By JOHN JAMES MARSHALL/Designated Writers

Here’s what we know about how it all went down with the NBA free agency rush over the last few days — nobody knew anything.

That’s how this works. Everybody guesses, but nobody knows anything … until they do.

Kevin Durant was going to the Knicks. Kevin Durant was going to Lakers. Kevin Durant was staying with the Warriors. He didn’t do any of those.

Kyrie Irving swore he wanted to stay in Boston. It was said that he had made up with Lebron James and was going to join him on the Lakers. Or that it was a certainty he was going to the Knicks. How did any of that work out?

Give the NBA credit: the league has somehow managed to create a news cycle out of a big pile of nothingness. The free agent speculation is a bigger deal that the regular season — granted, that isn’t saying much — but everyone with a microphone or a Twitter account wants to announce as to where these player are going.

And in the end, it really doesn’t matter. Anybody notice how Sacramento did in signing free agents? Or Orlando? That’s because there are so few relevant franchises in a league that seems to have so many relevant players, but really doesn’t.

How many difference makers are there in the entire NBA? Fifteen, maybe? And two of them — Klay Thompson and Durant — will sit out all or most of the 2019-20 season.

And how come the biggest story seems to be all about what one franchise didn’t do as opposed to those who did? First, the Knicks didn’t win the draft lottery, now we have to hear all the wailing and gnashing of teeth about what a death blow it is that they didn’t get Durant and Irving. This is a franchise, by the way, that hasn’t won an NBA title since 1973. Seattle has won more than they don’t even have a team anymore.

But we only have ourselves — and the time of year — to blame. Summer turns non-events into much bigger deals than they should be. If you don’t believe it, then stay tuned for the opening of NFL training camps.

At least half the Designated Writers team was at church Sunday and, Lord have mercy, there was our friend Danielle Scott, a Baton Rouge native who still lives there and was in June inducted into the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame. She was in town, as she was in the spring, to help promote Team USA’s FIVB Volleyball Intercontinental Olympic Qualification Tournament at CenturyLink Center Aug. 2-4.

It’s a big deal for these parts.Tickets are $35 and $45 through CenturyLink.

Kazakhstan (had to look it up), Argentina and Bulgaria, each a Top 25 team in the world, are the other competitors, along with the USA Volleyball National Team. The winner winner chicken dinner earns a spot in the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games.

Scott is qualified to rep the sport here for some solid reasons:

— She left Baton Rouge to star at Long Beach State where she was an All-America player and National Player of the Year in 1993 when she led Long Beach State to an NCAA title. She also played hoops.

— She’s a five-time Olympian–think about how hard that is to accomplish–on every USA team from 1996-2012 and earned two medals.

— She was World Grand Prix MVP in 2001.

–She was inducted into the International Volleyball Hall of Fame in 2016.

But here’s the biggest thing: last spring, USA Volleyball presented Scott with its Courage Award because last autumn, Scott suffered serious stab wounds while trying to protect her sister from her sister’s estranged husband; Danielle’s sister died in the attack.

Yet Danielle, during all the festivities during Induction Weekend in Natchitoches in June and yesterday at church, was the Human Smile, a hugger and a spreader of good cheer, a doting mom with a spirit of goodness she can’t hide.

For the LSWA, our friend Robin Fambrough of The Advocate wrote a really good story about this really good person if you want to know more about our friend Danielle.

https://www.theadvocate.com/acadiana/sports/article_5a495d08-8545-11e9-9bbb-bb558caec602.html

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