More Trades That Don't Make Sense

Here's one for you:

Charlotte Bobcats have traded Matt Carroll and Ryan Hollins to the Dallas Mavericks for DeSagana Diop.

Not so sure about this trade, but I haven't been sure on almost any of the trades this entire season.  Mavs signed Diop to a full MLE this summer because they wanted his length and defensive capabilities, which, they don't want anymore, because... Erick Dampier is playing awesome?.  Apparently Matt Carroll is supposed to be Dallas's answer from long-range.  Beyond Dallas throwing gobs of money at Diop, for basically no reason (well now apparently for Matt Carroll), this trade makes no sense for Charlotte either.  Yes, you get a true center to play next to Okafor (wait, wasn't Nazr Mohammed a true center, and averaging like 19 and 12 when starting next to Okafor?), but I don't see how Diop and Okafor on the floor at the same time works.  You now have 2 defensive-minded bigs.  Ok, Okafor kind of has an offensive game, but still, it's like a poor man's Ben Wallace and Tyson Chandler starting frontcourt, do you really expect to get a lot of points from that?  Really?  Another trade that doesn't make sense.  

Maybe the trade was for Hollins...  I did some research.  He's averaging a career high 3.6 points, and 2 rebounds in a career high 10 minutes per game.  Of course, he's only actually played a little over half of the games so far in the season.

Fans Voting Funny

I was about to say that fans voting for All-Stars is suspect or not working, but honestly, I don't have a better solution.  The fans pick the 10 starters and the coaches pick the other 14 players that get to suit up.  There are 4 days left in the voting for the starters of the ASG and so far this is what it's going to look like:

EAST

Guards: Dwayne Wade, Allen Iverson

Forwards: LeBron James, Kevin Garnett

Center: Dwight Howard

WEST

Guards: Kobe Bryant, Tracy McGrady

Forwards: Tim Duncan, Carmelo Anthony

Center: Yao Ming

However, this year especially has been strange.   The official count is here.  However, here are some items of interest perhaps for those of you who haven't really looked at it.  Let's do a top 5 for each conference.

Western Conference:

5.) The fact that Tracy McGrady has 157,063 more votes than Chris Paul actually kind of boggles me.  I mean, I know T-Mac's been around longer, but really?  We're talking about being more popular than a guy that played in the most recent Olympics and was second in MVP voting last season.

4.) 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th for Forward voting proceed like so; Bruce Bowen, Shane Battier, Luis Scola, Josh Howard, LaMarcus Aldridge.  Seems a little backwards to me.

3.) Rafer Alston has 105,077 more votes than Brandon Roy.

2.) Houston has 6 players in top 10 voting for their respective position, all the starters plus 6th man.

1.) Nick Collison has more votes than Marcus Camby and Chris Kaman combined.

Eastern Conference

5.) Samuel Dalembert is the no 2 center in terms of voting popularity, that's in front of Rasheed Wallace, Jermaine O'Neal, Al Horford, and Andrew Bogut

4.) Yi Jianlian is only 159,466 votes from taking Kevin Garnett's starting spot, and is a comfortable 464,421 votes ahead of the next player; Chris Bosh.  That difference is almost the number of votes that the next player (Paul Pierce) has; 486,656 (the China vote).

3.) Dwight Howard has the most votes (2,102,368); yes, more than Yao Ming (1,758,499), Kobe Bryant (1,903,798), LeBron James (1,940,162), Tim Duncan (1,454,918), and Dwayne Wade (1,818,717).  That's right, if you did the math, the next closest is LeBron James, by 162,206, which means Yi will become a starter before someone becomes more popular than Howard.

2.) Luke Ridnour has more votes than Derrick Rose, Jose Calderon, Joe Johnson, and Jameer Nelson (and by that note teammate Michael Redd as well).  Who would you rather have from Milwaukee? 

1.) The only Wizards to make it onto the top 10 voting per their position are Gilbert Arenas and Brendan Haywood, who have played a grand total of 0 games this entire regular season.  

Addidas vs Nike

I really could care less for the shoes, but let's say the players, this should be interesting.  I was just watching the Addidas Brotherhood commercial and was thinking, what if the top Addidas players matched up with the top Nike players?  For kicks (no pun intended) I'll throw in some other sponsors as well.

Here's what the matchups would look like (let's assume everyone is healthy):

Addidas:

PG- Chauncey Bilups

SG- Tracy McGrady

SF- Kevin Garnett

PF- Tim Duncan

C- Dwight Howard

Nike:

PG- Deron Williams

SG- Kobe Bryant

SF- LeBron James

PF- Chris Bosh

C- Amare Stoudemire

Reebok:

PG- Jason Terry

SG- Allen Iverson

SF- Jamal Crawford

PF- Al Jefferson

C- Yao Ming

Jordans (yes, technically Nikes, I know):

PG- Chris Paul

SG- Joe Johnson

SF- Kevin Martin

PF- Carmelo Anthony

C- Juwan Howard (there are no big men that wear Jordans)

Converse:

PG- Jameer Nelson

SG- Dwayne Wade

SF- Kyle Korver

PF- Elton Brand

C- Udonis Haslem

Personally, I think it's up between Addidas and Nike.

Playing around with the ESPN TM

All I have to say, as a Spurs fan, I wish this would happen, or make the Spurs the Argentinean national team plus Tim Duncan and Tony Parker.

Much Ado About: Mike Miller

I've never really been a huge fan of Mike Miller, maybe because I only remember remember him from the Grizzlies.  After his trade to the Timberwolves, everyone thought that he and Al Jefferson would be a potent inside-outside combo, I mean the guy shoots a career average of 40% from beyond the arc.  However, that doesn't seem to be the case.  The Timberwolves really haven't improved significantly, and honestly, I think Miller is getting ousted out of the lineup even before he had a chance to fit in.  He is coming off of an ankle injury, but you get the sense that he isn't really being involved in the offense he's averaging a career low 9.6 points per game in 31 minutes of play.  31 seems like a lot, but not if you consider that he hasn't really seen over 30 minutes of floor time since December 17.  Again, he's coming off an ankle injury so the Wolves aren't rushing him back, yet you get the feeling he's not really working with the system.  I mean, 9.6 points?  Really?  The guy is supposed to be a shooting stud, he's coming off a year averaging 16.4 points on 50% shooting and 43% beyond the arc.  It didn't hurt that he had a career high 6.7 rebounds either.  He's a big SG that rebounds like an SF, a lot of teams could use that, just, not the Wolves, apparently...  Which actually makes sense, the Wolves need to develop their young talent more and honestly, I think their biggest struggle isn't finding another scorer (Randy Foye does that just fine) but actually in finding a way to best optimize Al Jefferson.  I personally don't think that's at the C slot.  I think it's hard on Jefferson when he's the only starter standing over 6-7, and he's not really great defensively.  Kevin Love was supposed to be the answer, but, his defensive liabilities at the PF slot are almost identical to those of Jefferson at the C slot.  Slow feet, a little on the small sad, poor rotations.  They need a big man that can man up the big centers but also not take away from Jefferson on the block.  That's a little hard to come by, but there might be some possibilities, and something is better than nothing.

So who would be top suitors for the 6-8 SG/SF?  Well, I think any championship caliber team looking for immediate impact.  The Wolves aren't going to get better any time soon, and with the Sebastian Telfair/Randy Foye combo looking promising, Miller will likely lose his spot on the roster eventually to the retunring Corey Brewer next season.  Maybe Miller will get healthy and prove me wrong, but right now, Miller isn't a horrible contract, especially if he can contribute at the caliber that he normally would, that is, a solid scorer and spot up shooter.  Granted, he's a liability on defense, but I'm sure teams are willing to take that risk and try to hide him on the floor.  If healthy, Miller's major contributions are fairly obvious, scoring and threes (perimeter threat), however, what also helps is that he rebounds well for his position (that is SG/SF), if you take a general comparison, current rebounding leaders of SG/SFs are Kevin Durant and Andre Iguodala at 6.2, for pure shooting guards its Kobe Bryant at 5.3 per game.  Currently Mike Miller has been averaging 5.7 rebounds per game and has averaged a solid 6 rebounds per game in his last two seasons at Memphis.  So in summary, what you get with Mike Miller: scoring: career average 14.2 ppg, shooting and perimeter offense: career average 46% FG and 40% 3 pt, and rebounding: career average 4.8, solid numbers for an off guard.

Two teams I think he could make an immediate impact on: Boston Celtics and San Antonio Spurs.

Jeff Clark at CelticsBlog kind of already addresses Mike Miller for Boston.  So I'll leave that to him.    His offer ends up being something like Brian Scalabrine, Eddie House, and Tony Allen, adding a scoring punch off the get-go for the Celtics, but as he points out, might not make a whole lot of sense for the T'Wolves.

Here's my take on the Spurs.  The package would center around Fabricio Oberto (hear me out), including either Bruce Bowen or a package including both Jacque Vaughn and Michael Finley.  A combination of Bowen and Oberto create an immediate salary decrease for the T'Wolves of about $1.4 million, if that's what they're looking for, the Finley/Vaughn combo gives them a decrease of closer to $1.65 million immediately due to salary differences and then leaves only Oberto's $3.5 million on the books the year after (both Vaughn and Finley are expiring).  As far as on the floor reasons (because we need to think of the stuff other than making salaries match), the reasons for the Spurs are pretty obvious.  While probably not the defensive stalwart that Greg Popovich would like, Miller's offensive skills, especially his 3pt proficiency would make him an immediately valuable asset to the team.  He'd easily slide into Michael Finley's starting slot and perhaps enable Pop to go back to the rested 6th man Manu scheme.  Either way, he's pretty flexible within the roster.  So why for the T'Wolves?  Beyond the obvious financial reasons, though we're not sure if McHale is trying to save money or not, Oberto gives the Wolves a big that plays center, but also has the range to stay out of the paint on offense, which I think would help out Jefferson a lot.  Finley is an expiring wing-player, who at the very least, can't be worse than starting tandem forwards of Craig Smith and Ryan Gomes, and should they get Bruce Bowen, he'll tide them over until Corey Brewer gets back, and either becomes trade bait, or can be a defensive mentor to Brewer.  It gives the Spurs some instance offense (which they needed last year).  With George Hill playing as well as he is, Jacque Vaughn is now highly expendable, especially since Roger Mason can handle the ball as well.  

That's my take, and my deal to make the Spurs better, I really don't see much of a future for Mike Miller with the T'Wolves, and honestly, I think it's a waste of good talent.  

If the T'Wolves were willing to take on more salary to try to make their team more effective over the next couple of years, trades for Samuel Dalembert, Chris Kaman, Marcus Camby, or Brad Miller would work money-wise as well.  Of course, there are questions as to whether or not players like Dalembert and Kaman could coexist on the floor with Jefferson.

Dunno, makes sense in my head.  

Shaq Making Them Pay: From the Charity Stripe?

I think Shaq's finally figured it out.  Reportedly, he's going back to his high school form of shooting free-throws, and for all extensive purposes, it's paying off.  Since the beginning of December Shaq has been 77 for 111 at the free throw line, that's 69% (he's 17 for 20 so far this year), we're talking about a career shooter of 58%.  Now take these numbers with a grain of salt (like they might not have used hack-a-Shaq), but 69%!  Here are the implications of these numbers, if Shaq had figured this out earlier...

In his highest scoring 1999-2000 season with the Lakers, he would've made 140 more free throws, resulting in an almost 2 point increase in his scoring average raising it to 31.5 ppg as his career high scoring average.

His career low scoring average would be a whole point higher (13.9 ppg rather than 12.9 ppg).

Overall, it would've probably raised his scoring average by at least 1 point per game per season (i.e. averaging 24.3 ppg in his rookie year instead of 23.4 ppg). 

His scoring average would be 26.6 ppg to its current 25, because he made 1731 more free throws.  Wow.  Of course, this is all in retrospect, but that's the difference that it's making right now.  Hope he can keep it up.  Kudos to the big man.