Transaction Wire

• Lakers trade Shaq to the Heat for Lamar Odom, Brian Grant, Caron Butler, and a first round pick. Interesting. Odom fills their lazy mess quota. Grant recently beat out PJ Brown for the "Didn't He Retire for Being Too Old Yet?" Award. Other than that, Butler is a good player, and Shaq doesn't have very many years left in him. So, overall, we have two uh players + 1 good young player + 1 high draft pick = 1 "great" player who won't be around very long. I guess it evens out.


• Suns re-sign Steve Nash, the team he played for in the days when everyone kept confusing his name with Rick Nash. Rick Nash, coincidentally, was the second highest rated high school basketball player behind Magic Johnson after their senior years.


• Grizzlies sign free agent Brian Cardinal. Yep.


• Jazz sign Carlos Boozer. Yep.


• Astros fire Jimy Williams and hire Phil Gardner. This brings up three thoughts: 1) You kind of saw this coming when Williams was introduced to the home crowd at the All Star Game, and everyone booed. 2) This once again brings up the question, why do you hire multiple 100 game loser Gardner over Cito Gaston? Seriously, did Gaston fall off the face of the earth? Can we at least do a "Where are they now?" on this guy? Oh, and 3) Gary Gaetti was named the interim hitting coach. Nice.


• Randy Johnson officially put himself on the trading block. As expected, the Yankees and Red Sox are the big contenders. Here we go...


• Speaking of Johnson being traded, there may be another player making an extremely short stay in Houston (remember that?). Carlos Beltran may be on his way out, and experts say he'll be a good match in the National League, especially LA. Beltran is a free agent at the end of the year. So, he's useless to a non-contender, unless they can get some prospects out of him.


• Matt Kerls was named Assistant Equiment Manager for the University of Notre Dame. Since Kerls graduated this past May, I'm assuming this is his full time job. Now, I've known some great managers in my time, but this move to ensure indefinite VIP status at the 'Backer is the ultimate coup de grace. Kerls, you may remember, was also the "Token Kurt Angle Fan" of the Morrissey WWF Raw watchers. (there's one in every group)