The Spurs signed their top draft pick, James Anderson, today. All that’s left is for us to see him actually play a game for the Spurs. Hopefully his hammy stops acting up because I need to see something so that I don’t think the Spurs wasted the pick.

Speaking of which, the home pre-season schedule was announced and the first game will be against the Miami Dwyane Wade and Friends on Saturday, Oct. 9. Tickets go on sale tomorrow. I really don’t know what else to call that team anymore. It’s clearly the Dwyane Wade show featuring LeBron James and Chris Bosh. Wade is the only true alpha-dog on that squad because it’s painfully obvious now that LeBron doesn’t have the requisite testicular fortitude and Bosh has always been a second banana playing first banana for a wack team.

There’s also a good read on Spurs.com about the impact of the Tiago Splitter signing. For all the scheming and salary dumping and shenanigans going on in the league, the Spurs are quietly putting together the pieces of a legit contender for 2011.

The Spurs signed their summer league star, Gary Neal, to  a contract yesterday. He was definitely the brightest spot on the summer team and could be on his way to helping put last year’s Roger Mason fiasco behind us. One can only dream.

The 6-foot-4, 210-pound Neal led the Spurs’ summer league team in scoring with 16 points in 25.8 minutes per game in five games. He was 30 of 60 from the field and 17 of 34 from beyond the 3-point line in Las Vegas.

He went undrafted in the 2007 NBA draft after playing college ball at La Salle and Towson. Since then, he has played one season of pro basketball in Spain and two in Italy.

I think Neal has a solid chance to stick and make the active roster to start the season. Keith Bogans and Roger Mason are still unsigned right now, so it remains to be seen just how this will play out, but I am all for the new blood after the way those two played last year.

In what is sure to be one of the more bizarre subplots of this summer’s free agency, Richard Jefferson inexplicably opted out of the final year of his contract. The move will cost him $15 million dollars up front. As RJ tells it:

“I probably wouldn’t make 15 (million dollars) some place, but you could somehow recoup some of that over a multi-year deal and get some guaranteed money for the next few years.

“So you figure it out. If you’re able to get four years and 40 (million dollars by opting out) from someone, it’s like, ‘OK, I did lose out on 15 (million dollars). But I’m going to get basically a $25 million extension.’ Those are things that you think of at the end of the season.”

Wait, what? He thinks he is getting a four year 40 mil deal? From who? Is Isaiah Thomas a GM again? Ok, fine – so it’s entirely possible that he will get such a deal when the dust settles and either the Knicks, Nets, Bulls, Clips, or Heat  are clamouring to fill the rosters that they gutted in vain after no one signs there – after all, Drew Gooden is getting a 5-year $32 mil deal, and that was from the Bucks who no one is thinking about. (And quiet as kept, they are building a nice squad over there.) At any rate, the Spurs now have some wiggle room to sign someone more useful this summer, and for that we can thank Dick Jefferson.

Oh, and by the way, it’s not that I forgot about the draft, but after the Spurs picked James Anderson… well, I haven’t really known what to think of that – let alone what to say about it. My first thought was something along the lines of, “huh?” Then I figured he was meant to be RJ’s eventual replacement, but still, no one I know of had him pegged as a potential Spur, and even Bill Simmons said he figured Anderson for a bust. I guess the Spurs saw something there that the rest of us didn’t see. I’ll take another look at him later and post some thoughts.