The election of officers for the NBA Players Association. The players' union chose Knicks center Patrick Ewing to replace teammate Buck Williams as president and selected Washington forward Juwan Howard and Atlanta center Dikembe Mutombo as two of the vice presidents. All three are clients of agent David Falk, who pushed for the abolition of the salary cap during the labor negotiations two years ago. So if the league reopens the collective bargaining agreement next summer, Falk is in a position to wield even greater influence. "If Falk wants to start a revolution," says one Western Conference general manager, "he's got his lieutenants in place."

David Wesley's leaving Boston for Charlotte. It's odd that Rick Pitino, the Celtics' new boss, vowed to make the team a more professional operation, then allowed the two best examples of professionalism on the roster, Wesley and swingman Rick Fox, to leave as free agents. Wesley's departure, in particular, may come back to haunt Pitino. Wesley is the league's most underrated point guard, and with all the talent around him in Charlotte, he could well have a breakthrough season. Chauncey Billups, the point guard Pitino drafted to replace Wesley, had better live up to his billing or his coach will have some explaining to do.

Elimination of the in-the-air timeout. Someone, sometime, must have made a smart play late in a game by calling a timeout as he flew out-of-bounds with the ball, thereby saving an important possession. But the practice got out of hand, with players saving insignificant possessions by wasting timeouts that their teams might later need. Beginning this season, a player can't call timeout if both his feet are in the air and he's on his way out-of-bounds, which is as it should be. Besides being bad strategy most of the time, it just seemed like a cop-out. Good riddance.

—Phil Taylor