Buck Harvey of the San Antonio Express-News: "Brent Barry will be free soon. The Sonics have waived him, and he can sign with any team after a 48-hour period. Any team except the Spurs, of course. Because they traded him, they wouldn't be able to re-sign him for 30 days. There are reasons to think Barry will wait. But he has every right to weigh his options and rethink what he wants to do. After all, he's been hearing trade rumors for several years. Now it's his turn to decide. Barry wasn't particularly happy when he heard he'd been traded Wednesday, but it's not his nature to stay angry. Besides, he's been around long enough to understand the business."
Sam Smith of The Chicago Tribune: "For the Bulls, this is just the beginning. The rebuilding is under way. The Bulls must have noticed it's nearly March and they still are 11 games below .500. They are entering perhaps the most difficult part of their schedule, with Denver at the beginning of it Friday night at the United Center. The playoffs in the weak Eastern Conference aren't out of the question, but that can't be the franchise's goal as it took a small step Thursday to resurrect an NBA contender it believed it had built just a year ago."
Patrick McManamon of The Akron Beacon-Journal: "Danny Ferry pulled off what didn't seem possible. He found teams willing to trade for his players. He dumped Larry Hughes' contract. He got help for LeBron James. He brought in a point guard. And he changed the look of the Cavs almost completely on one Thursday afternoon. Best hope it works. Because there are gambles involved, and if the gambles don't pay off, the Cavs will merely have reshuffled the chairs instead of bringing in fancy new ones. Or in this case, old ones."
Terry Pluto of The Plain Dealer: "The Cavaliers are playing to win ... right now. That's what the monster three-way deal between the Cavs, Seattle and Chicago is all about as the defending Eastern Conference champions added Ben Wallace, Wally Szczerbiak, Joe Smith and Delonte West while Larry Hughes and Drew Gooden are the only significant players shipped out of town. Here's the bottom line on the deal: It makes the Cavs better."
Art Thiel of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer: "A seaport town surrounded by forested hills blasted regularly by winter storms, Seattle knows a little about endless driftwood. But now, thanks to the StudentSonics, enough floaters have accumulated to provide a walk halfway across Puget Sound. Washed upon our basketball shores in the past two days are Brent Barry, Francisco Elson, Donyell Marshall, Ira Newble and Adrian Griffin. The starting five from Splinter Beach. Where, you ask? It's under the radar, yet over the hill. I know, I know. The StudentSonics' trade-deadline deals weren't about this season; the deals were about the future. Specifically, the StudentSonics for the next three drafts now have six first-round choices. Yee. Hah."
John McGrath of The News Tribune: "Donyell Marshall has the distinction of being involved in two of the biggest trades in league history: A nine-player deal in 2000, and Thursday's 11-player blockbuster. If the Sonics didn't participate in the league's most expansive trade, they had to take part in the most expensive trade: The 11 players moved Thursday are making $66,018,281 in salaries although the only full-time starters involved were Drew Gooden, sent to the Bulls from Cleveland, and the underachieving Wallace. Imagine: Some $66 million involved in a trade of, essentially, bench players. And David Stern thinks that the politicians in Seattle are fumbling with money issues?"
Bernie Lincicome of the Rocky Mountain News: "At first look, the Nuggets, and the rest of the West, have less to fear from Phoenix and Dallas than they did before the trades. The appearance, however, is that those teams are at least doing something, making a move to improve, to better their chances. Comparatively, the Nuggets now look like stooges -- and Shemp, not one of the funny ones. A team that so far has been just good enough to teeter at the edge of the playoffs is deemed to be good enough for the job ahead, while teams that are better than the Nuggets refused to take the same chance."
Jerome Solomon of the Houston Chronicle: "If you're a fan, you want your team to be a contender for the crown. If it's not, when the NBA trade deadline comes and your team is involved in a couple of trades, you want them to be blockbuster deals. You would like the moves to be the most talked about around the league, and the lead item on national sports shows. You didn't get that from general manager Daryl Morey and the Rockets on Thursday. But don't be too disappointed. You got smart moves, and that's OK."
Doug Smith of the Toronto Star: "The Raptors made a small move at the NBA's trade deadline yesterday, moving the unhappy Juan Dixon to the Detroit Pistons for Primoz Brezec, hardly a blockbuster but all that general manager Bryan Colangelo felt comfortable doing. 'It's important to have players that want to be here,' Colangelo said after the trade. 'Juan and his representatives made it pretty clear that he wasn't content with his role. ... You want to make players happy and you don't want unhappy players around. Not that he was handling himself in an unprofessional way, I want to be very clear. I only want players here that want to be here and want to be part of this culture.'"
Michael Grange of The Globe and Mail: "You want excitement? You want trade deadline intrigue? You would like the Toronto Raptors to be the centre of the online rumour mill? Come back, oh, in about a year or so. You can start the rumours now. Scan the club's salary commitments for next season for yourself and fire up that trade machine. You want expiring contracts? The Raptors will have expiring contracts. And in the NBA, salaries that are coming off the books are as sexy as a hotel lobby full of small dresses at all-star weekend. Anthony Parker will be in the last year of his deal. So will Jorge Garbajosa. Rasho Nesterovic, too. Throw in Jamario Moon and Maceo Baston and Raptors president and general manager Bryan Colangelo will have roughly $12-million (all currency U.S.) in expiring contracts to barter with."
Alan Hahn of Newsday: "As Newsday reported in January, when the Knicks' tailspin included nine losses in 10 games, Dolan and Mills discussed an exit strategy as they considered their options with what to do with Thomas and the franchise. At that time, no decision had been made because the team was within range of a playoff spot, which Thomas vowed to Dolan his team could achieve. Things may be a little more concrete now."
Michael Hunt of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: "It has been apparent for some time now that Larry Harris isn't coming back. The Milwaukee Bucks' general manager has made mistakes and, bottom line, the team hasn't had a winning record and is a ghastly 64 games below .500 during his four-plus seasons. He had his shot. But to pin everything on Harris would be wrong. In fact, what happened -- or, more accurately, didn't happen -- Thursday as the NBA trading deadline expired was symptomatic of the franchise's ongoing problems. If Harris had a chance to trade Bobby Simmons and Dan Gadzuric -- two of his more notable missteps -- and was blocked by Herb Kohl as reported in New York, it says a lot about the continued mismanagement of an organization paralyzed by ownership intervention."
Steve Politi of The Star-Ledger: "Keith Van Horn, reacquired in the blockbuster trade that sent Jason Kidd to Dallas, is somewhere in New Jersey. We think. Ask the Nets when he'll be available for an interview, or when he will begin his workouts to 'get back into NBA shape,' or for virtually any information about their new acquisition, well, good luck getting the answers. 'He's going to come in, we'll work him out and see if he can get in shape,' team president Rod Thorn said this week. 'He's here. But we are not going to make him available for interviews.' This, of course, is because Wilt Chamberlain will suit up for the Nets this season before Van Horn does (Wilt, coincidentally, is also not available for interviews). Van Horn is truly living the new American Dream, being paid -- quite handsomely -- not to work. He will earn $4.3 million for not playing the rest of this season, or $75,439 per day over the final 57 days of the regular season."
Jerry Brown of the East Valley Tribune: "Wednesday's Suns-Lakers epic wasn't just must-see TV in Phoenix and Los Angeles. The latest installment of 'Shaq vs. Kobe' reeled in boffo ratings both locally and nationally. Wednesday's game was the third most-viewed NBA regular-season game in ESPN history and the highest in more than three years. The game pulled a 2.9 national rating, averaging 2,813,000 households and 3,616,000 viewers. That's the most people to watch the NBA on ESPN since Christmas Day of 2004, when 4,325,000 viewers tuned in for the Indiana-Detroit game -- the Pacers' first trip back to Detroit after Ron Artest's infamous charge into the stands to fight with fans about a month earlier."
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