Let's round up a few Wednesday items out of the Eastern Conference….
- According to Gery Woelfel of the Racine Journal Times (via Twitter), there were some Bucks officials who wanted to cut Larry Sanders a year ago, making his lucrative new four-year extension with the club even more remarkable.
- The Heat will head into 2013/14 as the favorites to come out of the East for a fourth straight year, but Lang Greene of HoopsWorld warns that sleeping on the Bulls, despite their fairly quiet offseason, would be a mistake.
- Ira Winderman's latest mailbag at the South Florida Sun Sentinel includes questions on the Heat's inactivity and on whether Mikhail Prokhorov's willingness to go deep into the luxury tax will have an effect on the league's other owners.
- In an Insider-only piece for ESPN.com, David Thorpe poses "burning questions" facing the five Atlantic Division teams.
- Danny Granger (Pacers), Kyle Lowry (Raptors), and Paul Pierce (Nets) are a few of the players in contract years who Alex Kennedy of HoopsWorld believes are worth watching.