The NBA's big, bad wolf has been caged, for now.

	Bonzi Wells is only part of Portland's money issues.

The threat that the luxury tax would be implemented this season has quietly been withdrawn, a savings of millions for some owners, Paul Allen in particular. His Blazers faced a $30-million penalty if the complex formula had come in a little higher.

Meanwhile fans, coaches and GMs dream of deals that will be quashed by financial reality as the trade deadline strikes on Thursday. And this is only going to get worse because the luxury tax is locked in for next season. No escape.

"It's going to be tough for most of us," Hawks general manager Pete Babcock says. "You'll have to be very creative and have tremendous cooperation to make deals happen."

Signing free agents will take excruciatingly careful planning, Babcock said. In other words, without multiteam deals, the Knicks and Blazers may be out of that end of the business throughout our lifetime.

If you're a player you can't like this. The guys in uniform make too much money to be militant so soon after the lockout of 1998-99, and they are only mollified by degrees as they see wages squeezed.

Remember, 14 of 29 teams did not spend their middle class exception this season. Teams avoided the $1.3 million veteran's exceptions for the season for financial reasons, leaving the likes of Olden Polynice essentially unemployable. Ten-year players can't get the $1 million they thought they had coming, even though teams only pay half since the whole number counts against the cap.

For months this season the specter of the luxury tax in a worsening business climate threatened to sink the cap under $42 million, forcing teams that thought they were safe to pay up. But $1 is all it takes to cost a team its share of the escrow fund that will be distributed any time the total payout exceeds 55 percent of league revenues.

Think this is boring? It's one of the reasons your team can't get the backup center or point guard it needs.

The Hawks, middle of the pack in salary, are typical of the dilemma next year. They are going into next season a million over the cap, which may be reduced for the first time in history. This is money the Hawks can't dump and if they end up with draft picks it's going to get worse for them.

That's a nice job commissioner David Stern did on spending, isn't it? That's a great job players executive director Billy Hunter did on his own membership. The legacy of Patrick Ewing will endure far beyond the image of his fading skill.

Teams that can't control their appetites will pay a frightening price. Look what's happening in Portland, where president Bob Whitsitt's claim of better cost control is laughable.

Sure, everything is relative, but as Whitsitt says, "Our salary cap is getting managed more where we want it to be from a business standpoint, but we still have a few contracts we brought on board as part of a particular championship run." Portland's $84 million salary this year is roughly twice the cap limit. Next season it rises to $95.6 million, meaning the Blazers will pay at least $55 million in tax, enough to float some Third World economies. In 2003-04, it is $72 million -- and that is not accounting for additional players.

For example, Whitsitt says Bonzi Wells can become a restricted free agent on July 1, meaning the Blazers will tender him a one-year contract and retain the right to match any offer from another club.

So this is the primary game within the game that is influencing the NBA today. But there are others, including the particularly nasty game of Truth or Dare being played between the city of Charlotte and the NBA.

While Stern and deputy Russ Granik throw verbal stones at Charlotte and the city goes to incredible lengths to insult the Hornets' two owners, they are operating oblivious of the facts that strongly suggest that New Orleans is not now and cannot ever be an NBA market.

The Louisiana market has not come close to reaching the target projections required to put the team there. Hornets owners George Shinn and Ray Wooldridge made a deal with New Orleans officials to sell a minimum of 10,000 season tickets, 2,450 club seats and 54 luxury boxes by March 15.

Well, after missing a third consecutive self-declared deadline for announcing the numbers, they finally brought the ticket issue to light and it was scary. They have deposits for 2,062 season tickets and 10 for luxury boxes. No mention of club seats.

So they're nearly 8,000 season tickets, 44 luxury boxes and who knows how many club seats shy of their goals with a month to go.

The spin control is that there are commitments for a large number of tickets that have not been paid. Sounds specious, as questionable as the decision to move a franchise there in the first place.

And finally, there is a move toward veracity in the NBA.

Babcock, who has long led a Quixotic campaign to dump the terminology of an "injured list," has enlisted help from Pistons president Joe Dumars, who said at the league meetings he's had it with lying about injuries.

After activating Rodney White and Ratko Varda and demoting Brian Cardinal and Victor Alexander, Dumars said, "We haven't come up with an injury yet." He laughed. "Actually, one of the things we talked about over the weekend (in Philadelphia) was changing the injured list to the inactive list.

"I told (the commissioner) 'I am tired of making up injuries.' He laughed and said he was tired of reading about them. So I think that change is going to get made."

Apparently approval is a players association vote away from reality. Of course, this is dangerous expecting Hunter to cooperate on any meaningful point that does not promote self-interest for his group.

Jeffrey Denberg, who covers the NBA for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, is a regular contributor to ESPN.com.