After 149 days, the NBA strike seems to be over. NBA owners and players came to an agreement on Saturday. An abbreviated, 66-game season will start on Christmas Day, although the Phoenix Suns are not scheduled to play that day. A handshake agreement was reached, but it needs to be ratified by a majority vote of the owners' group and the players' union. Until then, it's only tentative, but everything is moving forward as if it's been set in stone.

When the Suns start their season, they will be without at least one key player who made other plans during the strike. Point guard Aaron Brooks will not be available to play with the Suns when the season starts up next month. In fact, Brooks will not be available until at least mid-February 2012. He has signed with the championship Guangdong team in the Chinese Basketball Association, whose regular season runs through February 15.

Forward Gani Lawal has been playing basketball in Poland during the strike, but he should be able to return to the Suns in time for training camp, which begins on December 9. There will be a preseason, which will also be abbreviated.  Each NBA team will have two preseason games and 64 regular season games. 48 games will be in-conference matches, and 16 games will be out-of-conference games. The regular season schedule should be released next week.

While there's some fear that chemistry between the players may be in jeopardy because of the shortened season, most of the current team has played together before, so a shortened season shouldn't hurt the team.