SPREE KILLING: It's a done deal: Latrell Sprewell is a Minnesota Timberwolf, and will likely be moving his yacht to Lake of the Isles any day now- and maybe he'll buy Prince's old house while he's at it. And I was wrong yesterday- the Post did indeed use "Minny" in the trade headline, just in the print edition only; and in yet another fit of passive-aggressive pique, the Post sports department in the accompanying graphic used the old Wolves Wolf-head-in-basketball logo, the one the team stopped using in 1996.
At any rate, the trade gives the Wolves by far the most star-studded lineup of any Minnesota sports team in history. Forget the Twins- I haven't been this excited about the start of a Wolves season since the "All nude, tastefully done" Garnett/Marbury era.
Meanwhile, hot on the heels of the Spree/Van Horn/Robinson trade came news of another rumored blockbuster- an odd trade of undersized white centers in which the Pacers will exchange Brad Miller for the Kings' Scot Pollard- but then both teams will give players (Ron Mercer and Hedo Turkoglu, respectively) to San Antonio, essentially for free (the Spurs may toss in a draft pick or two). It sounds completely nonsensical, but the rationale is that both the Pacers and Kings will gain salary cap space by getting rid of those players for nothing while the Spurs, still holding on to oodles of space that Jason Kidd didn't want, would be better off using it on two players in the last years of their contracts than on a multi-year deal for Stephen Jackson. That way they'll have extra space next year for free agent Manu Ginobili. Got that, everyone?