| 02 July 2010
The NBA free agency scene is a puzzle that's extremely difficult to figure out. We get clues about where someone is going one day and another clue about how he is staying put the next day. Basically free agency is one big crossword puzzle.
If you're a fan of crosswords then you understand the basic concepts to try and complete. You go through each puzzle and look at the clues and answer the ones that you are positive are correct. The same type basic concepts apply to free agency.
Once we get the correct answer on where someone is going then we can fill in that answer with pen. Now that we have one answer we can start using part of it to try and solve the other clues. Bosh is definitely going to opt-out is an answer we're certain of, so we take that info and try then use it to try and determine the places he would go. We look at the rosters, the coaches, the cap room; basically anything that can give us more information to try and solve the free agency puzzle.
In most crossword puzzles you usually have one or two big answers that can really crack open the entire puzzle for you and in the NBA's case that is LeBron James and Chris Bosh. Once we can finally fill in their team's name in pen then we'll be ready to figure out the rest of it.
I think at the end of this free agency we will all look back and realize that we shouldn't have been surprised by much of it. Most of the time the answers that seemed so difficult to fill in at the time are usually the ones where once you see the results you realize you should have known it.
Since the NBA free agency is one big crossword puzzle, I thought what better way to showcase the parallel then by making an interactive one that you can try for yourself. Remember that once you get some of the big answers out of the way, the other ones should come easy.
