NBA houston Rockets

There is a reason nothing stays the same in the NBA. It's never good enough -- even at the top.

What the Los Angeles Lakers learned from the previous four NBA champs – Detroit, Miami, San Antonio and Boston -- was that the status quo will just get you beat the next season.

It's why there have been no repeats lately.

By landing Ron Artest to replace Trevor Ariza -- a huge upgrade -- the Lakers did what others before them didn't do. They got better after they won.

The Boston Celtics aligned their three stars and rode them all the way to a NBA championship in 2008.

The Houston Rockets hoped to do the same when they added unpredictable yet talented Ron Artest with their superstar duo of Tracy McGrady and Yao Ming last summer. But a year later, their dream has unraveled.

McGrady and Yao are sidelined with potentially career-threatening injuries and Artest left Thursday in free agency, heading to the world champion Los Angeles Lakers to join forces with Kobe Bryant for a three-year deal.

Bloggers knee-jerking on the phone + roundtable style = RoundCast.

One of the biggest moves of this free agent season went down on Thursday, when it was learned that Ron Artest will be heading to the Lakers. Matt Moore and I break down what is effectively going to be L.A. trading Trevor Ariza for Artest, as it was also announced that Ariza agreed to a deal with the Rockets.

After plenty of Artest talk, we also review some of the other deals that have gone down, and ponder the fates of some other would-be contenders like the Cavaliers, Pistons, Magic, and Celtics.

Free agent talk at it's finest, after the jump.

As we all attempt to grok Ron Artest: Los Angeles Laker, much will (rightfully) be made of the strange relationship Kobe Bryant and our antihero Artest enjoy. Off the court, the stars claim to be best friends. On the floor, there has been some serious (and recent!) bad blood.

But in real basketball results, Pau Gasol might be the most endangered Laker in all of this. Kobe ain't giving up shots to Ron-Ron ... but someone will have to, unless you think Artest -- who has in the past placed himself in the same league as Kobe and LeBron James -- will shave half his offense to become Trevor Ariza II. I sincerely doubt our protagonist will be so generous. So the Laker attacker who requires the ball to be fed -- Pau -- figures to suffer.

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. That's the mindset that Ron Artest has apparently taken following today's news that he's agreed to join Kobe Bryant in Los Angeles. Artest was instrumental in helping the Rockets take the eventual champion Lakers to seven games during the Western Conference semifinals. Instead of serving as Kobe's antagonist, he'll become Kobe's sidekick.

According to Ken Berger of CBS Sports, Artest met with Lakers owner Dr. Jerry Buss and spoke with Phil Jackson on Thursday before instructing his agent to get a deal done. Details of the agreement -- both the length and the amount -- are still unknown, but from the sounds of it, Artest isn't about to quibble over the details.

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Ron Artest caused a bit of a flurry Wednesday night when he went on his Twitter account and announced he was signing a new deal. Of course it was all a joke/publicity stunt. However, the activity on his twitter account -- particularly the farewell to Houston tweet -- made Artest's agent David Bauman come out and claim that the Twitter account is a fake.

As athletes have been burned by fake accounts before, we have become pretty good at identifying fake Twitter accounts, and it seems Bauman is wrong about the account in question being a fake.

As if Cleveland wasn't already a focal point of the NBA universe, it may be reaching a whole new level of crazy. A brand of crazy NBA fans only know as ... Ron Artest.

The Cleveland Plain Dealer was the first to report on the possibility, but even coming from super-reliable Brian Windhorst, it was still just your run of the mill free agency rumor; a possibility to keep an eye on.

That was until Artest decided to fan the flames a bit by informing the world that his days in Houston were over -- via his Twitter page, naturally.

The Rockets have targeted Orlando center Marcin Gortat as a desirable pick-up. Whether this had been the plan all along, or whether Yao Ming's injury has forced management's hand(s), it doesn't matter. It only matters that the Rockets are seriously serious about landing Gortat, who caddied for Dwight Howard this season.

How serious? Right around midnight, Houston GM Daryl Morey posted a message on Facebook and Twitter imploring Rockets fans to tell Gortat how much they love him.

Not everyone is waiting for 2010 – the mother of all free agent summers – to try to improve their team by throwing big money at the seasoned veterans.

Even in hard economic times, the top players like Carlos Boozer, Hedo Turkoglu and Jason Kidd will leave teams and get their financial reward in other places. The squeeze will be on the lower-level free agents who must settle for minimum or various exceptions.

What hurts this class is that only seven teams really have major room under the salary cap to make something happen, and they usually aren't the NBA's biggest spenders. Unless the free agents stay with their current teams, only Memphis, Oklahoma City, Sacramento, Atlanta, Portland, Toronto and Detroit have major room.

Although there has been plenty of dancing and unofficial talks the last few days, the real dealings can't start until 12:01 a.m. Wednesday.

Here is a breakdown by position of the five most intriguing – and unrestricted – free agents.

The bad gets worse. Rockets team doctor Tom Clanton confirmed to the Houston Chronicle's Jonathan Feigen that Yao Ming's broken foot is so serious it could end the center's career. Earlier Monday, Yahoo!'s Adrian Wojnarowski reported that outside general managers had gotten the sense in dealings with Houston's Daryl Morey that Yao's injury is much worse than anyone had thought, to the point the Rockets could be without their talisman for the entire 2009-10 season.

But the coda from Clanton -- marking this fracture as the most serious injury in Yao's accursed reign -- bodes more doom than one more lost season. As you well know, the Rockets without Yao is like a jazz quartet without the bass or piano. He's not just the face of the franchise. He's the spine, the legs and the arms, too.