Breaking Down the New Orleans and Charlotte Trade

This is a little late, and I'm not the only one that thinks this makes little to no sense whatsoever. I'm still trying to wrap my head around it, and while various pundits have tried to explain it away somehow, I still can't help but sit and consider how remarkably incapable the Bobcats' front office really is. You'd have to think money plays into this somewhere, and that while Chandler is slated to make $2 million more than Okafor over the next two years, Okafor is signed for the next three following. It's a weak, but semi-palatable argument that gives Bobcats some resemblance of credibility on this trade, more so than Larry Brown's proclaimation of playing Chandler, at least for a little bit, at power forward. I could start pulling out numbers now and talk about immediately how Emeka Okafor is at the very least, Tyson Chandler with an offensive game. So in essence the main difference in what you're paying Chandler is 3 inches of height on Okafor.

For the Hornets this makes every single bit of sense. Not only do you retain the defense that Chandler once brought to the middle in Okafor, you add a legitimate third option scorer behind Chris Paul and David West, one that isn't as injury prone as Tyson Chandler (or Peja Stojakovic). This is important because this enables Chris Paul a little more help and decreases the necessity of having to create a shot for every single other player, he can simply toss it into the post every now and again and have Okafor back his man in. While he's no Tim Duncan, Okafor is a competent back-to-the-basket player, and therefore keeps the defense honest on him. Additionally, he can run the pick-and-roll as effectively as Chandler can. Finally, depsite being undersized, Okafor plays like a true center, requiring fairly close positioning in the paint without any teammates getting in his way, with David West's bread-and-butter being the mid-range jumper, the frontcourt has good synergy and the pieces fit well next to each other.

On the other side of the trade, I'm not really sure why they pulled this. Some argue that Okafor is too much of a center and the Bobcats haven't been able to put legitmate PFs next to him, ones that can shoot, which leads me to wonder, isn't Boris Diaw the Bobcats' starting PF? Doesn't he shoot pretty darn well? I mean, I'm pretty sure you'd have to, to be a starter in D'Antoni's 7-seconds-or-less offense. The only feasible reason would be that Larry Brown wants to run the offense less through the middle, meaning more touches and shots for who? Oh, yes, the offensive powerhouse of a trio in Gerald Wallace, Raja Bell, and Boris Diaw? Maybe Raymond Felton and DJ Augustin? Vladamir Radmanovic? Um.... Yeah, I don't get it either. As Brown mentioned in his interview, he might play Chandler sometime at PF making the other center either Nazr Mohammed or DeSagana Diop. Now, Mohammed has some scoring ability, but with a front court of Diop and Chandler? I was just watching the 1999 NBA finals on DVD, and Doug Collins consistently mentions how Jeff Van Gundy was loathe to play Chris Dudley simply because while defensively competent, he can't score, and therefore stressing the importance of buckets. Not to say that Chandler and Diop can't put the ball in the bucket when left alone, but they are by no means defensive stalwarts, and neither DJ Augustin nor Raymond Felton are extraordinarily adept at creating shots for others. I understand that defense is important, but a team full of defensive specialists that aren't exactly known to be able to score? Uh... did I miss a memo here? Sure it's nice to hold the opposition to 85 points, but it doesn't help if you can't even score 80.

Swapping Centers

In the event you haven't heard yet, Charlotte and New Orleans are reaching agreements to trade Emeka Okafor and Tyson Chandler. It's an interesting swap, and you usually don't see straight up position for position swaps unless there's a particular motive, usually in terms of money or personnel fit. When we look at both players though, it's not as though either one is a lockerroom issue, from what I hear both are nice guys that fit well on both teams, both bring generally the same things to the floor, those being rebounding, solid interior defense, and a shot blocking presence. The swap to me from a basketball perspective ends up as something of a wash, however, maybe it makes a little more sense from a financial perspective, Bobcats save money in the long run and Hornets get a more offensively potent center and save a little bit of money now. Dunno how it works out, wish the best for both of them. Okafor's definitely one of those nice-guy big men that I wish Tim Duncan could've developed.

Does it matter how long you play college?

I was kind of speculating. My guess is that it really doesn't, since the talent level varies significantly, and people have different reasons for leaving or staying in school. Nonetheless, since I haven't done any of these speculations in a while, here we have it:

High School Only
PG	Monta Ellis	Louis Williams
SG	Kobe Bryant	Stephen Jackson
SF	LeBron James	Tracy McGrady	Rashard Lewis
PF	Kevin Garnett	Amar'e Stoudemire
C	Dwight Howard	Al Jefferson	Andrew Bynum
One and Done
PG	Derrick Rose	Jamal Crawford
SG	OJ Mayo	Corey Maggette
SF	Kevin Durant	Carmelo Anthony	Luol Deng
PF	Lamar Odom	Anthony Randolph	Zach Randolph
C	Chris Bosh	Spencer Hawes
Sophomore Sensation
PG	Chris Paul	Chauncey Billups	Gilbert Arenas
SG	Joe Johnson	Jason Richardson
SF	Caron Butler	Andre Iguodala	Rudy Gay
PF	Elton Brand	LaMarcus Aldridge
C	Rasheed Wallace	Brook Lopez
Juniors
PG	Deron Williams	Devin Harris
SG	Dwayne Wade	Ray Allen	Vince Carter
SF	Paul Pierce	Shawn Marion
PF	Carlos Boozer	Antawn Jamison
C	Marcus Camby	Emeka Okafor	Al Horford
College Graduates
PG	Jameer Nelson	Steve Nash	Jason Terry
SG	Brandon Roy	Danny Granger
SF	Tayshaun Prince	Shane Battier	Josh Howard
PF	Tim Duncan	David West
C	Brad Miller	Brendan Haywood
Foreign Club
PG	Tony Parker	Jose Calderon
SG	Manu Ginobili	Rudy Fernandez
SF	Hedo Turkoglu	Andrei Kirilenko
PF	Pau Gasol	Dirk Nowitzki	Nene Hilario
C	Yao Ming	Mehmet Okur	Marc Gasol

Now granted some of the one and done players might have tried to go into the NBA straight out of college (2006 and later) but for now, it seems we have a pretty good spread. What's your take? Juniors are pretty stacked.

What is Kevin Pritchard Doing?

Okay, so obviously Portland is trying to get better, obviously. I mean, they're one of the few playoff teams that has kept its core intact and still has cap space to play with. So the question ends up being, what do they need? Well, as of right now, here's what I see in terms of the Blazers' roster:

PG- Steve Blake, Jerryd Bayless
SG- Brandon Roy, Rudy Fernandez
SF- Nicolas Batum, Travis Outlaw, Martell Webster
PF- LaMarcus Aldridge
C- Greg Oden, Joel Przybilla

This is not counting the Blazers' draft picks of Victor Claver (who will probably stay in Spain for a year or two), Jeff Pendergraph, Dante Cunningham, and Patrick Mills. I don't know if the plan is just to let them all walk, or to offer any one of them a contract. What is crucial now is to consider the needs that Portland has. There are three things that I think Portland really needs, and these are them, in what I consider order of importance:

1.) Upgrade at the SF slot (defensive minded player that can hit threes)
2.) Upgrade at the PG slot
3.) A backup PF

So if we look at Kevin Pritchard's moves, it's a little confusing to say the least, at least from where I'm standing. The first was to offer a 5 year $50 million contract to Hedo Turkoglu, which makes some semblence of sense. He's decent on defense and can hit threes, as well as take some of the playmaking burden off of Brandon Roy. However, he's 30, and isn't super effective without the ball, it's a tough call, I think he'd help, but he wouldn't be the perfect fit in Portland. As we all know, he spurned the Blazers last minute for a 5 year $56 million deal in Toronto.

His second major free agent push was to throw a front loaded contract at Paul Millsap, I think the deal ended up being like $32 million for like 4 years or something, but Pritchard threw in a singing bonus and therefore paid Millsap $10 million upfront. The Jazz had made a commitment to match anything anyone threw at Millsap, and were able to scrounge up the money to do so. This is where things start making less sense. I can understand the idea of throwing a contract at Millsap for no reason if other than to make the Jazz match, but I don't see how Millsap is super attractive as a piece on the Blazers. Millsap is a starting caliber talent, and on the Blazers he's not going anywhere except on the bench behind LaMarcus Aldridge. $8 million a year for a backup is a lot, that's all I'm saying, unless Blazers had in mind to start Aldridge back at the center and play Millsap.

Now, there are murmurings of interest in Andre Miller. While it's an intriguing idea, I don't subscribe to the fact that Andre Miller will make the Blazers better. In my opinion, what fits for the Blazers in terms of point guards, is one that can hit threes as well as run the point. While I have no doubt that Miller can run the point, he can shoot threes for jack, and therefore needs the ball in his hands to be effective, which means taking the ball out of Brandon Roy's hands, and relegating him (Roy) to being more of a shooter than a creator. If we look at the blueprint of the Blazers, it's actually fairly similar to the Lakers. I consider Derek Fisher and Steve Blake to be along a similar mold of point guard, that is, one who can run the show, but also be that spot up catch and shoot guy at the top of the key. A perfect fit would actually be Kirk Hinrich if they could get him somehow (without giving up Jerryd Bayless).

My call would be to make a bigger splash at the wing position in free agency and then trade the expendable wing player for a backup big or something. I would say make a comparable if not larger offer that was made to Millsap to Marvin Williams. Worse case scenario is that Hawks match and take up a lot of cap space. Another possibility is to offer Lamar Odom the contract that was offered Hedo Turkoglu, and if the fit isn't great, trade him somewhere, maybe work out a sign and trade or something, say to Chicago for Hinrich. In terms of getting a backup big, there are a number of free agents still out there that are serviceable, maybe like a Hakim Warrick, Joe Smith, or Drew Gooden. Remember that Steve Blake and Travis Outlaw are still very tradeable. Maybe the Blazers think that Martell Webster will be good enough? They're high on Nicolas Batum? I don't know.

Thoughts From a (former) Warriors Season Ticket Holder

Most of my posts will be Warriors related, but i'll try to expand out to the rest of the NBA as best as I can.

It all started from the WE BELIEVE era of the Warriors after 13 years of not making the playoffs and so many bad decisions throughout the whole franchise, Don Nelson with the cast of Baron Davis, Jason Richardson, Monte Ellis, Stephen Jackson, Matt Barnes, Mickael Pietrus, Al Harrington and Andris Biedrins going on an incredible hot streak and sneak into the 8th spot of the playoffs. Around the All-Star Break, the Warriors were not supposed to make the playoffs, which would be what all Warriors fans would accept, but the Indiana Pacers gave us some hope when they traded Stephen Jackson and Al Harrington (plus Sarunas Jasikevicius) for Mike Dunleavy and Troy Murphy (plus Ike Diogu). Then the biggest upset in NBA Playoffs history happened and the Warriors beat the #1 seed Dallas Mavericks.

Then building upon the sucess of the previous season and the emergence of Monta Ellis, the Warriors traded beloved Jason Richardson to Charlotte to draft Brandon Wright. The Warriors had a good season winning 48 games, but wasn't able to make it to the playoffs because the Western Conference was too good. I went to a game with a friend and checked out a table with sales reps from the Warriors offering the Playoff Push Plan where we would get playoff tickets for making a downpayment on season tickets next year. We thought the Warriors would make the playoffs for sure and then play the Lakers in the fist round which we honestly could have made a thousand dollars in selling our playoff tickets, but they CHOCKED and it went all downhill from here.

Once free agency period hit, Baron Davis opted out of the last year of his contract and signed with the Clippers. The Warriors panicked to find a replacement for him and signed Corey Maggette to a big contract after Elton Brand and Gilbert Arenas refused to sign with the Warriors. The Warriors resigned Monta Ellis and Andris Biedrins as their core players for the futures. Then Monta Ellis celebrates his new contract by buying a moped and tears his ankle and misses the first half of the season.

We decided to get a pair of lower level seats behind the backboard which was the cheapest of the lower level with a season ticket holder price of $50 each and a face value of $80 thinking we could be able to sell games at face value and make $60 in profit for each game. This would have been the case if the Warriors were good and playing against a decent team. The Lakers are always schedule to come in to town and we could really make some money from selling those games. I was able to sell my pair for $250 and my friend sold his game for $300. But on the schedule comes midweek games against teams like the Kings, Thunder, Bucks, and Grizzlies where I could not find any buyers at all so I went to those games if I was able to go. The positive thing was that I was able to bring friends to their first Warriors game, but I could have bought similiar tickets from other season ticket holders or ticket brokers on craigslist for $20 instead of my cost of $50 or bought upper level tickets for $8. One of the perks that we got was to sit coutside at a pre-game shootaround as they Toronto players warmed up. That was an awesome experience as I got a "whats-up" from Jamario Moon, a thumbs up from Jose Calderon and a hand slap with Nathan Jawai. I yelled at Chris Bosh, but he didn't turn his head to look over at us. I went to a total of 10 games this past year and most of those games were losses.

In the end, I lost money by going to the games and eating most the costs for the people I took to the game so I will not renew my season ticket for next year even though they lowered the costs of our seat to $38 a game instead of $50 since the Warriors aren't going to get better anytime soon, even if they make the trade for Amare.

New Spurs Blog

So I'm still going to be fairly active here over the summer offseason, but I definitely am moving towards doing more specifically Spurs related blogging. Please check it out.

Taking the Next Step: Part 3

Cleveland Cavaliers
66-16 in 2008-2009
Lost to Orlando 4-2 in Eastern Conference Finals

I'm not really picking any particular order to do these in. Anyways, next on my list is the Cleveland Cavaliers, who after having a league best record, and numerous pundits lauding them the up and coming team, were embarrassingly and soundly routed by a superior Orlando Magic squad. Obviously Mo Williams wasn't enough, not enough to stop Dwight Howard from yanking the welcome mat to the Finals out from under the MVP. So, obviously things had to be done, and things were done, are they the right things though?

Shaq

The first obvious big move was to move the contracts of Ben Wallace and Sasha Pavlovic for that of Shaquille O'Neal. Wallace and Pavlovic would then be traded and bought out respectively, where ever they do end up. How does this work though? Is this just another trigger happy reaction on the part of Danny Ferry to make a big splash? My gut instinct tells me yes. Why is that? Well, simply put, for all the low-post help that LeBron needs, Cleveland is a team built on defense. While Shaq provides a more legitimate post presence than say Zydrunas Ilgauskas, he definitely is a significant defensive downgrade from Ben Wallace. Perhaps Shaq's offensive contributions overcome any loss of Ben Wallace on the defensive end, okay, I can live with that. However, Cleveland was decimated by Orlando's high pick-and-roll with Hedo Turkoglu and Dwight Howard. So what does Danny Ferry do? Trades for one of the worst pick-and-roll defenders ever? Maybe Hedo's not coming back with Dwight next season, but Jameer Nelson is, equally effective if not more so. Now you throw on a 325 lb colossus that won't show on the guard? A guard whose effective field goal percentage was in the mid 50s and whose true shooting percentage was like 61%? Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

Okay, perhaps I'm making too big of a deal about this, I mean, the Cavs might not even play the Magic again in the post season, but wouldn't it make sense to plan for the reigning Eastern Conference champions to be right back in the Eastern Conference Finals? For all the problems that having Shaq on the team does portend (especially on the defensive end for a defensive minded team like the Cavs), it does solve the problem of an interior presence. For all the problems both on and off the court that Shaq brings, he at the very least is a force in the paint, and one of the better passing big men in the league. While he won't dominate anymore, you can still probably expect him to put up comparable numbers to the 17.8 points and 8.4 rebounds per game that he did last season. Having Shaq platoon time with Zydrunas Ilgauskas ensures that the Cavs will always have an above-average, albeit old, big man in the pivot at all times of the game. Furthermore, since Shaq is an expiring contract, he's minimal risk, and will enable the Cavs to still be players in the long-awaited 2010 free agency. The biggest problem would be if the Shaq thing doesn't work out and LeBron gets fed up with Cleveland and bolts for New York or something.

Now that Anderson Varejao has opted out, the roster probably looks something like this:

PG - Mo Williams, Daniel Gibson
SG - Delonte West
SF - LeBron James, Tarence Kinsey
PF - JJ Hickson, Darnell Jackson, Jawad Williams
C - Shaquille O'Neal, Zydrunas Ilgauskas

Unless for some reason Mike Brown decides to start starting big Z at the PF spot that's one of the most obvious needs there is. Additionally, they need a backup wing. Cavs had shown interest in Charlie Villanueva, but they wouldn't have the resources to bid against the massive amounts of cap space that Detroit seems willing to spend on him. With pretty much only the MLE available to spend, the Cavs will definitely have to bolster their roster significantly as they lost significant depth with the trading of Ben Wallace and Sasha Pavlovic as well as the expiring contract of Wally Sczerbiak.

Some murmurs around have Lamar Odom being takeable at the MLE simply because Lakers will have to overpay to keep Trevor Ariza. It's hard to imagine that a talent like Odom would fall to just a simple MLE, but it'd be a dream come true for the Cavs should it happen. Odom is a versatile PF who can score like a SF but also rebounds well. Within the Cavs system he wouldn't have the pressure of being a go-to guy, especially with both LeBron and Shaq in the picture. He's versatile not only offensively but defensively as well and would add a ton of length to the frontcourt. Further down the list, were I Danny Ferry, I'd look at Chris Wilcox for cheap, or even Shawn Marion.

In terms of wing players, I'd keep an eye open on vets like Anthony Parker or Dahntay Jones or Flip Murray. Backup wings are generally pretty easy to come by. Cavs still lack a major scoring punch next to LeBron, and the ideal position for someone like that would be the PF slot on this Cavs roster. We'll see what happens here.