There has been so much focus on the big names in free agency that sometimes the complementary players are overlooked. Here’s a rundown of some of the mid-level names that have changed teams this summer:

Raymond Felton signs with the Knicks. (2/$15 M)
When life gives you lemons… Donnie Walsh managed to sign Amare Stoudemire, but struck out on LeBron, Wade and Bosh. So instead of overpaying for another big-name free agent, or even re-signing David Lee, Walsh signed a capable point guard in Felton to run Mike D’Antoni’s up-tempo system. Most importantly, he negotiated a short, two-year contract (with a possible third season as a team option) to allow the pursuit of Chris Paul if/when he becomes a free agent in two years. Felton averaged 12-4-6 and shot 46% from the field for the Bobcats last season. His numbers are sure to rise in New York assuming he gets the same run (33 mpg).

Jermaine O’Neal signs with the Celtics. (2/$12 M)
Rasheed Wallace is retiring, so the C’s needed to shore up its front line in order to contend with Dwight Howard, Carlos Boozer and Chris Bosh in the playoffs. O’Neal isn’t the player he used to be, but he averaged 14-7 and shot a career high (53%) for the Heat last season. He’s a big body and decent defender and he’s capable of hitting a face up jumper when given the opportunity. As long as he holds up, this is a nice signing by Boston.

Kyle Korver signs with the Bulls. (3/$15 M)
Chicago lacked three-point shooting last season and Korver fills that need. He hit almost 54% from deep last season and is a career 41% shooter. He should be a nice fit as a spot up shooter with Derrick Rose and Carlos Boozer, but needs to shoot 40%+ from 3PT to justify a starting spot. He’s better defensively as a small forward than as a shooting guard, so it’s not clear how he and Luol Deng will play together. I expected Korver to get a full mid-level deal in this market so the Bulls got him for a relatively good price.

Tiago Splitter signs with the Spurs. (3/$11 M)
This deal happened rather quietly, but San Antonio finally has its 2007 first round draft pick under contract… at a bargain. Splitter is a 25-year-old, 6-11 center who was named the MVP of the Spanish League last season. He averaged 16-7 and shot 58% from the field in 28 minutes a game. While he’s not a great rebounder, he’s good defensively and can take some of the scoring load off of Tim Duncan. At under $4 million a season, he’s a steal.

Al Harrington signs with the Nuggets. (5/$34 M)
Harrington’s 18-6 line from last season needs to be taken with a grain of salt since he was playing for a pretty bad Knicks team that played at a very high pace. The Nuggets outbid the Mavs for Harrington’s services and Denver had to overpay to lock him up. The Nuggets will be without Kenyon Martin and Chris Andersen to start the season and Nene is always a threat to miss time with injury, so Harrington gives the team a big body who can score when called upon. He’s 30, so this contract is not going to look very good in 2-3 years, but such is the market for big men.

Part 2: Tyson Chandler, Brendan Haywood, Tony Allen, Zydrunas Ilgauskas, Kyle Lowry, Steve Blake

Memphis GM Gerald Wallace took a lot of heat for trading Pau Gasol to the Lakers. But if we’ve learned anything in the past few days, it’s that Wallace was simply a man ahead of his time.

On Tuesday, we learned that the Bucks agreed to trade Richard Jefferson to the Spurs for Bruce Bowen, Kurt Thomas and Amir Johnson. (Fabricio Oberto was part of the original deal, but San Antonio sent him to Detroit for Johnson, who was then sent to Milwaukee.)

Regular readers know I’m a Bucks fan, and I spent the last couple of days grumbling on the Sports Bubbler message boards about how we didn’t get anything in return for Jefferson, who is still a pretty good player. When Wallace traded away Gasol, at least he got Javaris Crittenton (who was considered a prospect with upside at the time) and Pau’s brother, Marc, who turned out to be a productive center for the Grizzlies.

Then I wake up today to see that the Cavs and Suns have agreed to go through with that long-rumored trade that will send Shaq to Cleveland for salary cap relief. Who do the Suns get in return? A retiree (Ben Wallace), a bench player with a partially guaranteed contract (Sasha Pavlovic), some cash and a second round pick.

This is the going rate for a Third Team All-NBA center these days.

We knew that this summer had the potential to be a rough one for free agents, but it’s a little surprising to see that good players like O’Neal and Jefferson could be had for virtually nothing. Bucks owner Herb Kohl and Suns owner Robert Sarver realize that their clubs aren’t legitimate contenders, so they don’t see the point in paying the luxury tax just for the privilege of being knocked out in the first round of the playoffs. What kind of an effect these moves have on season ticket purchases remains to be seen.

The bottom line is that if a team is willing to spend, there has never been a better time to acquire talent. You’re not going to get someone like Caron Butler, who plays for a (pretend) contender and has a reasonable contract, but you can get Jefferson, who is overpaid and is on a mediocre team that is up against the luxury tax. And the older the player, the more likely he’s available. Teams aren’t going to give up good players that are in their early- or mid-twenties because the plan is to rebuild before they’re over the hill.

So who might be on the move for a bag of peanuts and some salary cap flexibility? How about Tracy McGrady, Baron Davis, Chris Kaman, Marcus Camby, Vince Carter, Tyson Chandler, Amare Stoudemire, Jermaine O’Neal, Michael Redd, Ray Allen or Rip Hamilton?

Truth be told, a team like the Suns isn’t going to give the youngish Stoudemire away for cap flexibility alone. But as the price of a star goes down, the price of superstar goes down as well.

It promises to be an interesting summer.

- SLAM says that Rasheed Wallace will retire if he doesn’t get at least $8 million to play next season. By my count, there are seven teams — Memphis, Atlanta, Oklahoma City, Sacramento, Toronto, Portland and Minnesota — other than the Pistons that could give him that kind of money. Who would be interested in ‘Sheed? I’m guessing only teams that are on the verge of competing for a title and have a need for a big man with championship experience. The only “contenders” on that list are Atlanta and Portland, and neither seems to be a good fit. Portland already has a slender sharp-shooting big man in LaMarcus Aldridge, and the Hawks will likely spend their cap space on re-signing Mike Bibby (though that isn’t necessarily the right thing to do). So if Portland and Atlanta pass on Wallace, someone will offer him a mid-level deal (~$5.8 M) and he’ll have to decide if it’s worth it. Any team in the league can sign him for that, so if he lowers his price, demand will rise.

- Dwyane Wade reiterated that he will consider signing an extension once he’s eligible to on July 1st, but that he hasn’t given the idea much thought. The Heat would have a ton of cap space this summer had they held onto Shawn Marion and his expiring contract, but they instead traded for Jermaine O’Neal whom they thought would help their chances in the playoffs over the next two seasons. In the end, I doubt D-Wade will leave Miami. He’s a star there, the weather is great, and with Michael Beasley and a yet to be named big man (Chris Bosh, Amare Stoudemire) to be signed in the summer of 2010, the Heat have a good foundation for success. To me, the big question is whether or not Beasley can play small forward. If so, then the team should try to put together a starting lineup of Mario Chalmers, Wade, Beasley, Udonis Haslem and either Bosh or Amare.

- Speaking of Wade, the Bulls have put themselves in the position to offer him a max deal next summer if he decides not to sign an extension this summer. But that means that they have to let Ben Gordon go and would need to avoid spending more than $8-$10 million total on any other contracts for the 2010-11 season to have the cap room necessary to compete for Wade. Given his ties to the city, Chicago seems like the biggest threat to Miami for Wade’s services, and with a supporting cast that would feature Derrick Rose, Kirk Hinrich, Luol Deng and Joakim Noah, Wade might find the Bulls to be appealing alternative.

- The same article mentions that Kirk Hinrich may be a target of the Blazers, as they are looking for an upgrade at point guard. If I’m running the Bulls, I’m not letting Hinrich go. He’s a great defender and a good shooter, and if the choice is between Hinrich and Ben Gordon, and I have Luol Deng returning from injury, an emerging wing (John Salmons) and an up-and-coming point guard (Derrick Rose), then I’d rather have the versatile Hinirch than the gunner Gordon. From Portland’s POV, Hinrich would be a great addition. His contract continues to decrease over the next three seasons and is reasonable for a starter-caliber point. He’s not a playmaker like Chris Paul or Deron Williams, but with Brandon Roy playing in the same backcourt, he’d be a great complement.

- There’s a rumor floating around that the Jazz actually hope that Carlos Boozer opts out so that they can afford to re-sign Paul Millsap. If he does in fact opt out, there are six teams — Memphis, Atlanta, Detroit, Oklahoma City, Sacramento and Toronto — that could offer him a contract starting at $10 million per season. He’d be walking away from a guaranteed $12.3 million, so he may be expecting more. He’d actually be a pretty good fit on all those teams, so there may be some significant competition for his services. He’s only 27 and is in his prime, but he has been hampered by injuries throughout his career.

With the trade deadline in the rear view mirror and players tied to their current teams at least until the summer, it’s a good time to take a look ahead at the free agent class of 2009. Given the state of the economy and how so many teams are saving up for the class of 2010, some are suggesting that this summer’s free agency could be a “nuclear winter” of sorts, no pun intended. The salary cap and luxury tax thresholds are likely to decline for the first time in years and that has GMs and owners around the league scrambling to cut salary where they can.

There are three types of free agents: players with early termination options (ETO) or player options (PO), restricted free agents and unrestricted free agents.

Players with ETOs or POs

This group includes Kobe Bryant, Jermaine O’Neal, Al Harrington, Jamal Crawford and Mehmet Okur, but it’s highly unlikely that any of these guys will hit the open market given the kind of money they’ll be making by extending their respective contracts. Of this group, Hedo Turkoglu, Anderson Varejao and maybe Carlos Boozer are the only big names that are likely to hit free agency. Boozer has already stated that he’s going to opt out, but he may decide against it if he doesn’t come back strong from his injuries. Turkoglu — the reigning Most Improved Player — is having another nice season, but he’s not playing quite as well as last year. Still, he can command more than the $7.3 million he’s due to make next season. Varejao could stay with the Cavs and make $6.2 million next season, but he and his agent (Dan Fegan) have been looking for more. Varejao wants a long term deal but it seems he and the Cavs disagree on how much he’s actually worth.

For the most part, guys in this group are going to be conservative and play out their contracts.

Restricted Free Agents

RFAs hardly ever change uniforms, but in this economic climate there are teams that are unlikely to match substantial offers for their restricted free agents. The other issue is that once a team signs a RFA to an offer sheet, the player’s team has a full week to match the offer. Most teams know instantly whether or not they’re going to match, but they take the full week so that the other team can’t make any other offers because its money is tied up in the offer sheet. The NBA should reduce this period to three or four days so that teams are more willing to make offers to RFAs. Or better yet, it should eliminate restricted free agency completely to avoid Josh Childress-type cases in the future.

(Stepping down from my soapbox…)

Anyway, the list of restricted free agents includes Childress, David Lee, Paul Millsap, Nate Robinson, Charlie Villanueva, Ramon Sessions (ESPN says he’s restricted though HoopsHype and ShamSports show Sessions as an UFA), Marvin Williams, Raymond Felton, Leon Powe and Linas Kleiza.

The Knicks can’t afford to keep both Lee and Robinson and sign LeBron or some other max-type free agent next summer, so if someone comes along and offers either player a substantial contract, it is unlikely that the Knicks will be able to match. Millsap played great in Boozer’s absence, and they are very similar players so it is unlikely that Utah can afford to keep both. Millsap looks like a potential All-Star and would be a cheaper option, but only time will tell if the Jazz have the balls to let Boozer walk.

Childress will probably return to the U.S. after a year playing in Greece. I suspect he’ll be a mid-level type guy, which increases the number of potential suitors as teams that are over the cap can still sign a player at the mid-level. The Bucks are in financial trouble and they need to get rid of Michael Redd or Richard Jefferson if they hope to keep both Sessions and Villanueva. Both players are having career years under Scott Skiles, but it’s unclear if the Bucks will be able to keep them. I’d expect Sessions to be a mid-level guy (and should be a solid starter for that price), while Charlie V might command a bit more. There are still questions about his heart, but if he’s thriving under Skiles, could he really be lacking toughness and drive? The Bucks have been hit by injuries to Redd and Andrew Bogut but are still holding onto the #8 playoff spot in the East, so they’d be wise to keep this core together if they can.

The Bobcats’ decision to draft D.J. Augustin made Raymond Felton expendable, so he could probably be had for the right price. I’m guessing that he’s a mid-level guy as well, though he and his agent will probably want more. Leon Powe and Linas Kleiza are both productive bench players and if the offer sheet is big enough, the Celtics and Nuggets (respectively) may decide not to match.

Unrestricted Free Agents

This group includes Ben Gordon, Lamar Odom, Shawn Marion, Allen Iverson, Ron Artest, Mike Bibby, Andre Miller, Jason Kidd, Rasheed Wallace, Trevor Ariza and Brandon Bass. Most of these players are older and on the decline, but they can still play. Veteran players in this group might be shocked by the kind of pay cut that they’re going to have to take in today’s climate. The days of 30+ year-old stars (not superstars) signing max or near-max deals are over, at least for a while. I bet all of these guys sign for less than $10 million per season. (I know…that’s peanuts, right?)

Gordon, Ariza and Bass are younger and could still be on the rise if they find the right team. Gordon seems to think he’s a starter and should be paid as such, but he’s small and doesn’t have a reputation for being a very good defender. He can really score though. If some team wants to pay him starter’s money, he’d be a good match to play alongside a bigger point guard who could cover the opponent’s off guard (Utah, Denver, Detroit?) or he needs to go to a team that doesn’t emphasize the defensive end.

Ariza continues to play well for the Lakers, but since he’s a much cheaper option than Odom, he’s probably going to be staying put. Bass had a terrific season two years ago, and is really coming on after a slow start this season. He’s just 23 and has some upside. I’d expect some team will sign him to a deal averaging in the $3-$4 million range, which would make him one of the best bargains of the summer.

So where will these players end up? Your guess is as good as mine. There are only a handful of teams — Atlanta, Detroit, Memphis (of course), Minnesota, Oklahoma City, Portland, Sacramento and Toronto — with the cap space (~$7 million or more) to sign a good player for another team, so I think there may be quite a few starter-level players/borderline stars signing mid-level deals this season. Playoff contenders that are over the cap won’t be able to pass up a good player for $5 million per season and there should be a number of guys that fit the bill this summer.

You can blame it on the Grizzlies.

Ever since they traded Pau Gasol to the Lakers for a bag of peanuts and some slightly used underwear, NBA teams have become more and more fickle about pulling the proverbial trigger. With the state of the economy, and some owners desperately trying to cut payroll before the cap and luxury tax thresholds decline, it’s a buyer’s market out there. And those buyers are looking for Gasol-type deals. On the flip side, Chris Wallace took all kinds of grief over that trade and general managers around the league don’t want to follow in his footsteps.

After two or three weeks of covering all of this trade chatter, the biggest deal to speak of is the Shawn Marion/Jermaine O’Neal swap and that happened almost a week ago. Sure, guys like Brad Miller, Andres Nocioni, John Salmons, Rafer Alston, Larry Hughes, Tim Thomas, Chris Wilcox and Drew Gooden changed zip codes, but I doubt any fans out there are sporting wood at the idea that one or more of these players is joining their team.

This year’s trade deadline was mostly about teams setting themselves up financially for the next two summers of free agency. Even though there were a number of big names bandied about, the Marion/O’Neal deal is the only semi-blockbuster trade of the season. And, barring some last-minute, late-breaking deal, we have these five teams to blame…

5. San Antonio Spurs
The Spurs were in talks with the Nets about acquiring Vince Carter and also spoke with the Bucks about Richard Jefferson. Either of those players would have been a nice addition, but the Spurs just don’t have the pieces (or the balls) to pull off a trade like that. They were willing to trade for Carter, but they didn’t want to give up Roger Mason or George Hill. So they offer the Nets Bruce Bowen and Fabricio Oberto. Great, the numbers don’t even add up. Don’t get me wrong – I don’t really think that the Spurs should have given up Mason and/or Hill to acquire Carter. They’re arguably the second-best team in the West and their current lineup, if healthy, is likely to give the Lakers fits if the two teams meet in the playoffs with a less-than-100% Andrew Bynum. Plus the Spurs are notoriously conservative when it comes to messing with their chemistry. Jefferson wouldn’t have been a problem in that area but Carter might have been. So the Spurs stand pat. Shocker.

4. Cleveland Cavaliers
In the weeks leading up to the trade deadline, all was quiet on the Cleveland front, but in the last few days, the rumor mill started to churn as Cleveland started to discover what kind of player Wally Szczerbiak’s expiring contract could get them. (On a side note, Wally and Raef LaFrentz are two players that join Theo Ratliff on the list of players who ultimately are more famous for their expiring contracts than they are for anything they’ve done on the court. It’s sad, but it’s true.) The Cavs reportedly spoke with the Bucks about Jefferson, with the Wizards about Antawn Jamison, with the Nets about Vince Carter and with the Suns about Amare Stoudemire and Shaquille O’Neal. They wanted an upgrade at power forward, so the Jefferson deal didn’t make perfect sense, though he and LeBron would be compatible on the wing because they’re both versatile players who can defend. The same goes for Carter, but ultimately the Cavs decided to let Szczerbiak’s deal expire, which will give them more cap flexibility in two seasons when LeBron (likely) hits free agency. They run the risk of passing on a deal that would have ultimately resulted in an NBA championship, which would have made it very difficult for LeBron to leave Cleveland, but that’s impossible to prove.

3. New Jersey Nets
Reportedly, the Nets were literally trying to give Vince Carter away, but had no takers. They spoke with Cleveland, Portland, Houston and San Antonio (and probably others), but were unable to come to terms. He has two years and over $33 million remaining on his contract, so his is a deal that is apparently unmovable in the current environment. No one wants to take on that salary, especially since Carter is already 32-years-old and his salary runs through the 2010-11 season. My guess is that the Spurs would have added him had they been able to convince the Nets that a package built around Bruce Bowen and Fabricio Oberto was enough. If it’s true that the Nets were desperate to move him, a Szczerbiak-Carter or a LaFrentz-Carter swap probably would have done the trick, but the Cavs and Blazers apparently felt that Carter wasn’t worth the cap ramifications of his contract and ultimately balked.

2. Phoenix Suns
Surprised? I thought about putting the Suns in the top spot, but once they jettisoned Terry Porter in favor of Alvin Gentry, it became clear that they felt that Porter was the problem, not Amare Stoudemire. Word leaked that the Suns suddenly became less willing to talk about deals involving Amare, and it probably didn’t hurt that he scored 65 points in the two games since Gentry took over. More importantly, the Suns look to be back to pushing the ball, as they scored 282 points in those two wins. (It should be noted that both games were against the Clippers, so it’s tough to get an accurate gauge of the effect that Gentry is having.) It was rumored that they were talking about trading Shaq to the Cavs for Ben Wallace and Sasha Pavlovic, but had they pulled the trigger on that deal, they would have been throwing away whatever chance they have at a playoff run this year in order to save about $5 million by acquiring Pavlovic’s expiring contract. These new-look Suns could be a factor in the playoffs.

1. Portland Trail Blazers
Ah, the Blazers. They have all sorts of talented pieces and Raef LaFrentz’s expiring contract, so they were heavily involved in the rumor mill over the last two weeks. Portland has a reputation for discussing a plethora of different trade scenarios but being very reluctant to pull the trigger, which leads many to believe that most of their trade calls are really just the team’s way of gathering intelligence. They were willing to trade LaFrentz and Jerryd Bayless for Stoudemire, but the Suns decided (wisely) that it wasn’t enough. They spoke with the Nets about Carter, but wanted New Jersey to throw in a first round pick as well. The same goes for the Bucks, who wanted to send Jefferson to Portland in exchange for some salary cap relief. They also tried to pry Caron Butler away from Washington and Gerald Wallace away from the Bobcats. It’s not enough that the Blazers were going to get a talented player for an expiring contract, but they wanted draft picks or a nice young prospect like Ramon Sessions as well. They were one of the few buyers in a buyer’s market and ultimately they didn’t buy a thing.

If this trade had happened a few years ago, it would have been a blockbuster.

The Toronto Raptors have agreed to send Jermaine O’Neal and Jamario Moon to the Miami Heat in exchange for Shawn Marion and Marcus Banks, league sources told ESPN The Magazine’s Ric Bucher.

The deal is pending league approval, according to sources, and if approved, would be announced later Friday afternoon.

Rumors about this deal broke a few weeks ago, but died down when all the Amare Stoudemire talk started.

The trade makes sense for both sides. The Jermaine O’Neal experiment was not working in Toronto, and by trading for Marion, they get out from underneath O’Neal’s giant contract, which runs one more year at the tune of $23 million. The Heat have been looking for a center since Shaq left, and O’Neal can be that guy. If he can post 18/10 and be a presence on the defensive end, the Heat will be a dangerous team come playoff time. The fact that his contract ends after next season still leaves Miami with plenty of cap room to sign another big name to go along with Dwyane Wade and Michael Beasley in the summer of 2010. The Heat were also able to unload Marcus Banks’ contract and they got a pretty good small forward (Moon) as part of the deal.

In Miami, Marion was not fitting in very well and his numbers were down across the board. Toronto likes to push the ball, so if Marion can get back to his old play, they might keep him around in the offseason (assuming he doesn’t ask for a contract that will break the bank). If not, Toronto will have about $13 million in cap space this summer.

The Cavs were up 61-51 at halftime, but a 22-8 run to start the third quarter put the Lakers in control of the game, and they went on to win, 101-91. That run included an 11-0 spurt at the start of the quarter, and Mike Brown failed to call a timeout to stop the bleeding. After all, the Cavs are still a young team, so they are not as adept at playing through adversity as, say, the Celtics, Spurs or even the Lakers. I kept waiting for Brown to call a timeout but it never happened, and in many ways, that shift of momentum at the beginning of the second half was the difference in the game.

But it didn’t help that LeBron James shot 5 of 20 from the field. He had a near triple-double (16 points, 12 assists, eight rebounds) but he’d be the first to admit that he didn’t play very well. It’s not often that the Cavs get 57 combined points from Mo Williams, Zydrunas Ilgauskas and Wally Szczerbiak and still find a way to lose, but they did just that today.

After the loss of Andrew Bynum for 8-12 weeks, the Lakers have to feel great about completing this five-game road trip with consecutive wins against the Celtics and Cavs. Kobe was apparently battling the flu, but still managed to outscore LeBron (with 19 points) and hit a crucial rainbow jumper with just 2:48 remaining to put the Lakers up six. Lamar Odom (28 points, 17 rebounds) continues to play big basketball in Bynum’s absence, and is doing wonders for the contract that he’ll be signing this summer as a free agent.

So with a 1-3 combined record against the Celtics and Lakers, do the Cavs make a move with Szczerbiak’s expiring contract or do they stand pat and hope for the best? I think they have to do everything they can to win a title (or at least get to the Finals this year) if they hope to keep LeBron next summer, but clearly they have to hold out for a deal that has a great chance to make them better. I think they could package Szczerbiak with Hickson (and maybe a first round pick or two) and get themselves an impact big like Jermaine O’Neal.

Is that worth the risk? Well, O’Neal had 22 points, nine boards and nine blocks in a recent loss against the Lakers and his contract expires in 2010, so it wouldn’t affect the team’s cap flexibility in the long term.