Rajon Rondo will reportedly compete in The South Florida All-Star Classic, a charity game at Florida International University on Oct. 8 at 7:00 p.m. hosted by Lebron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh. The F.I.U. basketball team is coached by none other than the greatest NBA executive of all-time, Isiah Thomas.

A number of NBA players are slated to join the Miami trio on the court, including fellow Heat teammate Mario Chalmers, the Oklahoma City Thunder’s Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook, the New York Knicks’ Carmelo Anthony, Amare Stoudemire, the New Orleans Hornets’ Chris Paul, the Washington Wizards’ John Wall, the Atlanta Hawks’ Jamal Crawford, the Houston Rockets’ Jonny Flynn, the Los Angeles Clippers’ Eric Bledsoe, the Dallas Mavericks’ Caron Butler, the Memphis Grizzlies’ Rudy Gay, the Boston Celtics’ Rajon Rondo, the Philadelphia 76ers’ Lou Williams, the Golden State Warriors’ Dorell Wright, and the Portland Trail Blazers’ Wesley Matthews and free agent Eddy Curry.

Cleveland Cavaliers first-round picks Kyrie Irving and Tristan Thompson also are possible participants in the game.

The squads will be headlined by Brand Jordan players (Wade, Anthony, Paul) vs. Nike (James, Bosh, Durant). Comedian Kevin Hart, who has appeared in Brand Jordan commercials with Wade, is expected to coach the Jordan team, while Miami-based rap star Rick Ross is expected to coach the Nike club.

If those players all compete like the game means something, this game has the chance to become legendary. Alas, players treat charity games like they are And1 Streetball games, so the game will probably be as watchable as Bucky Larson: Born to be a Star.

And please, don’t let Isiah Thomas meet Eddy Curry again. Looking at an overweight, excessively lazy center, Thomas may be struck by the desire to offer another $60 million contract. And that, my friends, would be against NCAA rules. Unless the recipient of the contract is Cam Newton.

I was present when Eddy Curry’s career began to fall apart.

In the summer of 2008, the Knicks held training camp at my school, Skidmore College. As a player on Skidmore’s basketball team, I was one of a handful of people allowed to watch the training camp. Mike D’Antoni had just been hired in New York, Allan Houston was attempting an ill-fated comeback, Stephon Marbury’s head bore the mark of his sneaker company, Nate Robinson half-assed a number of drills, David Lee saw the Skidmore volleyball team and remarked that spandex were what he missed most about college, Jerome James asked my buddy to fetch him a sandwich during the middle of practice, Zach Randolph grabbed rebounds like a vacuum and consistently exhibited the excitement of a pre-schooler meeting his favorite television character, Quentin Richardson told me the Knicks would be lucky to make the playoffs, and Eddy Curry never practiced once.

There were rumors that Curry was going to practice every day. He was sick, I heard once. He just needed to lose a few pounds, I heard another time. My buddy saw him working out in the Skidmore weight room. “But he just kind of chilled. And he looked even fatter than before,” my buddy said. Now, those reports would elicit a duh. But then, Curry was coming off a 13-point, five-rebound 2007-’08 season. He had slowed severely since the ’06-’07 year and clearly gained a bra size or two, but he was still a productive player.

He was productive, that is, until D’Antoni’s first training camp arrived and Curry became a ghost, a rumor, a no-show and ultimately, one of the worst insults a player can be labeled, an expiring contract. There would be similar rumors for the remainder of Curry’s remaining three years with the Knicks — he’s almost ready, he’s working out hard, he’ll play soon — but he would play only ten games during the next three seasons, earning $31 million for all his hard work. His fully guaranteed six year, $60 million contract finally ran out at the end of last season. But it could still be one of the reasons the NBA lockout continues.

Guaranteed contracts have reportedly become a sticking point in the NBA’s labor negotiations. Before Game 4 of this year’s NBA Finals, according to the Washington Post’s Mike Wise, a number of owners met with approximately a dozen players and the topic of guaranteed contracts was broached.

As usual, Mark Cuban offered his two cents.

“When we had Tariq Abdul-Wahad, he didn’t seem to want to train, didn’t really want to practice — he really was interested in a lot of things besides basketball,” Cuban said. Cuban then complained about Abdul-Wahad’s guaranteed six year, $40 million contract. “And I’m stuck with that,” Cuban said. Even if Abdul Wahad spent all of his time eating cannolis and drinking mimosas.

A lawyer for the players union then mentioned that J.J. Barea made only $1 million per season. “How about that?” he said. “You’re getting a bargain in a guy like J.J. Barea.”

That was when David Stern spoke.

“All right, you want to go tit for tat, I’ll go tit for tat,” Stern said. “I’ll see you J.J. Barea and raise you Eddy Curry.”

The owners, Wise writes, “are sick of paying premiums for damaged goods.”

And the players union, of course, does not want guaranteed contracts to die. Sure, Eddy Curry didn’t deserve $60 million to buy all the Krispy Kremes he desired. But the Knicks signed him to that contract in the first place, and the players contend they should honor the contract.  For players who have a ten-year career span — if they’re both good and lucky — guaranteed money would be a major concession in the negotiations.

Players Association Vice President Maurice Evans briefly mentioned guaranteed contracts in an interview with Sports Illustrated’s Sam Amick.

“The deal we’ve been offered would so drastically alter the game as we know it today,” Evans said. “The offers have been so pathetic that it’s hard to even talk about it when we’re informing the guys. We’re $7.6 billion apart [over the life of the proposed deal].

“Again, when you realize all the components that they’re trying to take away, and trying to take out of the [collective bargaining agreement] that’s already in effect — the guaranteed contracts, grandfathering in [contracts], the [salary-cap] exceptions, Larry Bird [rights]. You and I have already talked about this many times, but [players] are really starting to get it and they’re willing to sit out for as long as necessary to get us a fair deal.”

Evans is not thrilled, to say the least, about the owners’ last proposal.

“It’s not my job to critique [David Stern's] salary,” said Evans. “I want him to make money. That’s the whole point is we want everyone to make money.

“But he’s the one who wants everyone to suffer losses. … The guy tells us it’s the recession and all these different things, yet they want to experience all the growth over the next 10 years while we experience none. When you look at it that way, it’s extremely disappointing.”

The players are ready to negotiate, Evans said. They will make more concessions. But they are willing to miss this whole year or more if the owner’s do not meet them halfway.

Meanwhile, for the first time since before he arrived at Skidmore College, Eddy Curry has become more than a rumor, more than an expiring contract, more than a gigantic waste of soft hands and nimble feet and impressive touch. He’s now ammunition for the owners. Ammunition for Stern. A $60 million warning that guaranteed contracts can go frighteningly wrong.

The imaginary horns celebration came to define Darius Miles, or, at least, it became his most recognizable trait. The horns are the one aspect of Miles’ disappointing NBA career that will survive the longest in NBA lore, the first thing people will discuss whenever Miles’s name randomly pops up on an August weekday, whether the mention of his name comes after he gets arrested for carrying a loaded weapon into the airport or somehow, improbably, hypothetically, in the future, makes a return to professional basketball.

When Miles signed a non-guaranteed contract with the Boston Celtics on August 22, 2008, my 21st birthday, I offered the imaginary horns to my three brothers. I didn’t expect anything to come from the signing. Miles hadn’t been relevant since 2006; that was when he suffered a right knee injury so bad that the NBA deemed it career-ending and gave Portland salary cap relief for Miles’ contract. But this was Darius Miles who the Celtics signed — 6’9, third overall draft pick in 2000, arms longer than an airport runway, legs containing jet packs, once scored 47 points in an NBA game, had a cameo in “Van Wilder”, still only 26 years old — and so I gave the imaginary horns symbol to my brothers, the same symbol Miles and Quentin Richardson had presented to each other after every highlight play, or simply whenever they figured a situation merited pounding their heads.

That Miles never played a single regular season game for the Celtics came as no surprise. He had relied almost solely on his athleticism during his unsatisfying NBA stint, and his legs, deadened by the injury, resulting microfracture surgery, and two years of inactivity, no longer acted as trampolines. Adding to that, Miles was known as a problem child. Once, he shouted racial epithets at head coach Maurice Cheeks. Cheeks told Miles to leave the team’s film session, and Miles responded, “Make me.” When catching a fruit is no longer worth the juice, careers end and imaginary horns get put to sleep.

Miles did return for 34 games with the Memphis Grizzlies during the 08-09 season, but by then he was little more than a novelty act. Two years later, a couple days ago, he was arrested for carrying a loaded gun into the last place on earth anyone would carry a loaded gun, the airport. His basketball career is almost certainly over, another prodigious talent wasted to injury, drugs, crime, and/or a work ethic that couldn’t keep up with his outrageous physical talent.

So what makes a player become a bust? Why did Kwame Brown never become more than a serviceable NBA player, even though NBA scouts once salivated over him? Why did Micheal Olowakandi, drafted ahead of Paul Pierce, Dirk Nowitzki and Vince Carter, become the butt of jokes rather than an All-Star center? Why did Lenny Cooke go from being Lebron before Lebron to a second-round draft pick who never played a single NBA game?

Cooke haunts me. Not in the way that I lay awake thinking he’s hiding underneath my bed waiting to hurt me, but in the way that I think about him a lot more often than I should. I never saw Cooke play live. I never spoke a word to him and probably never will. I hold no ties to him whatsoever except that I read about him when I was younger, and his potential floored me. But whenever a young player fails to pan out, I think about Cooke. I wonder why he never became an NBA star. Did he turn to drugs? Gangs? Did he stop working out? Eat too much? Listen to bad advice? All of the above?

Search for Lenny Cooke highlights on YouTube. The only video you’ll find is a grainy one entitled, “Remember when we played with Lenny Cooke?” That’s all we have left of the Lebron before Lebron, one of the most-hyped high school athletes of all time, a player who was ranked No. 1 in the high school class of 2002 for years, who dropped to No. 4 during his senior year (behind players named Carmelo Anthony, Amare Stoudemire and, um, Raymond Felton), whose stock only dropped when he was ineligible to play high school ball as a senior, who flew with the eagles and was said to see the game three passes ahead, whose only professional basketball experience came with the Columbus Riverdragons, Brevard Blue Ducks, Brooklyn Kings, Purefoods TJ Hot Dogs, Shanghai Dongfang Sharks, and, most recently, the Minot Skyrockets. A player who possessed the talent to become a cultural icon has only one YouTube highlight reel. It’s as poorly-constructed as Cooke’s plans to maximize his potential, and it only serves as a reminder of Cooke’s steep and sudden downfall.

In the NBA, the differences between players can be minute. One of the largest differences between J.J. Redick and Adam Morrison is that Morrison smoked two packs (or so) per day. Redick worked hard, understood his basketball mortality, redefined his game, and carved a role for himself. Morrison could not, or would not, do the same. So his NBA career lasted many fewer years than Kevin Ollie’s, who had less than one-tenth of Morrison’s offensive repertoire but kept himself in world-class shape at all times.

Ollie couldn’t hold Lenny Cooke’s jock, yet he surpassed everything Cooke did in the NBA by 13 years, 2,496 points, 1,501 assists, 1,018 rebounds, and $20.1 million worth of salary. $20.1 million pales in comparison to the $51 million Kwame Brown has earned been paid during his career. A year before Brown became the No. 1 pick in the 2001 draft, he competed in the Adidas ABCD Camp. The MVP of that camp, which included Brown, Eddy Curry, Ben Gordon, Randy Foye, and Sebastian Telfair, among others, was a sophomore named Lenny Cooke.

I have now gone full circle with my six degrees of separation, NBA bust division, but what I’m trying to say is that talent alone is not enough. In the NBA, where every player is gifted beyond belief (err, almost every player — Scal comes to mind, among others), so many things can derail careers — drugs, a shabby work ethic, injuries, bad advice, bad eating habits, emotional illnesses, and whatever else I’m forgetting. We know Darius Miles suffered from injuries, we know he dabbled in drugs (or worse), we suspect he suffered from a poor work ethic, and we imagine that his basketball career is now over.

So if you drink a beer tonight, pour out a sip for Miles — NBA bust, marijuana dabbler, physical freak, criminal, and the creator of something far more memorable than his own NBA career: the imaginary horn celebration, a celebration that highlighted Miles’s youth and exuberance and perhaps, just perhaps, the first sign that he was too immature to succeed in the NBA, and maybe even outside it.

Dimemag.com listed the NBA’s 63 richest players in the league, and it got me thinking, Who are the most overpaid players at each position?

PG: Gilbert Arenas- Maybe not a point guard, but I’m putting him in this spot because he has played some PG, and there are no more overpaid guards than Arenas. Arenas has played just 42 games in the past three seasons due to injuries and last season’s suspension for bringing guns into the lockerroom. That’s a measly 14 games a season, meaning Arenas made more than $1 million per game played over the past three season. Arenas will be paid $18.3 million this season. Now that’s a cushy job.

SG: Michael Redd- Another player who is overpaid because of the amount of games he has missed. At least all the games Redd missed were because of injury. But when you’re paid $18.3 million this season, and you’ve played just 44 games in the past two seasons, I have no choice but to list you as the league’s most overpaid shooting guard. Sorry, Mr. Redd.

SF: Andrei Kirilenko- At $17.8 million, Kirilenko is the HIGHEST paid small forward in the NBA. Yes, you read that correctly. With career averages of 12. 4 points, 5.7 rebounds, 2.8 assists, 2.1 blocks, that’s an absurd contract.

PF: Rashard Lewis- Behind Kobe Bryant, the highest paid player in the league at $19.5 million. In the Conference Finals against the Boston Celtics, he shot 17% from three’s and averaged just 8.2 points. ‘Nuff said.

C: Eddy Curry- No list of overpaid players would be complete without Curry. Curry will make $11.3 million next season, yet he has played only 10 games over the past two seasons. In those 10 games, Curry has played less than 75 total minutes. Basically, Curry has played a game and a half over the past two seasons, making more that $20 million. I want to work for James Dolan. Maybe he’ll pay me and my brother $10 million per post.

While Isiah Thomas spends his days devising the perfect plan to convince Donnie Walsh that signing Kwame Brown for $66 million over six years is the next step to building a winner, I figured now would be as good a time as ever to make a few recommendations for the next person the Knicks should hire. Read more »

If J.J. Redick signed with the C's, it wouldn't exactly be a shocker. Get it?

The Celtics are looking into acquiring J.J. Redick with their mid-level exception, and will be dangling Rasheed Wallace’s contract in hopes of luring an impact big man. (Yahoo!)

Wallace has yet to file retirement papers, so the $6.32 million owed him next season and $6.79 million in 2011-12 would come off a team’s books after Wallace is traded to them. They could do a deal and not take on his money. Ainge is trying to use the Wallace contract to bring back a power forward or center to replace Wallace and the injured Kendrick Perkins.

The Celtics could then use their midlevel exception for a different player. Several sources believe that Ainge’s target is Orlando’s J.J. Redick, who is a restricted free agent.

Boston has strong interest in Brad Miller in free agency and could try to acquire Dallas center Erick Dampier.

The problem with going after Redick is that he’s a restricted free agent. Armed with only the mid-level exception, I don’t know if Boston will be able to draw him away from Orlando. The Magic will have the option to match any offer Redick receives.

If Dampier and Miller don’t work out, Rasheed’s contract and Glen Davis could be packaged together to bring Eddy Curry to the Celtics. Curry would add a proven big man scorer to start while Perkins is injured and then be a reliable reserve once Perk comes back.

By the way, just kidding on the Curry idea. Sorry if you just smashed your head through your computer screen in disgust. Did you really think the Celtics and I were that fucking stupid? Did you?

In a moment of all seriousness, the Celtics HAVE to be targeting Kyle Korver and Rasual Butler, right? Two veteran’s minimum possibilities who would both help. Sounds good to me, and should sound good to Danny. Of the two, Butler’s my pick — he’s not allergic to defense. But Korver’s shooting makes you overlook his inability to guard people, even if that inability is painfully obvious at all times he’s on the court. If it doesn’t exactly seem like I’m giving Korver a ringing endorsement, I’m not. But if you can pick up a deadeye shooter for the veteran’s minimum (and one who isn’t a walking cadaver — *coughcough* Michael Finley *coughcough*), then you’ve GOT to do it.

I wonder if the Celtics will also look to acquire Brendan Haywood with Sheed’s contract. The Mavs are reportedly open to a sign-and-trade including Haywood.