NBA News Roundup: Floppers to be put on notice, plus injury updates

The club said Nowitzki could resume basketball activities within six weeks. The forecast suggests team orthopedist Dr. T.O. Souryal did not find structural damage while performing the surgery. Nowitzki was unavailable for comment. On Monday, he said ‘I’m usually a fast-recover guy, but you never know.’ “

HoopsHype’s Jorge Sierra has a crazy cool chart of where all the NBA free agents went overseas since 2006. The trends are clear: more and more players are jumping to China and Turkey, at the expense of Italy, Spain, and Greece. Here’s a couple quotes from Sierra’s article: ” ‘The Spanish ACB used to be the top league, but the fundamentals of what they can afford have changed quite a bit,’ agent Mark Bartelstein said. ‘The middle to lower level teams have taken a big hit. Players that maybe were making $250,000 (for a year) are making $80,000 to $100,000 now.’ … ‘There are no safe places in Europe anymore,’ agent Bill Neff said. “FIBA may help but in many, if not most places in Europe, you now spend your time chasing your player’s money instead of managing his career. At the end of the day, your player wants to be treated well and your job is to try to ensure that this happens. In Asia, that is more likely to happen today.’ “

Did any Eastern Conference team do as good a job at retooling this past offseason as the Celtics, besides maybe the Heat or Knicks? Frank Dell’Apa of the Boston Globe writes about how well one of their key acquisitions, Courtney Lee is fitting into the C’s plans, and includes this little note at the end, about another new Celtic, Leandro Barbosa: “Rondo on Leandro Barbosa, who is expected to join the Celtics for Saturday’s game: ‘It’s big for me, I won’t have to play as many minutes and take a toll on my body. And with Barbosa in the game, the speed is going to continue to stay the same when I go out. He can create his own shots, make plays for teammates, and also can score the ball. I think it’s a great pickup.’ “

One of the guys who Lee and Barbosa will be replacing is, of course, Ray Allen, and Shandel Richardson of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reports that Allen is looking to help out the Heat in more ways than just shooting threes: “One of the areas the Heat could possibly use Allen is in the post. It was a big part of his game during the early portion of his career before he became identified mostly as a jump-shooter. Allen said he often pleaded with Celtics coach Doc Rivers to play more in the post, but it was not part of the plans. ‘In practice, I always posted up,’ Allen said. ‘I just could never convince my coach to allow me go down in the post. He was always telling me he wanted different matchups. I’ve had so many matchups in the post throughout the years. It gives me a different scoring angle. It takes pressure off having always to shoot 3s.’ Playing in the post would force teams to rethink their strategies of defending Allen. Opponents generally place a smaller defender on Allen because his tendency to run off screens and tire bigger players. The presence of a post game all but eliminates the possibility.”

If you haven’t already heard, LeBron James is up for another round of free agency negotiations in the summer of 2014, and lots of teams are already clearing cap space to try and land him. Most notable is the Lakers, but Dave Hilts of RantSports.com has an argument for why the Bobcats might be LeBron’s next landing spot. Yes, the Bobcats.