733 DAYS AND COUNTING...

by E. Spencer Kyte, Bugs and Cranks

It's a great day to be a New Jersey Nets fan.

Yeah, we dropped Richard Jefferson to the Bucks for on overpaid, injury-prone defensive specialist and the Chinese Andrea Bargiani, but still, it's a great, great day.

In moving RJ, we moved Cap Money. Now, 733 days from now, on July 1, 2010, we'll have somewhere in the neighborhood of $22M in open cap space to spend on free agents.

See that picture to the left? Get used to it.

For the six people who have been sleeping under a rock for the last few years, those two gentlemen are exceptionally close friends Jay-Z and LeBron James. One is a minority owner of the New Jersey Nets. The other is the greatest basketball player on the planet and a free agent in 2010. Do the math...

New Jersey already has more talent to surround LeBron with than Cleveland has had throughout the course of his career and they still have two more seasons to add to mix of Devin Harris, Robin Lopez, Chinese Andrea, Nenad and Chris Douglas-Roberts. Yes, I'm counting CDR in this mix because I have no doubt in my mind that he's going to end up being one of those guys in three years that makes everyone say, "How did this guy go in the second round?"

I know King James has hometown ties to Cleveland, but let's be honest - where is a better situation to further his off-court career, playing in close proximity to Akron or playing within spitting distance of The Big Apple? Advantage: Nets.

I've spent the last twenty minutes online at The NBA Store trying to generate a James #23 Nets jersey and it won't let it happen.

Even the NBA Store doesn't want to admit this is a foregone conclusion.

That's fine - deny, deny, deny...

I know it's a great day to be a Nets fan.

See you in 2010 LeBron.

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