Sports 4 Dorks

Henry over at TrueHoop has put together a great post with the list of the NBA’s non-guaranteed contracts. This is important to scope out because NBA teams have until 6 p.m. (on the island of Manhattan) tonight to either keep these contracts on board (paying not just the money owed to the players, but potentially the dollar-for-dollar luxury tax incurred by going over the $65.42 million threshold, while waiving your rights to the spoils collected by the teams under the tax line), or cut away.

It’s hard to see many more than the names already waived (the Warriors waived DJ Mbenga, Denver dumped Bobby Jones, and the Nets cut Billy Thomas) being sent home, we might see three or four more names hit the skids, but it shouldn’t be a massive bloodletting.

Players like Jamario Moon (above) are starting, while names like Malik Allen, Chris Richard, Leon Powe, Mario West, Ryan Bowen (… actually, a whole lot of these names, so let’s just stop here) are needed to fill out rosters that have been decimated by injuries thus far this season.  

That said, there’s nothing stopping these teams - even the injured ones - from dumping the non-guaranteed players on the list and bringing them back later on with a 10-day contract (which are now available to teams). Someone like Miami’s Joel Anthony will definitely be cut today, but he’ll be back on the end of the Heat bench soon enough.

So, we’ll see how it turns out. Nobody is owed an NBA gig, but this is a day for the junkies to be watching the waiver wire.