Links for a Sunday Evening

Hope you're all enjoying your evenings. The Official Roommate of Rufus on Fire and our college buddy in town for the weekend are here in the living room and we're enjoying the USA-Canada hockey game.

A couple Rick Bonnell pieces jumped out at me as I was catching up on reading this afternoon.

Murray trade product of salary cap math - CharlotteObserver.com
You could hear the frustration in Bobcats coach Larry Brown's voice when he said, "We did everything we could to keep him," regarding Murray. But this was about cap math, not Chicago's admiration for Murray's pull-up jump shot.

I'm pretty certain the Bulls wanted Murray to replace John Salmons, who they traded away to Milwaukee. Otherwise, if all they wanted to do was dump Tyrus Thomas's contract, they could have simply cut Lindsey Hunter, made him an assistant coach so he could stay with the team and provide whatever leadership/mentoring he's been providing, and taken a package of Acie Law, Stephen Graham, and Alexis Ajinca. The only other explanation is that the Bobcats didn't want to give up Ajinca, but if you're getting Thomas and hope to re-sign him, doesn't he already represent the absolute highest level of performance you can expect from Freedom Fries at his peak?

Inside the NBA: Bobcats-Bucks post-mortem
I don't know that Charlotte Bobcats coach Larry Brown says much of anything by accident when speaking to media. So I found this unsolicited comment about center Nazr Mohammed, following the Milwaukee Bucks game, interesting: "It's a blessing to have a player with the character of Nazr. He had no business playing'' with ongoing back spasms, Brown said. "That someone like Nazr is willing to play hurt sends a message to the team.''

Or: It's not necessarily the best idea to have players get back out on the floor before they're fully healthy, especially centers with lower body injuries, given their larger bodies. First, as we've seen with Nazr recently, playing hurt means the guy probably can't produce as he normally might. Second, as Tyson Chandler probably understands, playing hurt can extend the injury to the point that it affects the player longer than it would have had he rehabilitated and healed. Please don't push him back out there before he's ready.

Pacers' Ford was 'dancing' when he thought he was being traded - ProBasketballTalk - Basketball - NBC Sports

Also, this amused me to no end.