NBA Trade Deadline Deals

Cafe Society
1

Pretty active deadline the trades are as follows:

Sacremento Kings get: Brian Skinner, Kenny Thomas and Corliss Williamson
Philidelphia 76ers get: Chris Webber, Matt Barnes and Michael Bradley

Philadelpiha 76ers get: Jamal Mashburn and Rodney Rodgers
New Orleans Hornets get: Glenn Robinson

Cleveland Cavaliers get: Jiri Welsh
Boston Celtics get: 2007 First round pick

Boston Celtics get Antoine Walker
Atlanta Hawks get: 1st round draft pick, Gary Payton, Tom Gugliotta and Michael Stewart

Dallas Mavericks get: Keith Van Horn
Milwaukee Bucks get: Alan Henderson and Calvin Booth

New York Knicks get: Malik Rose and First round pick
San Antonio Spurs: Nazr Mohammad and Jamison Brewer

Houston Rockets get: Vin Baker and Moochie Norris
New York Knicks get: Mo Taylor and First Round Pick

Golden State Warriors get: Nikoloz Tskitishvili and Rodney White
Denver Nuggets get: Eduardo Najera and a 1st round pick

Golden State Warriors get: Baron Davis
New Orleans Hornets get: Speedy Claxton and Dale Davis

Milwaukee Bucks get: Reece Gaines and 2 second round picks
Houston Rockets get: Zendon Hamilton and Mike James

I think that about covers em all check out espn.com for analysis and possibly ones that I missed.

I’ll do an analysis team by team:

** Atlanta Hawks **

Decent trade. Antoine was going to give them a good deal of cap room but they have plenty of that already. Gives them another mid first round draft pick to build with. The rest of the players are done as NBA players.

** Boston Celtics **

Danny Ainge has again displayed his sheer incompetance as a GM. Jiri Welsh for a late first round pick in 2 years is just stupid. Bringing back Antoine walker is just odd espicially since he lost assets becuase of the two trades. Payton and Gugliotta are done as players in this league but would have given them cap relief.
** Cleveland Cavaliers **

Highway robbery a no-brainer of a trade.

** Dallas Mavericks **

I like this trade for them. Keith Van Horn was given a ridiculous contract and has taken a lot of flak for not playing up to it. He is a good enough role player that will come off the bench and give you good minutes. He just doesn’t deserve the max salary to do that. His salary is done after this season lowering the Mavericks cap number a bit (almost back into orbit but not quite)

** Golden State Warriors **

I think this trade comes down to lowering the cap number as IIRC Najera has an outrageous contract. A first round draft pick seems a high price to pay for just some cap room. Who knows though the two youngs they got might turn into something during the rest of the season.

** Houston Rockets **

Good trades all around. They get cap relief, help at the point guard spot without losing too much. Who knows Vin Baker might get his shit together again and be a productive player.

** Milwaukee Bucks **

Get cap relief to enable them to resign Redd. Decent trade nets them a disaster of a first round pick in Gaines. Maybe he will turn it around in his last shot in the league. Second round draft picks aren’t worth too much but if they can draft a young European and leave him in Europe he might develop.

** New Orleans Hornets **

Got a replacement starter in Speedy Claxton and a boatload of cap room for the summer. Two All-Stars (oft injured albiet) is a high price to pay for that cap room. No free agent has New Orleans has his first, second or even 3rd choice so they will have to over pay if they get anyone. This team is a disaster and I don’t really see them turning it around anytime soon.

** New York Knicks **

Sigh. Him and Ainge are consistantly trying to outdo each other with bone headed moves. He takes on 32 million more in salaries but I suppose when you are this far over the cap already it doesn’t really matter does it. Two first round picks will help them rebuild but then again they are late first rounders. Its hard to believe that is the best he could do for taking on 32 million in salaries.

** Philadelphia **

Ho boy if Mash and Webber stay healthy they have turned themself into an elite team. Unfortunately that is a HUGE if. Granted they did only give up expiring contracts and role players to get them. If either one or heaven forbid both get injured Philidelphia is screwed with a capital S. By the time their contracts come off the books A.I. will be almost done as an elite player in the league and they will be in deep trouble. Overall though I like these trades and I like Phili as a team now they have a nice mix of young (Igudola, Dalembert and Green) plus elite level vets (Webber, Mash and A.I.)

** Sacremento Kings **

I like this trade for them. Gets rid of a problem in the locker room, offense and relieves them of a huge contract. The team seemed to be better without Webber in the offense espicially Peja.

** San Antonio Spurs **

Cap relief and an upgrade at a position all rolled into one at only the cost of a first round pick. Good work as always from the premier orginization in the league.

As to how it affects my beloved Bulls well it bodes ill. New Orleans has gotten some cap room for the summer but no top flight free agent will want to go there. Teams like them and the Hawks end up over paying espicially for athletic big young players. Which is precisely what the Bulls have going into free agency. Both Chandler and Curry are restricted free agents and I fear that one of these two teams will throw them a huge stupid contract. The Bulls are going to have to match one or both of those stupid contracts or they lose half their front line. I do not want Antonio Davis and Othella Harrington as my starters being backed up by
Jared Reiner.

2

As a Bulls fan, I’m optimistic that they’ll keep this crop together. Things have turned around so suddenly that they’d be crazy to let an important piece go.

Sixers: Got better, big time. Their division was weak anyway, and I think this should put them far ahead of Boston.

Boston: Wha? I do think there’s some karma involved with Payton getting sent to Atlanta, but I don’t see the team getting better as a result.

Knicks: Once again, Isiah moves some players around for no discernable reason. Ho hum.

Hornets: I guess it didn’t matter anyway.

3

Great analysis. I had missed a few of those trades today. Some of the smaller ones were overshadowed by Webber and Baron. I think some of the small trades can be as influential as the big ones.

  • I think N.O. did a good job dumping Baron Davis. I think the guy is fundamentally injured and will break down. That contract was a nice dump. BUT if he is healthy, GS has the PG they have been looking for since Bug Hardaway!

  • I don’t get the ATL/BOS deal. Both sides have disgruntled players going to each team. Walker will be smarting going back to Beantown. GP was mad going to Boston! ATL is MUCH worse. He may not show.

  • Welsch got STOLEN from Danny Ainge. Getting Welsch was the ONE good move Danny Ainge made. Him, Isiah and Chris Mullin must be in a contest for stupididty.

  • I have a feeling Mashburn will feel better right away!

  • Van Horn suffers a bit from Juwan Howard Disease. He put up nice numbers (down this year, but 17PPG, 7 RPG for a career) but he is judged in relation to his fat paycheck.

  • Najera is a nice addition for Denver. He may be the SG they needed. I guess Skita just wasn’t worth the #5 pick!

  • I think Gaines was a bad pick as well. He had EVERY opportunity to play in ORL and HOU.

  • I like the moves my Rockets made. When we got Juwan, we didn’t need Mo Taylor. I love that we fleeced Isiah and dumped a big contract. Plus we get back the MOOCH! Mike James is also a nice addition. We thought about signing him this summer!

  • If you had to decide between matching Curry or Chandler, who do you pick? If I was convinced of his health, I’d keep Chandler. He reminds me of a tall, athletic Ben Wallace (weak offense, but an excellent rebounder and defender). Curry reminds me of Oliver Miller (post offense only!)

4

Yeah but they would be crazy to sign Curry to a max deal or Chandler to one over the 6-8 mil per range. Unfortunately they are free agents and if we want to keep them we have to pay and I see Atlanta and/or N.O. offering contracts in this range.

I agree when they are healthy this puts them in the top 5 in the East at least. Definately better than Boston, Wash and Orlando. Thats a big if though with Webber and Mash’s injury history

I forgot to mention that. If almost refused to report to Boston I can’t imagine he is thrilled about the Hawks. Not that Atlanta cares anyhow they just want him off the oboks.

Meh this is better than any of his other moves in my opinion. What he gave us for J.C. was stupid. The Marbury trade was stupid. In this one atleast he gets 2 draft picks that he can screw up.

5

Yeah ESPN lumped like 4 of them in one story under ‘Knicks make moves’.

Yep and word is that his contract is uninsured (which simply boggles my mind). This deal and the 76ers moves all depend on the health of the players they get. If they stay healthy it was highway robbery if they get hurt they are screwed.

Yep. Thats what happens when you get trades between two horrible front offices. I cringe at what a Knicks Celts trade would be.

Najera is a foward and he is not what any team need. He might be good playing for UCLA but he ain’t worth anything in the pros.

Yep you guys made out well. Thats what happens when you trade with Isiah and a salary dumping team.

Chandler absolutely. All he really needs to do is develope the 15-20 ft jumper and maybe one or two post moves. He finishes well enough around the basket, defends and rebounds. The Bulls have enough offense from their backcourt with Hinrich, Gordon and Deng to score. Chandler can get his points if he knocks down little jumpers, finishes on the break and dunks the easy set ups from his guards. Curry may be able to score in the post but he never takes over a game like Ben has, he doesn’t rebound nor does he play defense. His conditioning is questionable at best and lacks the focus or drive of an elite player. I’ve always thought Chandler got lumped together with Curry as ‘busts’ unfairly. I also think the injury concerns are overblown.

6

I’d go with Chandler too. They’ve got some fine guards now, and Luol Deng, so it’s good to have a shot-blocking, rebounding post presence, which is what Tyson is.

7

My analysis of the trade deadline deals: It fucking sucks being a New Orleans sports fan. We could have had Shaq for Baron and Magloire, which would have made New Orleans a much more appealing place to play for FA’s. Welp, at least I’ve got the Saints to dissapoint me for a few more years.

8

I made a mistake (or ESPN did when they first reported the trades) but San Antonio sent 2 first rounders (A pick they aquired from the Suns and theirs) to the Knicks. Houston sent a 2nd round pick to the knicks not a first.

I didn’t realize the extent of Mashburn’s injury nor how old he is but he is most likely done for his career.

BabaBooey:

Yeah but then again when that trade was made Baron and Mash both just had all-star seasons and N.O.'s future was looking a lot better than it turned out. I fear that you guys are going to now overpay for one of the Chicago’s bigs (Go for Dalembert he is much better!).

9

Well, that makes a difference. San Antonio AND Phoenix’s first round picks? Well, both are going to be lottery, right?

10

Yeah, what’s the deal with Danny Ainge, anyway?

is he
a) just a little dimmer than Terry Bradshaw, and thinks that being a on a championship team once means that whatever he does now is going to be good;

b) knowing a whole lot of things that we don’t about a whole lot of current players (for instance, that Jiri Welsch has been diagnosed as having five months to live);

c) just pissed off that he didn’t get the adulation in Boston that Bird/McHale/Parish and Walton did, so he’s running the Celtics into the ground out of revenge;

d) trying to help out his old teammates Bird and McHale by making moves that somehow help the Pacers and Timberwolves at the expense of the Celtics (though I don’t see how these trades help either of them)
of
e) pissed off Auerbach somehow, who’s now advising every one else in the league how to screw the Celtics?

I mean, big props for dumping Walker originally (the right move, and took some guts), and a good draft, but seems to believe giving away talent for nothing is a route to, uh, I don’t know what.

It’s pretty clear that Ainge isn’t taking the same stats-minded approach as the Red Sox (I mean, that would obviously never lead to a championship, right?) The player rankings here ttp://www.82games.com/rolandratings0405.htm, gives a measure of a player’s overall effect by calculating the difference between how well a team performs (in terms of scoring and defending) with the player on and off the court. Walker is second to last in the entire league.

11

Uh not quite. San Antonio and Phoenix are 1 and 2 right now in the league so those picks would be the last and second to last in the first round. In essence they are 2nd round draft picks with garunteed contracts. Hrm actually I guess it depends on which Phoenix pick they sent. I know they have the Bulls’ this year and I think they also might have the Knicks’ from the Stephon Marbury trade. Chad Ford in his column (insider on ESPN) says “Thomas did pick up two extra draft picks in the deal ? likely the 29th and the 30th picks. Way to go” so I would assume it is Pheonix’s pick.

Which reminds me of how well the Bulls’ ended up out of their deal. They sent their 2nd round pick last year and this years first for the 7th pick last year (Luol Deng). The Bulls’ pick this year is most likely going to be in the 15-20 range which means they made out like bandits.

Yep thats what happens when you don’t play a lick of defense. Suprisingly Andres Nocioni of the Bulls is 4th to last in those rankings. I am trying to figure out how that happens as he is one of the better defenders in the league. Perhaps thats also what happens when you don’t play a lick of offense. I find it amusing that Marbury is 5th while both of his numbers are -. The Knicks are bad with their best player on the floor and are just terrible without him.

Those numbers are pretty misleading however. You have Robert Horry a spot above LeBron James.

12

Yeah, I know. 'Twas a joke.

13

OK, in no particular order:

Great trade for the Sixers, don’t understand it for Sacto. The Kings actually picked up more salary commitment than they dumped – Williamson, Thomas, and Skinner have a combined 10 years remaining on their deals, and they’re all slightly-to-moderately overpaid. I hope they like Kenny Thomas, because he’s got just an unspeakably monstrous contract. Iverson’s never played with a player, let alone a big man, with a third of the ability Webber has. I never understood why Sacramento had so little respect for Webber’s game. Also, it seems like an afterthought, but Matt Barnes can really play. God, I love it. By the way, Jamal Mashburn’s never going to play again. Rodney Rogers, on the other hand, is a big acquisition; he played his best ball under Jim O’Brien, he can shoot, and he can defend several positions. Net gain for the Sixers: they become about three times as good in terms of shooting as they were two days ago, they move laterally salary-wise, and they get another star for the first time in a decade.

The Knicks didn’t accomplish anything. Nazr Mohammed was getting almost a double double for them, and he’s younger and bigger than Malik Rose. How many undersized big men with little to no scoring capacity can one team have? On the other hand, Maurice Taylor’s a legitimate player, and they got him for very little. All in all, considering that they’ll probably blow those late first-rounders anyway, it seems like Isiah just felt like he had to do something, so he did this. That trade was silly for Houston, too.

Antoine Walker coming back just seems like a disaster for the Celts. It was supposed to be Pierce’s team when he left, and obviously that didn’t work out. They just aren’t really a very good team – if the division wasn’t so awful they’d probably have tried to move Pierce and build up some more young talent, which they do have. Walker and Pierce together, aging… that’s a lot of missed jumpers and half-assed defense, in my opinion. I imagine they’ll be getting Payton back pretty soon, though, so maybe they think they’ve got the guns to go after it this year.

Also, Quercus, those rankings are very interesting, but they’re also pretty flawed, and I would never expect an NBA GM to use those numbers as gospel. For one thing, having a shitty backup makes you seem like a better player almost by definition, and backing up a great player is going to make you look absolutely terrible. It says right on that page that the rankings are really only effective at determining the player’s value to that particular team, and can’t be translated into a universal ranking. You don’t think the Heat should’ve been on the horn with the Lakers trying to ship Shaq back for Brian Cook, do you?

14

Well, you’re right about there being lies, damn lies, and statistics. As Jimmy says, you’ve there are all kinds of things that can influence this stat – just like there are things that can influence all the SABR numbers that Theo Epstein looks at.

But let me ask: how many championship rings does LeBron have? And isn’t Horry working on his second hand now? Not a completely fair comparison, I know, but there’s another stat that says maybe Horry really does know how to make his teammates better.
Though I admit I spoke a bit too soon about the Walker trade (hey, I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night). I hadn’t realized he was in the last year of his contract, and the rumour is that Payton will be released immediately by the Hawks and likely end up back in Boston. So maybe it’s not an unmitigated disaster.

But I’m still not optomistic about Walker’s ability to add anything. How can anyone continue to shoot that many threes with a .317 percentage?

15

Why do I love the NBA trade deadline?

  1. We get to learn who is still technically in the NBA? Tom Gugliotta. The corpse of Alan Henderson. Zendon Hamilton. These are names I would have thought had a better likelihood to be in the WNBA.

  2. Nothing beats the fun of big, white stiffs getting traded. Michael Bradley, Keith Van Horn, Nikoloz Tskitishvili.

  3. Awful teams make clearly one sided deals to give themselves many more millions under the salary cap with which to fail in wooing good free agents in the offseason. When has this strategy ever worked? The Bulls essentially started this after Jordan left and it’s taken this long to be respectable. I can’t imagine how long it will take a team like the Hawks to be decent. Just because you have $18 million to spend doesn’t mean good players will flock there. It essentially means we get to watch you give a max contract to someone like Ray Allen who will have no impact on wins and losses.

  4. Isiah Thomas. He is a fantastic piece of work. Business schools should write case studies about him. He is the Goofus to pretty much every other GMs Gallant. Just so you know Isiah picked up over $50 million in long term deals so he could build on his collection of offensively challenged, undersized forwards (he has 7 of them now). Take a glance at their roster and tell me who their starting center should be. I may have to send a resume.

16

This guy is one of Bill Simmons’ favorite targets. I think he first suggested that Isiah Thomas was the first guy to complete the Triple Crown of failure in basketball - as head coach, as GM and as league president (drove the CBA under).

I think he recently also suggested a new television show where each season Isiah gets a new business to drive into the ground. I think he wanted to call it The Midas Touch.