The Gary Payton Rule

Jerry Stackhouse to the New Jersey Nets in a potential deal involving Jason Kidd and Devin Harris?

A possibility if both parties cooperate and crunch up the right figures.

Stackhouse being released and the Mavericks welcoming him back with open arms?

Yet another possibility, given Stackhouse's relationship with Mark Cuban and the Mavericks organization.

So right now, this is all said in a hypothetical tone.

Let's say it did happen, the trade goes through and the Nets were even nice enough to release Stackhouse on or before March 1, 2008 in order for him to still be eligible for the playoffs.

Wait! Wait! Wait!

Enter. The Gary Payton Rule.

The aforementioned rule is unofficially named after then Boston Celtic-Atlanta Hawk-Boston Celtic Gary Payton when he was moved a few years ago (2005) by Boston in order to re-acquire Employee #8 Antoine Walker (whom they chose not to resign anyway at the end of the season). The newly acquire point guard was immediately released by the Hawks and the next thing you know, three days later, Payton is back in Bean Town.

Now those leprechauns sure earn their pay over at Boston.

So back to the "Gary Payton Rule."

Since the summer of 2005, players who are traded and then waived by their new team are forced to wait 30 days before re-signing (while only a spell of 20 days during the off-season) with the team that had just let them go.

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Employee #8 takes his game over to the Twin Cities

Yahoo! Sports reported that the Miami Heat and the Minnesota Timberwolves have consummated a five-player deal highlighted by Antoine Walker leaving his conditioning problems and moving out West in exchange for one-time Heat player Ricky Davis and center Mark Blount (who both came from the Boston Celtics in a trade deadline deal almost two years ago).

The Boston Globe wrote:

"The Celtics sent Ricky Davis, Mark Blount, Marcus Banks, Justin Reed, and two conditional second-round picks to the Timberwolves on January 27, 2006 in exchange for Michael Olowokandi, Wally Szczerbiak, Dwayne Jones of the development league, and a conditional first-round pick likely to be exercised in 2008."

While for these same two players (Davis and Blount), the Heat got the aforementioned Antoine Walker, third-string center Michael Doleac, forward Wayne Simien (who I know is there, but never really seen play) and a conditional first-round draft pick.

Gosh, it's either the Mutt and Jeff combo of Ricky Davis and Mark Blount isn't worth that much anymore (Davis is projected to be the Heat's third scoring option, while Blount should provide help to the trio of Shaquille O'Neal, Alonzo Mourning, and Udonis Haslem) or this is just another fine move by Timberwolves General Manager (Wikipedia.org lists him as Assistant GM) Kevin McHale to dump salary because I don't think the T-Wolves fans would love the idea of trouping to the Target Center to watch the "spectacular" veteran tandem of Antoine Walker and Juwan Howard fill up the box scores every night.

Certainly, the University of Florida's Corey Wayne Brewer, who the Timberwolves drafted this year, would be more entertaining to watch in their frontcourt.

I mean, come on! They did, once-upon-a-time have the talented Kevin Garnett...

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