James Naismith is probably rolling over in his grave right now. The NBA and NBPA have been fighting for over 130 days on the new labor agreement and it's safe to say that there's a good chance we might not even have a season. Fantasy basketball owners have been familiarized with B.R.I more than they have dreamed and last we checked, that's not a fantasy stat. It's really been a while since we actually had news that relates directly to fantasy basketball, so with that in mind, let's revisit the last gem before the lockout.

Approximately 10 hours before the looming lockout occurred, the Kings and Cavs gave the NBA fantasy world a nice little going-away present. Sacramento sent small forward Omri Casspi to Cleveland in exchange for power forward J.J. Hickson and a conditional first-round pick.

There are a lot of implications from this trade since the Kings had a surplus in the small forward department and adding some new personnel to the fold. The Cavaliers could afford to lose J.J. Hickson after acquiring Texas product Tristan Thompson with the fourth pick in the NBA Draft. It was the last important piece of news, so let’s discuss which players were affected by the June 30th  transaction:

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I realize that as I write this, the floor is coming out from under me. People are sliding into the icy waters, lifeboats are sailing away, and the band is still playing music. Yes, I'm going to write an article about fantasy basketball, and yes, I know I'm on the Titanic. But what the hell -- how about one last basketball piece before we sink into the ocean?

Today, we'll discuss the Denver Nuggets, a team that's seen an usual amount of players defect overseas. Kenyon Martin, J.R. Smith, and Wilson Chandler are all in China, which is fascinating in and of itself. And there's a report that they could all be released from their contracts with their Chinese teams if the lockout ends. However, let's put on our imagination caps and travel to Impossible Hypothetical Land. What if the lockout does end, and the Nuggets decide they don't want Martin, Smith or Chandler back, even if they can reacquire them? (And that's not an unlikely scenario in Martin and Smith's case.)

Then consider that the Nuggets would be unlikely to keep key free-agent Nene, who will demand a ton of money that the team might not be willing to provide. That means that with Smith, Nene, Chandler and Martin all absent, Ty Lawson and Danilo Gallinari -- neither of whom averaged even 15 a game last year -- would suddenly be the team's primary scorers.

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(The NBA lockout refuses to go away, and it'll be a while before teams can upgrade their rosters. On the plus side, it gives us plenty of time to familiarize ourselves with the players we'll want to target before (or if) the lockout ends. Some of these players may be on different teams by the time the season starts, but hey, that's the risk that comes with any prediction article. Today, we look at the Cleveland Cavaliers.)

No writer with the title of fantasy "expert" can accurately predict what will happen to teams like the Cavaliers, and that makes drafting one their players incredibly risky. You see, when a team is as bad as the Cavaliers were last year (and will assuredly be this year), everything is in flux. The guys you think will be starting may wind up coming off the bench by the end of the season, and the players you think are pretty good may only be putting up numbers because there's literally no one else who can do it. With Mo Williams and J.J. Hickson gone from the roster, the Cavaliers have only three players who averaged more than 12 points per game last season, and all three players are unrestricted free-agents in 2012 and are likely to leave. If that doesn't personify a team in transition, nothing does.

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(The NBA lockout refuses to go away, and it'll be a while before teams can upgrade their rosters. On the plus side, it gives us plenty of time to familiarize ourselves with players we'll want to target before (or if) the lockout ends. Some of these guys may be on different teams by the time the season starts, but hey, that's the risk that comes with any prediction article. Today, we look at the Chicago Bulls.)

When the Bulls lost out on the LeBron sweepstakes, no one expected them to challenge for a title right away. Their second-best player was the injury-prone Carlos Boozer, and Derrick Rose wasn't even considered as valuable fantasy-wise as Troy Murphy. (D'oh!) Yet the Bulls won a league-best 62 games anyway and Rose became the MVP of the league, leading many to wonder just how immaculate they would've been if James had actually signed with them. Instead they were forced to start Keith Bogans at shooting guard, and although they got as far as the conference finals, it become abundantly clear they were too reliant on Rose offensively. They should remain a contender for the conceivable future, but they're hardly a finished product as long as Bogans is in the starting lineup.

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(The NBA lockout isn't going away soon, and it'll be a while before teams get a chance to upgrade their rosters. Still, it gives us plenty of time to familiarize ourselves with the players we'll want to target before (or if) the lockout ends. Some of these players may be on different teams by the time the season starts, but hey, that's the risk that comes with any prediction article. Today, we look at the Charlotte Bobcats.)

No, the Charlotte Bobcats probably won't be the worst team in the NBA. (The Timberwolves have that distinction on lockdown.) But that doesn't mean they won't look like the worst team in the league. Sans Raymond Felton, Gerald Wallace and Stephen Jackson, the once promising 'Cats have maybe the most depleted, terrible lineup in all of basketball. They're the garbage dump of the league. They're loaded with retreads like Kwame Brown, DeSagana Diop, Matt Carroll, Dante Cunningham, Joel Pryzbilla, Garrett Temple, Eduardo Najera and D.J. White. If the league went back to 29 teams, I doubt a third of their roster would still be in the NBA. It's that bad. But even the tallest mountains of crap can have diamonds in the rough. Thankfully, in the cold world of fantasy where numbers alone mean everything, the Bobcats still have a few players capable of being relevant. The stats they put up may be empty, baseless, skewed stats that never translate to the win column, but they're stats nonetheless, and that's all that matters.

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(The NBA lockout isn't going away soon, and it'll be a while before teams get a chance to upgrade their rosters. Still, it gives us plenty of time to familiarize ourselves with the players we'll want to target before (or if) the lockout ends. Some of these players may be on different teams by the time the season starts, but hey, that's the risk that comes with any prediction article. Today, we look at the Boston Celtics.)

It's hard to believe, but last year's Celtics team may have sported the most star-studded starting lineup in NBA history. That's not to say it was the best ever, because their second round defeat to the Heat made that painfully clear. But can you think of another starting lineup with five future Hall of Famers in it? Pierce, Allen, Garnett and Shaquille O'Neal are all getting in, and Rondo probably will too if he can have a long and productive career. This year's Celtics team will look a little different now that Shaq is gone, but the core remains essentially the same. The question, though, is if they can continue to challenge the younger and more athletic Bulls and Heat as they continue to get older and older and older.

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The Atlanta Hawks are the Cincinnati Reds of the NBA. Every season it seems, a few daring analysts claim that the year has finally arrived when the Hawks will become a legitimate playoff contender, and not a team that spectacularly flames out in the second round. But all they ever do is the latter, and though they're step ahead of Cincinnati in that they regularly do make the playoffs, they pose no immediate threat to the Miami Heat, Boston Celtics and Chicago Bulls. The bottom line is that although they have a smorgasbord of talented players in their prime, Joe Johnson, Al Horford and Josh Smith are all a tier below the Wade's, Kobe's and Howard's of the world. The Hawks are good enough to compete and maybe win a playoff round, but they simply don't excel at anything and are doomed to wander in NBA limbo for the conceivable future: good enough to get by, but not bad enough to get a relevant draft pick.

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