Opa! Ex-Hawks swingman Josh Childress has agreed to terms on a fat three-year contract with Olympiakos of Greece. Here's what they're saying out in the ether about the shocking news ...

JoshChildressCamp: "2008 Summer Camp has been cancelled. Check back later for 2009 details." (Ouch. Thanks, Peter.)

Hawks BasketBlog: "I know most people want to blame Hawks management and ownership for letting this happen, and if that is your opinion you are entitled. But at least consider this [...] Chills is not like most NBA players (afro aside). Every time I've chatted with him at the start of seasons past he's raved about his trips abroad over the summer, including trips to China and Africa as part of the NBA's Basketball Without Borders program. He realizes there is a much larger world out there, and he's experienced a good bit of it. Right off the bat, the idea of playing in a foreign land was going to be much more palatable to him than most."

Ziller, FanHouse: "Childress carries a cap hold of $14.5 million. Assuming the Hawks can manage to retain Josh Smith for about $10 million a year, Atlanta figures to be about $20 million under the salary cap next summer. (Mike Bibby and Zaza Pachulia are coming off the books.) That can buy a mighty fine free agent. But unless Atlanta renounces its rights to Childress — meaning Chills would no longer be a restricted free agent, he could sign with any NBA team and the Hawks wouldn't have matching rights — $14.5 million of that cap space will be locked up in that cap hold. That means Atlanta would have only roughly $5.5 million of space, and that's less than the mid-level exception. The Hawks would then have no cap space, and would be in the same boat as 85% of the NBA. If the Hawks had overpaid Childress with, say, an $8 million annual contract, they would be able to go get a $12 million player in free agency next year ... and they'd have Childress's production! Instead, nothing and nothing."

TrueHoop: "The NBA's collective bargaining agreement includes a ton of complicated clauses. Each serves a purpose, and you can make a case that, all told, it's a good and fairly fair system. But regulation is always burdensome, and this league, famously run by lawyers, is knee-deep in legalese. In this instance, those rules created a really weird deal. According to Josh Childress, there were championship-contending NBA teams that were willing to pay him more than the Hawks would. A sign-and-trade couldn't be worked out, so Childress was stuck. But that makes a situation where here's an employee, a place that wanted to employ him, and an agreed upon price. In normal human life, that's all you need to make a deal. You can only tinker with the free market so much before it starts depressing normal economic activity. This is one of those cases. A rule (essentially, the salary cap) designed solely to keep NBA teams competitive with each other now ends up helping a whole different league."

Lang Whitaker, SLAM Online: "... I don’t think it needed to come to this. The Hawks didn’t have to pay him as much as he’s making in Greece, but they had to pay him something, anything. It just wasn’t happening, according to Josh. 'I had conversations with Rick and ownership and that was my number one goal to return to Atlanta,' Josh said. 'But I wanted to get my contract done early, but when that didn’t happen, I was kind of forced to explore my options.'"

FreeDarko: "... there's no guarantee it will work out, that we'll ever get to see this become a viable option for pros, or find the globalization of the game hastened in ways that would've been unimaginable only a week ago. For all the rewards Childress looks to reap—the largest contract in Euroleague history, a strong Euro, and significantly less taxation are among them—he is entering uncharted territory. Childress has the opportunity to make or break this option for future generations. You decide whether it's too strong to call that a burden, or the less somber "responsibility" will suffice."

KnickerBlogger.net: "... I hardly anticipate a mass exodus of US-born players to the various European leagues beyond what we currently see. The culture shock is considerable, and at the risk of stereotyping, many athletes are if nothing else creatures of familiarity and habit. If anything, I expect to see even fewer European stars jump across the pond to the NBA. The dollar is just too weak. If the structural weaknesses in the US economy aren’t the sort of thing you pay attention to, consider the Childress signing as yet another indication that the economy will probably get a lot worse before it gets better."

YAYsports!: "Okay, now that we've seen that the Josh Childress/Grecian Team deal is actually worth 32.5M over three years, there’s only one question everyone in and/or around basketball needs to ask: What happens when some EuroTeam offers LeBron $50M a year in 2010? Why wouldn’t he go? That’s more than he makes in 3 years here, and he’d probably make another $50M in endorsements — he’d be like the tallest, coolest, most popular person in all of Europe, and they’d all be salivating in their snails and crumpets and chips because they stole an American icon."

Related: The Internets are alive