The futures of NBA franchises hang in the balance as the names and possible destinations of big-name free agents fly around the web.

Going by popular consensus (along with some off-the-wall choices as well), let’s look at who might be wearing what colors next season, and what those teams will look like:

(Of course, these may all be totally wrong by the time you read this, but enjoy the crappy Photoshopping regardless)

Josh Smith, Philadelphia 76ers

The 76ers fail to bring in Elton Brand, so they try to make a splash with another name by bringing in Slam Dunk Contest champion J-Smoove. Running the fast break with Andre Iguodala on one side and Smith on the other, Andre Miller averages 20 assists per game over the course of the entire season.

Corey Maggette, San Antonio Spurs

After opting out of his contract with the Los Angeles Clippers, Xzibit Maggette goes to a real contender with a chance to win. He provides on-again, off-again scoring to make the Spurs offense at least quasi-watchable.

James Posey, New Orleans Hornets

Posey anoints himself Big Shot Pose, proclaims he can win a championship wherever he goes, and vows to take the Hornets to the next level. The Hornets advance to the Finals, but Posey misses half of the deciding game whilst sitting in a KFC drive-thru waiting for his bucket of chicken. Morris Peterson plays in his place, running the team into the ground. By the time a well-fed, content Posey arrives at the arena, it is far too late.

Elton Brand, Golden State Warriors

Brand mistakenly eats some magic mushrooms and, surprising even himself, takes Golden State’s max money, swapping spots with Baron Davis. Apparently it wasn’t as much about winning as it was hooking up with his B.F.F. Stephen Jackson and replicating his chest tattoos.

Ron Artest, Los Angeles Lakers

Merely feigning idiocy, Artest reveals he is actually an accomplished physicist, invents the time machine, and goes back in time one day to indeed opt out of his contract. Negating his previous statements, he signs with the Lakers for the mid-level exception, only to regret his decision.

WNBA Tip-Off 2008! It’s gonna happen! Get excited! Wait… did it happen already? Did anyone get excited?

In a Los Angeles Lakers dominated market, the Los Angeles Sparks obviously have to go the extra mile in order to get anyone interested that might have been potentially interested in the first place.

Awareness of the actual season is a start (yet I’m still unsure whether or not it has started yet) - and local buses in the L.A. area have been rolling around with ads promoting the season.

Featured are Lisa Leslie and Candace Parker, with the spot proclaimed that the former “is back” and the latter “is here” - referring to Leslie’s return from maternity leave and Parker’s impending rookie campaign.

Amazing how pregnancy and maternity leave cause Leslie, the Sparks’ star player, to be out for the season, thus crippling the franchise for a year and netting them the #1 draft pick in Candace Parker.

Formerly, a franchise would usually suffer a catastrophic injury to a star player, a la the San Antonio Spurs with David Robinson during the 1996-97 campaign, to net a future star, a la Tim Duncan. This is obviously an unplanned matter, as the Spurs were ready to compete with The Admiral and had not planned on benefiting like they did.

Sidestep over to the WNBA, where preggers happens. Given a certain level of team loyalty, a player can just succumb to her physiological destiny during say, when a team wants to rebuild, and the process is done and over with in a season.

Where’s the competitive balance in that? This is borderline cheating!

Never fear - male pregnancy is thisclose to taking off! Don’t you fret, Charlotte Bobcats - Jason Richardson is gonna take one for the team.

Hello all. The Tsar has given me a visa to post here, and I’m grateful that procuring this didn’t involve marrying a foreign bride (yet). I’m Mark, and I’ll be regaling you with my (mostly pedestrian) insights on various sports, my lousy fantasy teams, wacky terminology that George and I have come up with over the years, and so on and so forth. Anyway, for my first post, I’d like to reveal just why, from an extreme outsider’s perspective, the San Antonio Spurs find themselves in such a deep hole in their playoff series with the New Orleans Hornets.

You see, in my spare time my roommate and I play quite a bit of NBA 2K8. Probably too much, since we now play seven games series in order to get our fix. Anyway, whenever our friend Jeff comes over he also plays. Jeff, it turns out, is ridiculously good with the Hornets, namely because they fit his style of play to a T. Whenever Jeff plays as the Hornets, he employs a simple yet effective strategy: he clogs the middle and dares his opponent to shoot 3-pointers. And when I say “dare,” I mean that he sags off perimeter players by a least a couple feet. The natural inclination when seeing this is to think to yourself, “Damn, he’s really giving me a lot of space. I know I shouldn’t but…I’m so open…if I make this, it’ll be huge…SCREW IT.” Then you hoist up a three and (probably) clank it. Then Jeff gets the rebound, runs back before you can get in transition, and gets an easy 2. Fall victim to this a few times in a row, and suddenly you’re down by 10. Then you get freaked out that it’s seemingly impossible to get inside on offense, start to settle for more open 3s, missing more than you make, and before you know it you’ve lost by at least 15. And every single time, as the game ends and the awful NBA 2K8 music begins (”I GRIND I PUSH I WORK REAL HARD”), you smack yourself in the forehead. “Why did I fall into the trap?! Why did I take so many damned 3s?!” Around our apartment, playing against Jeff when he’s the Hornets is referred to as “taking the Hornet Challenge.” This strategy, of course, is not without its downsides. Namely, if you make your 3s, the strategy is fairly ineffective. I have beaten it before, but it took some ridiculous 3-point shooting (I made something like 60% and shot over 30) to do so. Also, getting to the line can overcome it as well (though counting on this in NBA 2K8 is like counting on Kevin Garnett to take the big shot).

I bring this up because this must be exactly what the Spurs and Gregg Popovich are thinking after the first 2 games in this series. There are obviously a number of reasons the Spurs are getting smacked around in this series (effective defense on Tim Duncan, Chris Paul having his way with a slow, aging Bruce Bowen, David West being an absolute terror even when he only scores 10 points), but this is one that has been mostly overlooked (Though ESPN’s TrueHoop blog made note of it today), and the numbers don’t lie. In the regular season, the Spurs attempted 19.6 3-pointers per game. In the playoffs, they’ve averaged about 16 3-point attempts. But if you look at these past couple games, the numbers tell a different story. In Game 1, the Spurs attempted a whopping 31 threes, connecting on just 12 of them (38.7%). They settled down (slightly) in Game 2, taking “only” 27, but making just 8 (a ghastly 29.6%). In Game 1, three Spurs attempted 8 or more 3-pointers, only one of them shooting 50% (Bruce Bowen, 5-10, most coming in the first half). This is in keeping with how the Hornets have played all year, as they allowed the most 3-point attempts per game of any team in the league.

Watching this series, whenever a Spurs player jacks up a 3, you can see the wheels turning in their heads, and I imagine them thinking the same things I do when I play Jeff. “Man, a 3 would be huge here. Why are they sagging off on me so much? I can totally make this!”

HOIST. CLANK. “DAMMIT!”

It happened 19 times in both Games 1 and 2. It doesn’t surprise me that the Hornets defend like this, because it is a good strategy…but it’s usually most effective against gunslingling teams like, say, the Nuggets or the Warriors. The obvious downside, like I said before, is that a team will suddenly make its 3-pointers in bunches, but in that case Byron Scott will live with getting burned by such low-percentage shots. After all, as a team the Spurs shot 37% from beyond the arc as a team this season. If I’m Byron Scott, I’ll live with them taking shots with that sort of success rate instead of banging to the basket or having Tony Parker or Ginobili penetrate for easy looks. But with all that said, I’m frankly pretty shocked the Spurs are falling into this trap instead of working to get better shots. Is it because they’re too old and lack the quickness to get around the defense? Are they that confident in their 3 point shooting (I hope not)? Are they just falling behind early and desperately gunning to get back into the game?

Beats me. I’m just a couch potato who plays way too much NBA.