Update: My timing is ridiculously bad. Basketball 24/7, which has been on this story for weeks, just broke the news that Great Britain Basketball ponied up for insurance -- Deng will play!

Luol Deng has planned to represent his homeland by anchoring Great Britain's 2012 Olympic basketball team for quite some time. Unfortunately, those plans hit a snag, thanks largely to his brand spanking new $71 million extension. From Brian Hanley of the Chicago Sun-Times (via Blog a Bull):

MetLife, the NBA's insurer which covers the top 150 salaries in the league under a group policy, has the right to exclude 14 high-risk players every year.

Decisions are based on the player's injury history and the amount of money remaining on his contract. Deng came under MetLife scrutiny when he signed a $71 million, six-year contract at the start of this month. It is the fourth-highest contract in the NBA in terms of outstanding money.

MetLife subsequently used an MRI scan taken last November when Deng, 23, injured his back and missed three games to exclude him from the coverage.

Because MetLife has excluded Deng, he can't play in a qualifying tournament for the Olympics next summer without additional insurance, and as you'd expect, a policy to insure a $71 million contract isn't exactly cheap. How expensive? Try $500,000 a summer for each of the next three years. All told, that's about half of the national team's entire budget.

Is Zach Randolph suddenly a wanted man? After the Cavs reportedly showed interest in the big man last week, Ronald Tillery of the Commercial Appeal (via Knicks Fix) reports the Grizzlies have been talking about acquiring the pudgy power forward, as well.

Who would Memphis give up? Tillery says that Darko Milicic is available, and considering Darko's contract ($7 million this year, $7.5 million next) expires just in time for the summer of 2010, you have to figure the Knicks would be interested.

Even though Darko won't even make half as much as Randolph ($14.66 million) this year, an even one-for-one trade is actually be possible given how much room Memphis has under the salary cap. Given how frugal the Grizzlies tend to operate, though, you have to imagine they'd insist on New York taking at least one other bad contract -- Marko Jaric ( $6.6 million), perhaps?

Randolph is certainly a solid low-post scoring presence, but he also has an outsized personality that might not be the best influence in a young locker room. (And with Antoine Walker already on the roster, the role of "overpaid and perpetually grumpy veteran" is already filled.)

I could see Randolph falling into line on a veteran squad with an established pecking order where his production could put a contending team over the top (Cleveland, anyone?), but putting him on yet another losing team seems like a recipe for disaster.

Every NBA team has a captain, but I guarantee no one takes the role more seriously than Jameer Nelson.

For the third year in a row, Nelson flew practically the entire Magic roster to his hometown of Philadelphia for "Building Magic," a week-long team-building retreat he puts on with zero input from team management. In addition to planning training sessions and nights out on the town, Nelson also arranged a talk from Marc Isenberg, an author who helps athletes make smarter financial decisions.

It's obvious that Nelson leaned on his teammates to make this a priority -- everyone made the trip but Dwight Howard, who's a little preoccupied trying to win Gold in Beijing, and Hedo Turkoglu, who's still in his home country of Turkey. And not only that, Nelson foots the bill for the entire thing, including plane tickets, hotel rooms, meals and training sessions.

The Boston Celtics signed Darius Miles to a non-guaranteed contract today, a mere 860 days since he last appeared in an NBA game. Does this make him officially relevant again? Not yet -- he still has to survive training camp cuts. From the Boston Globe:

"He's coming to training camp and he's going to try to prove that he can make the team," said Celtics general manager Danny Ainge. "He has come in for a couple of workouts. He'll try to make the team somehow."

That's hardly a ringing endorsement, but as Henry Abbott notes, the fact that they gave him a non-guaranteed contract rather than a simple training camp invitation suggests Miles can still play. We'll have to wait and see in the exhibition season if that's really the case.

Even if he makes the team, though, he'll have to sit out the first 10 games for apparently testing positive for Phentermine, an appettite suppressant, at some point over the last two years. Phentermine is a controlled substance, which makes it illegal to possess without a prescription, and is banned by the NBA's drug policy, which Lindsey Hunter found out the hard way in May 2007.

It was bound to happen. When you put players on the floor and have them going full speed, injuries are going to amass, the same as any other sport. When it's players fighting for the pride of their countries, it's even more likely. But man, Bucks fans have to be asking "Yeah, but why did it have to happen to us?"

Less than a month after inking a five year,$60 million contract extension, Andrew Bogut was bravely trying to fight off the American horde pounding at his country's Olympic basketball doorstep. And in the process, he ended up twisting his ankle while trying to stop Kobe Bryant from getting to the basket (not an enviable task in its own right), and the result was him hobbling off the floor. No big deal, these things happen all the time. But a report out of the Salt Lake Tribune indicates that Bogut said he suspects the two words you don't want to hear after the game.

Ligament damage.

He's scheduled for an MRI tomorrow, and we hope everything works out well. And hey, maybe it will. After all, this is the Bucks, and they always seem to catch the breaks, right? Right? Aw, man ...

Oh, Zero. How you manage to always keep our attention.

Gilbert Arenas has come to be known as one of the most entertaining NBA players in media. He's always got something to say, and most of the time, it's interesting, even if it's a little played out from time to time. He's a character, and in a league that needs them, especially ones that stay out of trouble, he's a blessing of sorts. So it should come as no surprise that there has been discussion of a Gilbert Arenas reality show. In fact, Arenas was kind enough to talk about the idea that been broached with him on a recent appearance on the Big O and Dukes Show (via RealClearSports). Here's what Gil had to say:

"Ya know, it's funny. I got a -- you ever seen the show, 'Rob and Big?' The producers want to do a reality show on me -- the first NBA player to do a reality show. But then I thought about it -- I was like, my life is really not that exciting. Ya know, so, I'm thinking about it, because, ya know, I have players like Nick [Young], who's goofy, so we can do paintball shooting and see who can get hurt on the grotto jumping into the pool..."

So it definitely sounds like there's been some serious talk. And for all of Arenas' wishy-washiness about blogs and attention and whatnot, he loves being in the spotlight. And I'm the first to admit. If he's got a reality show, I'm setting the DVR. Maybe he can take Kwame Brown cake shopping. Or take DeShawn Stevenson to figure out he's not as good as LeBron James. What am I saying? I'd watch it just to see Caron Butler be Caron Butler.

(HT: Awful Announcing)

Mike D'Antoni's vaunted offense favors fast, athletic big men who can get up and down the court in a hurry and play above the rim (see: Marion, Shawn; and Stoudemire, Amare) -- in other words, players that are the exact opposite of Zach Randolph and Eddy Curry.

Mike Brown's (lamentable) offense is, well, barely existent. Despite featuring the most exciting player in the game (see: James, LeBron), the Cavs play at an absolute snail's pace, and last year failed to score as many points as they gave up over the course of the entire season.

Do you see a potential match? The internet does: one day after Bob Finnan of the Morning Journal cryptically suggested that "the Cavs could be talking to the Knicks about a big man," Bill Ingram of HOOPSWORLD and Alan Hahn of Newsday followed up by brainstorming trades sending Randolph to the Cavs.

Sigh. The trainwreck is narrowly avoided.

Lang Whitaker for SLAM, who kind of, sort of knows these things, is reporting the Hawks will match the $58 million offer sheet tendered by the Memphis Grizzlies for forward Josh Smith. The team is "happy to have Josh return as a member of the Hawks." So there goes the Conley-Mayo-Gay-Smith-Gasol dream. Thanks for nothing, Atlanta. See you in two years when Smith demands a trade after the rest of the roster follows Josh Childress' lead and abandons ship.

Just kidding.

For Hawks fans, this is a reason to get off the bridge railing. The Grizzlies actually did them a favor, once they recovered from the mild heart attack, by giving the Hawks an offer sheet they could afford, significantly less than other free agents have signed this summer who are arguably inferior to Smith. So make sure to thank the next Grizzlies fan you meet, Atlantans. Without them, someone may have been able to reach the comparatively low threshold necessary to pry Smith away from the dysfunctional front office in the ATL. So the Hawks are .500, losing Childress to Greece, keeping Smith on the relative cheap. The Hawks needed this one, badly, and they got it.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled late summer boredom and Olympic coverage.

There's still plenty of time between now and the start of the season, but Ben Gordon sounds about ready to give up on his pipe dream of being the highest-paid Bull. Actually, he sounds ready to give up on being a member of the Bulls at any salary. From the Hartford Courant:

Gordon said negotiations are at a stalemate with the Bulls, and he doesn't know if he'll be back in Chicago for a fifth season.

"Right now, honestly, it doesn't look like it," Gordon said. "I think a decision is going to be made soon. ... I've had a great time here. I was fortunate enough to play on a team that made the playoffs; I led the team in scoring three of the four seasons I've been here. It's been a good experience, but we haven't been able to come to any common ground. It's just part of the business. You have to do what you have to do sometimes."

His pessimism is curious, especially considering his only trump cards consist of a) signing Chicago's qualifying offer and becoming an unrestricted free agent next summer, or b) signing with a European team.

If he wants to stay in the NBA, he'll have to find an interested suitor to agree to a sign-and-trade that the Bulls deem acceptable, which is easier said than done, especially when you consider the complicated Base Year Compensation rule (not to mention the fact that, you know, most teams aren't chomping at the bit to bend over backwards to sign undersized two-guards).

How will this play out? Mark my words: Gordon will eventually sign the qualifying offer, only to realize next summer that he never should have turned down the Bulls' five-year, $50 million offer from 2007.

Well, now. And we thought things were going to quiet down here in the NBA stateside with the Olympics. I guess we thought wrong.

The Commercial Appeal is reporting that the Memphis Grizzlies have extended a $58 million offer to Atlanta Hawks stat-stuffing forward Josh Smith. The length of the contract is not available at this time, but when we have it, you'll have it. The consensus is that it's a 5 year deal for $11.6 a year, average. Some think it's a bit low.

The Hawks have seven days to match the offer.

This puts quite an interesting cap on the end of an already wild free agency. There's been a lot of speculation about Smith this offseason, from Philadelphia's courting of him before signing Elton Brand, to reports that he's unwilling to return to the Hawks as long as Mike Woodson is head coach, to why no one had even taken a shot at him in restricted free agency. We're about to find out just how committed Josh Smith is to Atlanta, and how committed Atlanta is to Josh Smith.

The conceptual lineup of Mike Conley Jr., O.J. Mayo, Rudy Gay, Josh Smith, and either Marc Gasol or Darko Milicic is enough to send fans of athletic squads into epilepsy. It might not be a playoff squad, but it's entertaining as all get out. With Javaris Crittenton, Kyle Lowry, Hakim Warrick, and Darrell Arthur, if Memphis pulls this off, they're going to have done exactly what they needed to with their rebuilding project.