USA Basketball chairman Jerry Colangelo plans to meet with Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski in the near future to offer him the chance to return to the bench for the 2012 London Olympic Games, several sources said.

“We’ve yet to talk about how much of a level of interest he has in doing it again, if at all,” Colangelo said by phone Thursday night. “We’ve saved that conversation. There’s no need to push that envelope so soon. I wanted him to get back to Duke and get ready for his college year. But I do believe a great deal in continuity.”

Together, Colangelo and Krzyzewski were the architects of the United States’ gold medal at the Beijing Games in August. Sources say that while USA Basketball officials aren’t convinced that Krzyzewski will take the job again, it’s his if he wants it.

“I wish to have that kind of discussion with him in the short term,” Colangelo said.

Krzyzewski had said that he didn’t plan to return for a second four-year cycle as the national coach, but Colangelo is hoping the

When NBA owners chose the Minnesota Timberwolves Glen Taylor as the chairman of their Board of Governors, the hypocrisy inspired no public outcry. No notice that a mastermind of what the commissioner had called “one of the farthest-reaching frauds I’ve ever seen” had gone from betraying his peers to presiding over them.

Taylor had sanctioned free agent Joe Smith’s secret side deal eight years ago, a clandestine contract that would cost the Wolves three future first-round draft picks and a $3.5 million fine. Taylor didn’t just show his dishonesty by cheating on the salary cap, but his incompetence for doing so with a player whose talent never justified the risk.

The owners cheered David Stern’s harsh punishment. They condemned Taylor as a crook. And then, three weeks ago, Stern would celebrate Taylor’s choice as chairman with a you-have-to-be-kidding declaration that his selection would “ensure the same high standards” of his predecessor.

This is how it goes in the NBA, where rogue

Around the U.S. Olympic basketball team, the players had come to understand the odd machinations of life with Kobe Bryant, learning to laugh away the self-love and peculiarities of the planet’s best player.

His teammates called him out when he speed-walked into the opening ceremony, leaving them several yards behind to treat his own entrance with the lavish ovation that it deserved. Together, they understood the reality that it was all about Kobe on the way into those Games. And, alone, Chris Paul discovered how it would be all about Kobe on the way out of the gold-medal game against Spain.

As Paul worked his way to the free-throw line to shoot two technical fouls with 26 seconds left, Bryant could be seen intruding on the space, nudging Paul out of the way to take those shots for himself. Paul flashed a perplexed look, but resistance was futile.

“Come on, Kobe had to pad his stats,” another Team USA teammate would laugh later.

It didn’t go unnoticed, but no one cared much in the

NEW YORK – The NBA Players Association is investigating charges that a former certified player agent stole several hundred thousand dollars from Detroit Pistons star Richard Hamilton and the union says it will turn potential findings over to legal authorities for possible prosecution, Yahoo! Sports has learned.

Hamilton has accused Josh Nochimson of defrauding him over several years as his business manager. Multiple sources say audits indicate the three-time All-Star could’ve been bilked for as much as $500,000.

“It’s just something that you never think, in a million years, can happen to you,” Hamilton told Yahoo! Sports. “You hear about the horror stories, but never think it’ll be you. Never, never you.”

When Hamilton was an All-American at the University of Connecticut in the late 1990s, Nochimson, a student-manager on the team, befriended him. Nochimson moved with Hamilton to the NBA in 1999 as a personal assistant and business manager. While never representing Hamilton as his

NEW YORK – Across the dining room table, Joe Dumars introduced Allen Iverson to Detroit with an unmistakable word of warning: The Pistons' basketball culture isn't for everyone. He told him about the burdens of sacrifice and selflessness over shots and scoring, about the practices, the professionalism. As the hours passed inside his home this week, the Pistons president probed Iverson to support his suspicions that this trade wouldn't doom Detroit to a lost season in the championship chase.

"The reason I made this trade," Dumars told Iverson, "is that I think this is the environment you're craving right now."

This wasn't the most popular trade in the Pistons' locker room and Iverson's new teammates wouldn't ask these things of him. They would demand them. For everything Dumars had done to create salary-cap space for a run at LeBron James in 2010, he understood that a season without Chauncey Billups promised an uneasy proposition.

Dumars keeps thinking Randy Moss and the New England

Joe Dumars had the chance to consider Dallas’ Jason Kidd and his expiring contract over the summer, a league executive said Monday, but the Detroit Pistons president had bigger, bolder ideas. Allen Iverson still gives the Pistons a puncher’s chance in the Eastern Conference this season, but this trade isn’t about him. It isn’t about Chauncey Billups.

Think bigger.

Think bolder.

Think LeBron James, 2010.

The Pistons president doesn’t just have the salary cap space for the Cleveland Cavaliers star. He also has the connections and the championship credibility. Make no mistake: Detroit and Dumars are officially in hot pursuit of James – maybe even the favorite now – and it promises to be a long, agonizing two years for the Cavaliers.

Detroit doesn’t deliver the bright lights and global metropolis destination that James wants when he opts out of his contract in 2010, but two more years of watching Kobe Bryant win titles could transform his priorities. James wants badly to be considered the

The Denver Nuggets have traded All-Star guard Allen Iverson to the Detroit Pistons in exchange for Chauncey Billups and Antonio McDyess, a league executive with knowledge of the talks said.

Pistons center Cheick Samb also will go to Denver to make the salaries match in the trade.

Billups helped guide the Pistons to the Eastern Conference finals during each of his previous six seasons in Detroit. He grew up in Denver and played 58 games for the Nuggets over two seasons from 1998-2000.

McDyess has had two previous stints with the Nuggets, and he began his career with them in 1995.

Iverson was traded to Denver in December 2006 but was not able to help Carmelo Anthony lift the Nuggets out of the first round of the playoffs in his two seasons there.

The trade gives the Pistons salary-cap flexibility at the end of the season. Iverson's contract, which pays him $21.9 million this season, expires in July.

Billups is owed $36.3 million over the next three seasons and has an additional $14.2

NEW YORK – As Mike D’Antoni tried to undo the damage and scars left in the New York Knicks locker room, the residue of Isiah Thomas lingered in the strangest way for the season’s start. The pall of the past emperor’s professional failure returned with the turmoil of his overdose. He is the exiled Knicks employee still strangling the tabloid news cycle, still casting a shadow over his reclamation project.

As much as anything, reviving these Knicks calls for cutting ties with the monuments of failure here. Opening night, and Mike D’Antoni, his West Virginia drawl and his go-go West Coast style, dispelled the suggestion that he’s missing the toughness, the resolve, to restore these Knicks. He never turned down to the end of his sideline, where the benching of Stephon Marbury and Eddy Curry represent a break from the past. Finally, the windows flung open in a musty Madison Square Garden.

Everyone knew Curry was out of the rotation, but only D’Antoni and his closest associates knew that the