market until it burst, contributing to a collapse of the global financial markets and at least one bonafide U.S. recession. Gilbert wasn’t alone — plenty of banks got too loose in the name of profit and stupidity but mostly profit. But Quicken Loans was a big player in this game.

As such, Dan Gilbert doesn’t get to tell anyone to “trust his gut” in a business deal. Dan Gilbert can’t drop an ultimatum on someone, tell them to trust him and get away with it. Of all the delusion, the brand torching, the picking over carcasses that the NBA’s vultures have done over the past four month, nothing tops this. Nothing tops Dan Gilbert asking players to trust him. How could you blame anyone from laughing in his face?

In the end, it is David Stern and Adam Silver who need to get Allen, Holt and Gilbert — and the 26 other owners — back in line, back on a path to solutions, not union-busting. That is, of course, unless Billy Hunter is right, and this was the end-game all along.

If so, God help us. Our world can only survive so much bulls–t, and these owners are adding to the tally every single day.

Ken Berger, CBS Sports:

There are hard-liners among the owners who refuse to give the players a dime more than 50 percent, and some harder-liners who were reluctant to go even that far. But you know what? There are hard-liners on the union side, too — agents and super agents and clusters of seven agents who didn’t want to go a dime below 53 percent. I know of at least one powerful agent who never thought the players should have offered anything below 57 percent — the share they received under the previous six-year deal.

The difference? Fisher and Hunter have successfully excluded those hard-liners from the bargaining process, all the way up to Thursday, when sources told CBSSports.com that some agents were still working the phones and telling their clients to “hold firm” and reject any deal below 53 percent. Hunter and Fisher ignored them and offered to go lower on Thursday — to 52.5 percent if revenues came in as projected and as low as 50 percent if they came in lower.

The league has not only been unable to keep hard-line owners from influencing the negotiations, they couldn’t even keep them out of the room Thursday.

Of course, other than all the tremendous writing being published today, this lockout sucks.