Friday Bullets

• CBA talks are underway in New York. Been talking CBA shop all morning, and have hit on a fairly basic idea: Sports are risky business. Based on injuries, player development, and assorted weirdness, you may close the season with 30 straight sellouts, awesome TV ratings and a nice playoff run. Or you may finish the season sad, lonely and penniless. That's a lot of risk to owners. And they're saying, essentially, hey players, do us a favor and take some of this risk. If your contract starts to look terrible, go ahead and be a free agent after three or four years instead of six. If you're out injured, take less money. And the players response is, essentially, we'll earn a little less in total. But that risk? All yours.
• I disagree. This looks brilliant to me.
• When Lakers rap.
• Magic Johnson's tweet suggesting the Lakers call the Magic -- presumably for Dwight Howard -- has been deleted.
• Jeremy Tyler has no idea who Nate McMillan is, while working out in Portland with Coach McMillan in the room. But watch the video. He recovers quickly, makes a little fun of himself, and maintains plenty of poise.
• You can cool it with your JaVale McGee-for-the-Wolves-second-pick talk, according to the Washington Post's Michael Lee.
• LeBron James agreed to star in a Hollywood comedy, although the shoot is now on the "not this summer either" shooting schedule. The fact that it's a comedy, and he's also in a cartoon, are clear signs he simply does not embrace the villain role. He sees himself as likable.
• A tangential hint that the Suns will pick Jimmer Fredette, Marcus Morris, Markieff Morris, Tristan Thompson or Chris Singleton with the 13th pick. Chad Ford's mock draft has them taking Alec Burks. DraftExpress predicts Thompson.
• Check out Connecticut's South Kent school, as told by Zach Schonbrun of Columbia Sports Journalism: From 1992 to 2002, just one South Kent student went on to play Division I basketball. But since 2004, 38 players have landed on the rosters of Division I basketball programs— an average of more than five per season -- and two, Dorell Wright and Andray Blatche, went straight to the NBA.
• Ian Segovia of Bucksketball on Jimmer Fredette: "Here’s a fun example of Fredette’s divisiveness. Driving up to Appleton, I was arguing his merits with a friend. The conversation got heated and at one point he said that Fredette was a better shooter than Ray Allen. I simply turned up the radio and stopped talking."
• Meet Jan Vesely.

Source: http://espn.go.com/blog/truehoop/post/_/id/30450/friday-bullets-183

Anthony Wayne Stewart