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If you were even remotely surprised that Elton Brand left the Los Angeles Clippers at the alter for a bigger payday (a five-year, $79.8 million contract) from the mediocre Philadelphia 76ers, then you, my friend, are a moron.

That because, as a general rule, professionals athletes will almost always take the money and run. To me, this is as newsworthy as Britney Spears leaving the house without panties or an Olsen twin with an eating disorder. The fact that people are pretending to be shocked is absurd. Riddle me this Batman, if the guy wanted to truly stay with the Clippers, then why did he opt out of his contract in the first place?

And while we’re on the subject, if you think Gilbert Arenas did something noble by “giving money back to the organization,” then you too, are a moron. Arenas didn’t do anything. He was played perfectly by Wiz general manager “Big” Ernie Grunfeld, who was able to stroke Gilbert’s ego by offering a max contract when free agency kicked off at 12:01 a.m., but also put heat on Agent Zero by saying, “If you take the max deal, we won’t be able to bring in another player for the next several years.”

If Arenas was really giving the Wizards some sort of hometown discount, he’d have taken half the money he did and truly put them in a position to build a championship caliber roster. As previously stated on this blog, this team is capable of making the playoffs and nothing more. Arenas, Caron Butler and Antawn Jamison are solid players and fun to watch, but they’re never going to be a threat to the handful of teams actually able to contend for a championship year in and year out. Winning teams score points in the paint and play sound defense, two areas this team has no interest in improving upon. But with the bar being set so low after years of Wes Unseld at the wheel, anything Grunfeld does is an improvement – including the annual one-and-done playoff routine the Wiz and Cleveland Cavaliers have worked out.

Ivan Carter of The Washington Post is getting it done.

On the first night of free agency, Carter earned every penny they pay him when he cranked out a blog post at roughly 3 a.m. shedding some light on the initial craziness. I highly suggest you click the link to read the posting, but here are a few highlights:

– Baron Davis opted out of the final year of his contract with the Golden State Warriors, which would have paid him nearly $18 million. Five hours later, Carter reported that word on the street is that Davis will join my man, Elton Brand, on the Clippers next season.

– Within 30 minutes of the start of free agency, the Warriors, who now have money to spend, put in a call to Gilbert Arenas and offered him a maximum-level contract of five years and more than $100 million. Guess it’s safe to say the Warriors regret ever letting Gil leave in the first place.

– After locking up Antawn Jamison, Wizards general manager Ernie Grunfeld offered Arenas a maximum six year, $124 million deal. Grunfeld apparently also laid it all on the line, telling Gilbert that if he takes the max deal, then the Wiz offseason is essentially over. There will be no money to retain Roger Mason Jr., or to pick up any other pieces to round out the roster.

– The final nugget from Carter is that the Sacramento Kings, who haven’t been noteworthy since Chris Webber was still good, apparently want Agent Zero so badly that they’re allegedly willing to trade away their entire team if need be to make room for him.

That’s a lot of good stuff, especially considering that this is a weak free agent class and the only other news of the day is that Tiger Woods won’t be coming to town.

Do you remember the Underpants Gnomes from South Park? They’re memorable because the had a three-phase business plan that they were convinced would make them lots of cash. Here’s pretty much how it broke down:

1. Collect underpants
2. ?
3. Profit

I bring this up because it reminds me of the situation the Washington Wizards currently find themselves in. I’m not making any bold statements by saying their current roster revolves around three players — Gilbert Arenas, Antawn Jamison and Caron Butler. And this hasn’t been a bad business plan, seeing as this team has made the NBA playoffs in each of the last four seasons, something previous incarnations of the Bullets/Wiz Kids couldn’t always say. But this offseason, general manager Ernie Grunfeld has to make a decision. Should he re-sign Arenas and Jamison, both of which are free agents, or should he take the team in a different direction. Compounding matters, Agent Zero has no agent, and has said that if the Wiz would like to keep him in town, they must first bring back Jamison.

So essentially, Ernie’s looking at this business plan:

1. Re-sign Antawn Jamison.
2. ?
3. Re-sign Gilbert Arenas.

We put the question mark there because nothing is certain with Gilbert. He could wake up tomorrow, decide to flip another coin and take a mid-level exemption to play in Toronto. Seriously, nothing should surprise folks about this guy anymore. And more importantly, what is Big Ern trying to accomplish with this team? If he wants an entertaining team that can make the playoffs, but get bounced in the first round annually, then it makes sense to bring both Arenas and Jamison back. If he plans on actually trying to win a championship … well … this ain’t the team to bet on.

Scanning the pages of the Worldwide Leader in Sports, they’re reporting that the Wiz have basically wrapped up Jamison to a new four-year, $50 million deal. I have no problem with that. On a team of hotdogs and showboats, he’s the voice of reason. He’s the guy who would rather his team do less talking and more winning. A knucklehead like Andray Blatche needs a role model like Jamison in his ear (as opposed to a hooker in his ear). I’m just not sure Arenas is the answer. Call me crazy, but when an entire team plays one way, and the superstar plays another … well, that’s not a good thing. I’d work the phone and pull off a sign and trade with the Clippers for Elton Brand. Both players are in the same salary ballpark and both are coming off of injuries. The difference, Brand gets guaranteed points in the paint – something this team of jump shooters sorely needs.

Arenas is talented, charming and fun to watch, but he’s also a coach’s nightmare. The Clippers aren’t going to win any championships, so he’d be perfect back in California, where he could battle Kobe Bryant and the Lakers for most entertaining act in town. Meanwhile, the Wizards could use Brand and the Wizards players who actually buy into a team concept to try and advance to the second round of the playoffs. It’s so crazy, it just may work.

The Washington Wizards used their first round draft pick, 18th overall, to select JaVale McGee, out of Nevada. He’s a seven footer, who weighs in at around 240 lbs., and apparently has the wingspan of a Buick. Doing a little homework, I’ve seen him compared to Portland Trail Blazers forward Channing Frye and Los Angeles Lakers center Andrew Bynum, although Bynum outweighs him by roughly 35 lbs.

“Very talented,” said Jay Bilas, when describing McGee during ESPN’s NBA draft coverage. “He’s got good shot mechanics, he can step away and hit the little soft turnaround jumper and he uses the glass really well. He needs to move his feet a little bit better, but he’s got a lot of potential.”

And even though the panel of experts covering the draft considered McGee to the Wiz a little bit of a reach (Chad Ford had him ranked the 26th-best prospect), basketball apologist Michael Wilbon loved the pick. Not surprisingly, I don’t agree with him.

Wilbon wrote that getting a legit big man was priority number one because “anybody who spent any time watching the Washington Wizards over the last four years could see the Wizards weren’t big enough, strong enough or physically tough enough to be a serious playoff contender.”

While McGee excels as a shot blocker, (he told one beat writer, “If I were in a video game right now, shotblocking would be a 90”) one of his biggest weaknesses is his one-on-one defense. On top of that, the words “project” and “raw” are word commonly used to describe McGee.

The Wiz don’t need a guy who can help them three or four years from now. They have a stack of big bodies, including Brendan Haywood, Etan Thomas, Andray Blatche, Darius Songalia and Oleksiy Pecherov. What they need is either a back-up point guard or someone who is an above-average defender (or best-case scenario, a back-up point guard who plays above-average defense). D.C. is full of projects (in more ways than one). They could have done without McGee, who is described by his hometown newspaper as not ready for prime time. Sure, he’s got potential, but as a wise man once told me — “Potential is just another way of sayin’, ain’t done shit yet.”

That nifty photo at the top of this entry is a shot I took earlier this year of Georgetown center Roy Hibbert, who was drafted one spot before the Wizards were on the clock. If the hometown team was going to have to coach up a youngster with potential, it would have been much more enjoyable if it were Hibbert.

By in large, the NBA is doing very well these days. Players aren’t rushing into the stands to throw down with the fans, referees aren’t wagering on games they’re calling and teams are once again capable of scoring more than 80 points a game. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t areas in which the game and the league couldn’t improve upon.

Call traveling. We know you want LeBron James to be great, but let’s not make a mockery of the game we love so bad. At this point in his young career, referees let King James get away with so much that it only takes him three dibbles to go coast to coast on a basketball court.

Don’t take the Sonics away from Seattle. The home of Pearl Jam and Starbucks was awarded a basketball team in 1966, and the Sonics began their inaugural season the following season. Call me crazy, but more than 40 years of history tells me the they deserve to keep the franchise. If you want a team in Oklahoma City or wherever, that’s fine. But leave the Sonics alone.

Fix trades. When trades become more about a player’s “expiring contract” and less about the actual player, then there’s something wrong with the system. Nuf’ said.

Suspend players who flop. It’s embarrassing watching some of the best athletes alive resort to these kind of shenanigans, but I guarantee that if the league suspended floppers one game for every infraction this new trend would go away in a heartbeat. Otherwise, you’d see Manu Ginobli sitting out more games per year than notoious hothead Rasheed Wallace — all because Manu hits the deck like Hillary Clinton just ordered a hit on him every time he comes in contact with another player.

Ditch the WNBA. At this point, the only rational explanation why the league even admits the WNBA is still in existence would be David Stern’s ego. Let’s not forget, almost everything he’s done for the league has worked out (expanding from 23 to 30 franchises, televising games in more than 200 countries, making the league a ton of money globally). So I’m sure when he set out to help the NBA’s “special” little sister, he thought his name alone would put them on the map. Instead, what he got was an overwhelming “no thanks” from basketball fans who didn’t care if “she got game.”

And finally, make kids stay in college for at least two seasons. Just think about how much money O.J. Mayo would have if he were at USC for one more year. His parents would never have to work again, and NBA teams might (gasp!) actually be able to draft more than four or five players who could contribute during their rookie season.

We officially live in a “no fun” world — where every kid in the league gets a trophy regardless of whether their team wins a game or not and character-building games like dodgeball are almost universally banned. So it should come as no surprise that moments after Papa John’s put together some timely t-shirts with LeBron James’ number and the name “crybaby,” they issued an apology for offending people.

Papa John’s will sell Cleveland residents a large, one-topping pizza for 23 cents this week, and will also donate $10,000 to the Cavaliers Youth Fund. I realize this is a no-brainer for them because they get a ton of free publicity, but this is not cool. Either have the stones to call someone out or don’t. This is no better than playing both sides of the feud — sticking whichever side is winning.

Sports are all about trash talking, and it should be a good thing if D.C. establishments want to get in the game and support the local franchises. But don’t wuss out and bail the second you get a phonecall complaining (even if it’s from the commissioner David Stern). You had the grapefruits to think up the t-shirts and to have them made. Stand by your decision and tell Cleveland to, once again, quit crying.