The Cincinnati Bengals signed Carson Palmer last month, two days before they selected him first in the NFL Draft. But across the state, the Cleveland Cavaliers -- if they are fortunate enough to win the rights to pick first in the upcoming NBA Draft -- won't be able to sign LeBron James for at least 39 days after finding out their lottery fate.

	LeBron James won't be seen in an NBA jersey for awhile.

The NBA conducts its lottery on May 22 and its draft on June 26, but the earliest that James, the consensus No. 1 pick overall, can sign with an NBA team is July 1. Under the NBA's Collective Bargaining Agreement, new player contracts cannot be signed until the team's salary cap figure is established following a league audit.

Despite the fact the CBA already has locked in the salaries of all first-round picks, rookie signings operate under the same rules for the league's veteran players, said Rick Buchanan, the NBA's senior vice president and general counsel. The first pick in this year's draft would receive a maximum three-year deal of $12.96 million with a team option for a fourth year.

Not having James under contract could make it more challenging for the team with the No. 1 pick that's eager to cash in on his notoriety right away. That's because the rights to James' name and likeness do not belong to an NBA team until he signs his contract.

"LeBron James owns his name and his image and they have been licensed to no one at this point," said Fred Nance, managing partner of Squire, Sanders & Dempsey, the firm that has been providing legal counsel to James, the prep phenom from Akron, Ohio.

In a standard NBA contract, a player relinquishes the rights to his name and image for use in still photographs, motion pictures and video. Players also give the NBA exclusive rights to market their name on licensed products, including jerseys and video games.

Although a lottery winner will not be allowed to use James' name or image for promotional purposes before he signs with the team, some say merely announcing that the team will select the heralded 6-foot-8, 240-pound man-child from St. Vincent-St. Mary High School will be good enough.

"Even a nuclear scientist locked up in a lab has heard of LeBron James," said Dean Bonham, a sports consultant who formerly served as the Denver Nuggets' president. "Once a team says they're taking LeBron, the media -- sports talk radio hosts and newspaper and Web site columnists -- will do all the marketing."

Although the Cavs, who along with the Nuggets have a 22.5 percent chance of landing the No. 1 pick, have to wait and see what happens in next Thursday's lottery, they became the first team last week to announce they would take James with the first pick in the draft.

"We'd love to have the first pick, and we all know who that will be," Cavs owner Gordon Gund said last Thursday.

Nance declined to speculate whether the team with the rights to the No. 1 pick would be able to strike a temporary licensing arrangement to bridge the gap between the time team executives express their intention to draft James and the time they have to wait to actually sign him.

	“	Whoever wins the lottery should call everyone on their ticket staff and tell them to bring their sleeping bags to the office immediately. It's possible that thousands of tickets could be sold in days. ”
		— Dean Bonham, former Nuggets president

"We've already told people who we would pick, but right now we're investigating as to the extent that we can move forward should we get that pick," Cavs spokesman Tad Carper said. "In a way, our statement speaks for itself and we won't have to use LeBron's name and picture, but I'm sure if we could, we would."

Buchanan said the NBA has never received a complaint from a team looking to sign a rookie before the draft. Last year, the Houston Rockets unveiled a marketing campaign with their No. 1 draft pick, Yao Ming, as its centerpiece months before Yao signed his contract, though it was after they drafted him. In that case, Rockets officials met with Yao's marketing team in July to discuss possible solutions.

"We felt like they owed us the courtesy to tell us what they were going to do," said Bill Sanders, marketing director for Team Yao, a contingent that represents the 7-foot-5 All-Star center from China. "But we felt like it was going to be a good partnership and it was certainly nothing that we objected to."

James' presence might be needed most for the two teams with the greatest chances to land him. The Cavaliers drew an average of 11,497 fans this season, down 21 percent from the 2001-02 season. The Nuggets averaged fewer than 15,000 fans for the fourth time in the past seven seasons.

"Whoever wins the lottery should call everyone on their ticket staff and tell them to bring their sleeping bags to the office immediately," Bonham said. "It's possible that thousands of tickets could be sold in days."

Darren Rovell, who covers sports business for ESPN.com, can be reached at darren.rovell@espn3.com