Points in the Paint

» August 4, 2009 3:39 PM | By Brandon Hoffman

Good insight from David Aldridge about how owners are seeking significant changes going into the first round of CBA negotiations. In short: they’re pushing for a hard cap, higher luxury taxes, and a smaller spread between the salary cap figure and luxury tax threshold.

Ken Berger reports that changing the restricted free agency model will be one of the points of discussion when the Labor Relations Committee and Players Association meet this week.

Phil Jackson on what makes him tick, and his relationship with Kobe Bryant: “Well I’m a guy that wants to honor the contract, that’s something that’s an agreement between myself and the owner. I kind of did this at his behest. When I came back from my South Pacific hiatus and came back to a three-year contract, they kind of slid in a two-year option … and I said, ‘OK, but I want to do it one year at a time, please.’ … And I have a relationship with Kobe Bryant that has now gone back for 10 years, and we’ve had a lot of great times in our relationship, and we’ve had some struggles. We’ve seen this team be rebuilt around Kobe’s leadership, and I think this is a relationship that I have a hard time walking away from.“

Longtime sportswriter Dwight Jaynes is a fantastic blogger, and today he’s writing about how luxury charters changed the lives of NBA writers forever: “Writers today travel commercial, by themselves mostly, and stay at different hotels than the team. It can be a very lonely existence and one I wouldn’t care for. In the old days, I even rode the bus with them from the airport to the hotel. And to practice, too. Oh, that’s right. No closed practice in those days, either. I went to every single practice for seven seasons. Watched the whole thing. I do believe we didn’t need coaches to tell us who screwed up in those days. If you went to practice and paid attention, you knew who was supposed to be where on certain plays or defensive schemes. You got a basketball education, if you wanted it, from the likes of Jack Ramsay that college or high school coaches would have died for.”

Michael Lee of The Washington Post: “Wizards Coach Flip Saunders began building relationships with his players even before the team officially hired him. It started with a few text messages with Gilbert Arenas. Since he’s been hired, Saunders has worked out individually with some of his players, offered personal instruction and traded text messages from time to time to give and receive updates. But in the past few weeks, Saunders has also started traveling to the hometowns of his players and hanging out for a few days with them. Saunders has already made it down to Atlanta to hang out with Javaris Crittenton and he’s supposed to soon head to Charlotte, where he will spend time with both Antawn Jamison and Brendan Haywood. Saunders believes it is important to establish relationships with his players, and mutual trust will be a key, especially when Saunders inevitably decides on his rotation.”

Charley Rosen says it’s now or never for Andrew Bynum: “This young man must show improvement in several physical categories — like staying healthy and developing better footwork on both ends of the court. Even so, his biggest problem is his attitude. Like so many other young hot-shots, Bynum believes all of the butt-kissers who constantly tell him that he’s already a great player who deserves to be playing 35-plus minutes per game and, after Kobe, being the secondary option in the offense. Besides his L.A. buddies, the chorus prematurely celebrating Bynum’s game also includes many of the local media. The truth, however, is that Bynum is still a work-in-progress. He continues being befuddled on defense, and he’s convinced that he should be getting many more scoring opportunities than he does. In fact, rather than accepting his role as a defender and rebounder, Bynum thinks that he is primarily a scorer. Because of all of these factors, Bynum doesn’t work as hard as he should and is becoming a perpetual malcontent.”