While the NBA lockout teetered on disaster for the league, it did produce one excellent consequence: the Dallas Mavericks will open the season at home against the Miami Heat on Christmas day to open the season — and raise their championship banner prior to the game. The lamest member of the superfriends in Miami, Chris Bosh, thinks that the ceremony is going to suck.

Bosh, who is a Dallas native, thought that there were too many Mavericks fans during the offseason as well.

Bosh spent only a week back home in Dallas during the offseason, partly to enjoy the Miami surroundings with his wife, but also to avoid the negativity from fans back in Texas — fans, he added, that weren’t so abundant when he was growing up.

“I didn’t want to hear all the fans,” Bosh joked. “But it’s funny because there wasn’t a lot of Mavericks fans when I was a kid. But now all of a sudden, everybody’s a Mavericks fan.”    

That’s funny. Before the superfriends teamed up in Miami, did anybody care about the Heat? As if teaming up with two superstars in Miami, in a league dominated by player interest more so than team interest, isn’t going to invite bandwagon fans. 

Maybe Bosh can have a few tissues ready for LeBron James when they raise the banner, since it’s going to suck so much – it wouldn’t be the first time LeBron cried in Dallas.

With next year’s NBA season in serious jeopardy, some players have already jumped ship to play overseas. Spanish International Rudy Fernandez is not one of them.

Recently traded from the Portland Trailblazers to the reigning NBA Champion Dallas Mavericks, Fernandez turned down a six-year, $26 million contract with Real Madrid, according to Spanish sports website Marca.com. The deal reportedly would have made him Spain’s highest-paid player.

Fernandez would have gone to Spain to play, before returning to the United States whenever the 2011-12 season started in order to play the final year of his NBA contract. The 26-year-old is set to make $2.2 million in the final year, while the contract with Real Madrid would have paid him $4.35 million a year on average.

In three years in Portland, Fernandez averaged 9.1 points per game, while shooting 36 percent from beyond the arc. Some say that Portland’s slow tempo contributed to Fernandez’s lackluster numbers, as he’s built for a more up-tempo system.

Former Celtic Nenad Krstic is one player who has already headed overseas this offseason to play.