Karalis: Random thoughts on big men, tampering, and Deuce Tatum's growing star

August in the NBA is the basketball equivalent of the five second rule. You still get to talk about whatever little bits of news slips through the cracks as long as you get to it quickly enough. 

Here are a few bits and pieces from the week that we can blow onto, dust off, and swallow before anyone realizes what you just did. 

ROSTER SPOT BATTLE

The Celtics are bringing in Bruno Caboclo and Noah Vonleh to compete for a roster spot in training camp. 

I’m not going to go too in depth about what they can bring because the answer in all honesty is they're not bringing a whole lot. There's a reason they floated along until this point of the offseason.

You never know who will hit in the right situation, so I can’t write them off completely, but what I can do is highlight Boston’s approach to the center position right now. 

Caboclo and Vonleh will get a chance to make the roster, probably on a partially guaranteed deal, during training camp. One of them might get a chance to add to the bench while Luke Kornet gets the primary backup reps behind Robert Williams and Al Horford. Mfiondu Kabengele will also get some chances as the Celtics make creative use of the two-way spot. 

That should be enough to get them into the regular season and see how things work. From there, they have a few options. 

- If Vonleh/Coboclo work, keep whichever one wins the job the rest of the way on the minimum deal.

- If Kornet works, then waive Vonleh/Coboclo and just live with Kabengele as an emergency guy. A partially guaranteed deal for Vonleh/Coboclo protects Boston against dead money on the cap. 

- If none of them work, use one of the two remaining TPEs to pursue a better option. 

The preseason starts in a couple of months so there aren’t many other options out there unless the Celtics can pick a stray center from a Kevin Durant or Donovan Mitchell trade. This is basically how the frontcourt will look when they open camp.

PRESEASON SCHEDULE

Speaking of which, here’s the Celtics preseason schedule:

• Sunday, October 2 vs. Charlotte, 1 PM, TD Garden

• Wednesday, October 5 vs. Toronto, 7:30 PM, TD Garden

• Friday, October 7 at Charlotte, 7:30 PM, Greensboro Coliseum

• Friday, October 14 at Toronto, 7:00 PM, Bell Centre, Montreal

That's less than two months away, which means training camp opens soon. 

The short turnaround is real. This is going to be a challenge for these guys. 

SILLY SEASON SHENANIGANS

Steve Bulpett reports that -- SHOCKINGLY -- the reports of a Jaylen Brown offer to the Nets might have been overblown.

“There was a recent report that the Nets had weeks ago turned down an offer of Jaylen Brown, Derrick White and a first round pick from the Celtics, but others have disputed to Heavy that such a proposal was ever truly on the table.”

Between this and the anonymous GM who casually suggested Boston trade Jayson Tatum for Durant, it’s obvious that the ulterior motives were in full force this week. 

Every time a rival GM anonymously says something, I take it as they're trying to get one over on someone else. I never take what opposing GMs say seriously because everyone is trying to gain an advantage at all times, so they’ll throw out anything that might sow some discord in a rival team. 

This whole story stunk from the start. It’s annoying to me that it grew the legs that it did. 

TAMPERING INVESTIGATIONS

The league is looking into the Sixers for their deal with James Harden and the Knicks for their signing of Jalen Brunson, which again opens up the question of what tampering really is and how much it really matters in the NBA. 

Let’s just put this out there to begin this conversation: Of course teams negotiate before the allotted negotiation window. Everyone does it. There's no way to plan out your offseason if you don’t. 

So did Brunson get early word about what New York’s offer would be? Of course he did. His father is an assistant coach and his agent’s father runs the team. Did this disadvantage the Dallas Mavericks in any way? Not really because they could have offered more money if they really wanted to, but they didn’t. They also missed out on earlier chances to re-sign Brunson, so his departure is on them, tampering or not. 

The Harden case is more complicated because it amounts to cap circumvention. A wink-wink deal with Harden to take less now and more later breaks cap rules and could result in lost draft picks. That's something similar, though not as egregious, as the Joe Smith deal with the Timberwolves in 2014 where he signed three separate one-year deals in order for the Timberwolves to acquire his Bird Rights, then reward him with a massive contract once they could go over the cap to do so. It was a multi-year plan that was blown up with Smith’s agency split. 

The Harden deal could be harder to prove, but it could follow a similar path, giving him the opt-out for next season so he can sign a huge deal after giving the Sixers enough cap space to sign PJ Tucker and Danuel House. The league obviously wants a level playing field, and the union doesn’t like players setting bad precedents and giving back money. 

The level playing field is at the heart of all this talk. The league is okay with some light tampering when the season is over and everyone is keeping up some level of illusion that they're waiting for the starting gun to free agency. If everyone is doing it, then the playing field is level. When teams start skirting the accepted norms, they have an issue. 

They also have an issue if the negotiations start during the season. A player choosing to leave a situation on his own is fine. Torching another team’s season by pulling a player’s mind away from his current team crosses a line. That doesn’t seem to be the case with Brunson, who was great for the Mavericks, but it was also clear that New York had hoped to sign him for quite some time. 

Considering the personal connections to the Knicks, it’s both hard to believe he didn’t get wind of that during the season, and hard to prove because it’s the easiest covering of tracks a team could have. A dad calling his son can be about anything, so even in-season phone calls aren’t proof of anything. 

It’ll be interesting to see where the league goes with this. It’s probably in the NBA’s best interest to pick a lane when it comes to tampering and either set hard, fast limits and punish accordingly, or stop investigating the offseason stuff. Too much of it comes off as a charade. 

DEUCE IS THE REAL STAR

Jayson Tatum is a star. 

Jayson Tatum, Jr., a.k.a. Deuce, is a bigger star. 

Exhibit A: 

It won’t be long before Deuce is in commercials with his dad. The kid might be a multi-millionaire several times over before he’s even old enough to play true competitive basketball.

I’m betting Deuce will be in a movie before he becomes a teenager.