I do think it is a time to kind of break apart and see if he can get a new start somewhere else.

I do think the commissioner feels like he wants to present a picture to the public that becomes a professional basketball player and a pro basketball league. But even before this, we were on our way. We've just got a lot of young players in this league who need to grow into that role, and most of them are there.

In my conversations with Reggie, it is clear he will not play next year. I've spoken with Reggie, and he is fine with it. This will go down as his final assist.

I hope we can get something done in the next couple of weeks. But too many things can happen on the way to the forum for me to say we definitely will.

I'm not going to box myself in by saying something like that.

I'm not putting a timetable on it. These things aren't that easy to work out.

This is kind of the last straw of a lot of issues.

I told the teams that I was dealing with out there, that he was going to have a large impact and whoever got him they'd move up in the standings. The only thing that will limit them does not have to do with Ronnie - they do not have enough big people to go up against the teams in the West.

That's when Mel (Daniels) and I ran the workouts.

Ronnie didn't say he wouldn't go there, in fact he said the opposite was true. He said he wanted go there and win games.