NBA players can talk to NBA employees at Hall of Fame ceremonies. Yay?

It isn't as if Dennis Rodman, Chris Mullin, Arvydas Sabonis, Tex Winter and Artis Gilmore are currently employed by factions of either side of this NBA lockout. But should any NBA player or team employee happen to crank up a chat with each other while deciding to pass on a hack-y yet delicious bacon-wrapped scallop hors d'oeuvres during this month's Hall of Fame ceremonies honoring the men listed above, the NBA has decided to pass on coming down hard with a million-dollar reprisal typically reserved for contact between an NBA employee and a player.

How nice of them.

The Basketball Hall of Fame is a joke, we've known that for years. It honors middling NCAA coaches years before it decides to pay tribute to NBA legends; and when it does deign to honor an NBA? The selection process is heavily vetted through the pathetic soap opera stylings of ideological enemies but slavish shoe company devotees in Jerry Colangelo and David Stern.

And Monday's news, from Lacy J. Banks of the Chicago Sun-Times (via Pro Basketball Talk), should be a non-issue. Adults should be able to talk, without fear of penalty. And the NBA has lifted, for one long weekend, a fear of a million-dollar fine during the Hall of Fame ceremonies. Because sanity, as it has too few times this summer, has prevailed.

Lacy?

Despite the NBA lockout, the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame ceremonies will go on as scheduled.

''We have been declared a 'safe zone' in terms of current players interacting with NBA team managers," Hall of Fame president and CEO John Doleva said in an interview Thursday. ''We're a separate entity from the NBA anyway. Our program is to always honor basketball at every level and the individuals who make it great.

''So we have not been told there will be any restrictions about [management] and current players interacting or any seating restrictions at our reunion banquet, our pre-enshrinement cocktail and the enshrinement ceremony itself. NBA-TV cameras will be free to interview people, including current players."

NBA TV being the network that had to lay off dozens of staffers last month because of the current lockout. In case you forgot.

This mess has become so pathetic that we're now in a place where we have to make news out of congratulating the NBA for not acting like outright pillocks when it comes to discussing the fact that it does have somewhere around 400 players under contract (with 50 or so left to be signed before whenever the next season starts), and that those players might bump into a co-worker from time to time. Goodness, gracious, sakes alive -- this entire thing is so unbelievably daft.

Maybe this is a start. Maybe things get better, from here on out. Perhaps now they'll do us a favor and allow people like John Schuhmann of NBA.com to start discussing the players they have under contract, again.

Karl Malone Moses Malone Pete Maravich Kevin McHale George Mikan