Will any of these NBA free agents make an impact?

Trevor Ariza (left) is another player who could make more of an impact during a championship run than Carmelo Anthony. By Keith Allison, via Wikimedia Commons

Since when did NBA free agency become more like college recruiting? All I’ve heard over the past few weeks is how NBA general managers and coaches have been trying to woo free agents their way, with information chaos ensuing. In the world of sports, college recruiting is the only thing I can ever imagine comes close.

I guess it shouldn’t come as a surprise. Players have always talked to one another. At one point in the late 90’s (probably during the Del Harris Lakers years), Shaq talked openly about trying to recruit Kendall Gill based on the perceived need for better outside shooting. Eventually, Rick Fox, Robert Horry and Glenn Rice were added, and the Lakers were off and running.

More recently, the types of moves toward a superteam have been less engineered by a General Manager and more-so by the players themselves. The Celtics got a pair of titles by bringing in Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett to play alongside Paul Pierce. Miami went to four straight finals — winning two of them — with their even bigger “Big 3.”

The best “Big 3” of them all might have been Manu Ginobili, Tim Duncan, and Tony Parker. Those guys have managed to help others rise along with them on a regular basis, and over the course of 10-plus years.

Now, it seems that a “Big 3” model is the one everyone is trying emulate, but they’re doing it the wrong way — through free agency. People forget that Ginobili, Duncan and Parker were all drafted by the Spurs. In case you haven’t been paying attention, the Spurs’ has been the only “Big 3” that has lasted longer than four years.

Hanging onto young talent and building around it is an important thing in sports. The problem with the NBA is that you are either a star or a role player. The problem is that more players get max contracts than deserve them. The Spurs are lucky to have a guy like Danny Green (who doesn’t make max money) on their roster. There aren’t a lot of Rick Fox’s in the NBA anymore — at least not ones who make less than maximum money. I can’t imagine what a guy like Horace Grant would get paid on the open market in today’s NBA, where solid role players think they are superstars and superstars aren’t happy unless they are on a team with other superstars.

I guess what I’m saying is that we can get all worked-up about NBA free agency. We can follow things like the Yahoo! NBA Free Agency Tracker. We can speculate on what effect various moves will have on our favorite teams. In the end, though, things like organizational stability and sound drafting decisions win-out. According to reports, we may see a Carmelo Anthony-Kobe Bryant combination in Los Angeles soon. We also may see Golden State hang onto their core nucleus of young talent and try to win with them.

If the Lakers do get Carmelo to play alongside Kobe, which California team would you most like to be a fan of? Which California team would have the best chance of making a deep playoff run? Would Carmelo to the Lakers really change anything? Would Carmelo signing with anybody really change the NBA landscape that much?

I guess what I’m getting at is that there times when players and free agent moves can change the course of title runs. LeBron James and Chris Bosh signing with Miami was one of those times. Unless LeBron decides to go somewhere else, this off-season will never be as impactful as when LeBron left for Miami, or when Shaq left for Los Angeles.

There are times when you can expect big things — I think this off-season is setting all of us NBA fans up for a letdown.