Today’s the first day NBA teams can start negotiating with other team’s free agents.

One of the things the last collective bargaining agreement did, and it continues on even more so with the new one that took effect at midnight, is that most of the fun has been sucked out of free agent season. It makes little sense for a player to change teams when he can get more money from his own team than any other team can offer him. It was a tremendous move for the NBA because more of their stars stay on one team longer than in other sports. Sure there’s still movement, but not like baseball and not like the salary cap mess that NFL offseasons have become.

That’s what hurts and helps a team like the Bulls. In an ideal world they’d go out and spend some free agent money on a big shooting guard and a power forward. But they don’t have any money to spend. They have the $5 million veteran’s exception to use to find a player.

How it helps the Bulls is that they are at almost no risk of losing Eddy Curry or Tyson Chandler. In fact, there’s more risk of Eddy suffering a Big Mac induced coronary than there is of him going to play for Cleveland. The Bulls can match any offer another team gives Eddy or Tyson and if either player signs an offer sheet with another team it’s to the benefit of the Bulls who will pay them less than they would have had to if they’d given them those wonderful “full-boat” contracts that Jerry Krause always talked about. The other teams can only make offers to Tyson and Eddy that are $20 million less than what the Bulls’ maximum would be.

But because of that, you won’t see Ray Allen or Michael Redd (two guys who could really help the Bulls and a dozen other teams) seriously test the waters. They might both go out and shop around, but even as unrestricted free agents, they will get more money to stay than to leave.

There are some players whose teams don’t want them back, or who want out so badly they’ll take less to go away. Sharif Abdur Rahim has had enough of Portland for instance. That’s so well known that little Lawrence Frank flew to his house last night at midnight to try to convince him to sign with the Nets for the veteran’s exception. The Mavericks are set to use a one-time loophole in the new CBA to dump Michael Finley without a cap penalty. He’d probably love to come home to Chicago and if healthy would be a great fit in the Bulls both offensively and defensively. Only, there’s almost no chance of keeping him healthy, which is why the Mavs are dumping him to begin with.

Antoine Walker will be back on the market because the Celtics got tired of him even faster the second time around than they did the first time. At the trade deadline I thought the Bulls should go after Antoine because his unique ability to fill two of the Bulls’ needs (scoring and rebounding) while playing big forward would be a nice shot in the arm for the last couple months of the season. But he’s probably not a guy you want to sign to a three or four year deal. The idea was that Scott Skiles’ could tough-love him into cutting down on the massive amount of three pointers he hoists in the short-term. Long term, I think Antonie and Scott would try to kill each other.

The Bulls announced their summer league roster yesterday and it, like everybody else’s summer league roster is full of bums. Former second round draft pick Mario Austin is on the team and he’s got an outside shot (very outside, like outside in the rain) of making the team next year. Pale stiff Jared Reiner is on the summer league squad. So is a guy the Bulls wanted to draft (if they’d had a pick), UNC-Charlotte guard Eddie Basden who reminds some of former Bull (very briefly) and current Spur Bruce Bowen. The good news for Eddie is that he reminds people of Bruce now, not the sorry-assed player he was coming out of college.

Former no-shoot UConn point guard Taliek Brown is on the squad (he’s basically Chris Duhon with less defensive ability) as is former Cincinnati point guard Kenny Satterfield. In other words, if Austin or Basden doesn’t make it, nobody’s going to.