Labor deal, free agency among issues that could shape 2009-10

With the possible exception of the NL West, baseball's division races have nothing on the NBA in the dwindling days of September in terms of urgency, suspense and unresolved issues. Here are some biggies looming over the pro hoops landscape as players and coaches prepare for their close-ups on media day:

We never have experienced an NBA season when so many of the game's brightest stars will be on the verge of relocating. This season could feel like the second semester of senior year -- a lot of yearbook signing and locker cleanings -- if the futures of LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh, Kobe Bryant, Amar'e Stoudemire, Joe Johnson Manu Ginobili and on and on overshadow what transpires on the court.

Wade gave a glimpse into what the next 10 months might hold when he was asked on a Chicago radio show about possibly playing for his hometown Bulls in 2010-11. "If I disclose that kind of information, the articles this season aren't as exciting anymore," he said playfully. "Speculation is not the same. You guys ain't going to have nothing to talk about me." Well, at least he didn't go all Carlos Boozer; in fact, Wade then lauded and talked about his loyalty to the Miami Heat organization.

Still, we've seen this stuff play out with isolated free agents, with fans made to feel like the kids in a household of impending divorce. Problem with the NBA, there's no such thing as a trial separation.

President Barack Obama warned Wall Street honchos this week about returning to their "reckless behavior," lest they cripple the entire financial system and alienate a disgusted public. Well, Nobody Aschburner is telling the NBA and its many talented employees the same thing: Don't be greedy, understand the public and tread very lightly. In its simplest terms, that spells N-O L-O-C-K-O-U-T-S.

Any pro sports league that even flirts with the verbiage is risking a grave mistake. Fans are, first and foremost, wage earners and consumers, and they know that hard economic times is the new sheriff in town. It would be felonious, on top of stupid, for the NBA and all its privileged members to threaten their already precarious well-being by fighting over pie slices in public. Let's not get bogged down in the definitions of "strike" vs. "lockout" and where responsibility would lie; they'd all be guilty if they damaged the sport and themselves again or even crept within hours or days of any big, ugly deadlines.

Replacement referees? Commissioner David Stern "shutting down" further talks last week, with the phrase "replacement refs" creeping into conversations for this autumn? That Dec. 15, 2010, cutoff for the owners to extend the collective bargaining agreement through 2011-12 or face a nuclear winter in July 2011? Please. If the owners don't like the red ink on their financial statements now, just try offering up another ruptured, 50-game, asterisk season of the sort that turned 1998-99 in NBA history books into, well, '99.

Fact for the players and refs: An alarming number of teams have been losing money. Fact for the owners: Ticket prices, lavish player contracts and capricious coach firings generate zero sympathy for your side. Likely fact for them all: Some of the screws being tightened this summer on scouts, staffs and the refs have been warning shots, a clear message to the players' union that "next time, it's your turn" to sacrifice. That pay cut taken by Pat Riley, Erik Spoelstra and the Heat coaches in Miami is both a savings and a statement.

Fortunately, unlike Congress these days, there is a plan to fix things: Everyone who makes his or her living from the NBA needs to dwell long and hard -- let's say, a locked room for one full week -- on their next-best employment alternative. How easy it would be to land in this economy, how much fun it would be and how much it would pay, relative to their current gigs. Then and only then are they allowed back at the bargaining table. Presumably pens in hand.

Portland's Greg Oden spotted Kevin Durant 80 pages last fall. That was the difference from where Oden would have appeared in the official NBA Register (pg. 159, between O'Bryant and Okur) and where his entry actually ran (pg. 239), back there in the "Promising Newcomers" section. Oden was a rookie again because he missed all of 2007-08 because knee surgery. Now he's back after a second straight injury-hampered season -- a season in which Durant put even more distance between them as a budding NBA star. The Oklahoma City swingman boosted his numbers pretty much across the board (from 20.3 points to 25.3, 4.4 rebounds to 6.5, 43 percent shooting to 47.6, 28.8 percent from three-point range to 42.2). He got to the line more than all but nine others (524 attempts). He'll be an All-Star once the Thunder start winning about half their games, and some suggest he might crash that James-Bryant-Wade party in talks of NBA supremacy.