While the 05-06 body's still warm...the NBA offseason trades and shit thread

Where will AI and Jermaine O'Neal play next year?

I like the Telfair trade for Boston.

I don't see why not. He's probably not going to be a scoring champ, but he has a nose for the ball and he knows how to play under the rim.

Granted, I only saw him play in the NCAA tourney (where he underperformed like a madman), but isn't he undersized or a tweener or somehing?

He had 14 points and 12 boards against a really tough NC State team. He didn't blow anyone away, but he was doubled and tripled all game.

I SUPPOSE THAT THE DAY IS NOT OVER.

Fred Jones would actually be a really nice pickup for the Blazers... he could be a solid 5th or 6th guy in the right situation. Not really sold on Luke Jackson at all.

(How the hell has he been employed by three separate franchises?)

i know, i know...i'm not even trying to make fun of him anymore, i'm just trying to understand how on earth he thinks any of the things he does will actually work.

i saw smith once apparently genuinely hurt skip bayless's feelings on espn once so i could never ever truly hate the guy

"One of my big concerns of last night was giving up Viktor Khyrapa, a player I really like. He plays hard, he's long, and he doesn't make mistakes. Chicago wasn't really going to take LaMarcus Aldridge. The Blazers, it seemed, could have picked him fourth and kept Khyrapa. But here's the thing: other teams that wanted Aldridge were, as the story goes, also vying for Chicago's pick. (Can anyone tell me who that was?) The Blazers had to outbid them.
I could still argue that the Blazers could have called their bluff. The Bulls wanted Tyrus Thomas, and had the fourth pick. If Chicago made a deal with someone picking lower than Portland, the Blazers could have still taken Thomas in spite. Basically, the Blazers had the power to keep Chicago from their guy. They could have wielded it."

As in: Hello, I would like to trade the twentieth selection and Q-Rich to the Bobcats for a #2 and Gerald Wallace. You're telling me that the Cats, who will be using Wallace as a 6th man this year now that Mr. Stache is in town, couldn't use a dynamic outside shooter like QRich? Plus, they could have added another great piece with that 20th pick, perhaps a backup point guard so they can get rid of Brevin.

Then, Isiah could draft his guy Rolando Blackman Jr. at pick 30 or whatever and that other guy in the mid 2nd and no one on earth would complain. If anything, they'd say "oh, he wants to win now instead of later" which is patently obvious to begin with.

interesting

colangelo is proceeding rapidly on his plan to turn toronto into phoenix east

undersized bullet point guard with jacked up back: check

Danny Ainge is sweet on AI, even though it's probably diminishing returns on his career from here on out.

Right, but Shaq's deal is going to cripple the Heat in the coming years.

No, but I do think he'd be one of the three or four most famous players in the NBA. The Heat were pretty damned good the year before Shaq arrived.

They brought O'Neal in to win a title, and they did, so they got what they were hoping for. But to what degree was Shaq responsible? Watching this season, O'Neal coasted during the regular season, had maybe two games in the playoffs where he was the difference maker, and was otherwise irrelevant.

Meanwhile, his game is deteriorating faster than I ever expected, and his contract is mammoth, and longterm, and eventually will hinder Miami's ability to stay competitive. With a different line-up and a weak Eastern Conference, there's no reason to think Wade couldn't have brought a team to the title.

The biggest free-agent prize of the NBA offseason appears to be off the market. Ben Wallace has informed the Pistons he will sign with the Bulls, Insider Chad Ford reports. The deal is believed to be $52M for four years.

Chicago has got so much depth now, it's crazy. Nocioni, Ty Thomas, Bens Gordon and Wallace, Hinrich, Deng, Chandler. They've passed up Cleveland, if not Detroit at the moment.

Does Detroit have money for a real bench now? I'd imagine that not signing BenWa frees up cash to get a cheaper center (the Prza? Nazr Mohammed?) and some depth. Either way, they'll have a legit chance in the East provided Rip Hamilton doesn't break his legs playing pickup ball.

In a way, it reminds me of when the Warriors chose not to re-sign Erick Dampier. They thought he was asking for too much and let him go, but when they looked at the market they didn't see any bigs, so they wildly overpaid for Foyle to make sure they were covered at the 5. Mistake.

Nene is a much better player than Foyle, but he still leaves a lot to be desired. He could be effective in a Haslem kinda way if he was in the right situation, but the Nugs need a second option, and Martin, Nene and Andre Miller all seem far too happy to let Anthony take over.

I think maybe Al Harrington for Martin would be a good trade for the Nuggets. He's a lot more of a score-first PF who can play SF as well. Martin could be of great help on a team like Hawks that needs an infusion of toughness and a lot of garbage time scoring.

way too much money for Big Ben ... but damn if part of the ol heart doesn't feel ripped. Stupid Bulls. Always need to grab Pistons players to make championship runs. 1st Rodman and now Ben. It's all good, hope it works out for Paxson! He's kinda staking his career on this one, wow! good for Ben -- great guy, glad he's got the ducats now. Pistons will be fine, McDyess was wasting away on the bench. now they just need a big guy they can develop like maybe a Darko-type ... or maybe they will just go with the Flip thing and screw defense in which case, we could really use a Wade-type .... OOOOOOPS!!

Joe D. don't look so hot no more.

Called it!

Pryz is sticking with Portland.

also: milwaukee fleeces toronto out of charlie villanueva for t.j. "whole lot of guts and DL" ford, watch out for THE CHARLIE BELL ERA in cream city

i don't know if they're gonna be title contenders (they could use a scorer, assuming ben gordon doesn't bust out into a 25 per game guy) but they'll challenge for the division title.

Also, I think long term, the Pistons are going to look smart for not overpaying for Ben Wallace. Sure, he's an excellent defender and the face of the franchise, but he's getting old and people forget how awful he was in the playoffs this year. Giving him huge money will prove to be a mistake by the time that contract winds down.

TJ Ford, well, I'm willing to let him get his bearings, since it isn't really his fault that he broke his neck. But I'd rather have Villenueva + Roy or Gay or Foye than Ford + Bargnani.

Between the draft and free agency, a little deal between Toronto and Milwaukee got lost in the shuffle. It shouldn't have, because it's potentially one of the most one-sided trades of the decade.

Just before free agency opened, the Raptors dealt forward Charlie Villanueva to the Bucks in return for guard T.J. Ford. There were no draft picks, cash or deadweight contracts thrown in -- it was just Ford for Villanueva, straight up. As such, it was one of the more baffling deals I've ever seen.

As with most one-sided deals, it came about because a team had a need at a position and decided to overpay to meet it. With Mike James's impending free agency, Toronto found itself needing a point guard, and in Villanueva had a surplus forward to use as the bait.

The problem is that now the Raptors don't have Villanueva . . . and they still need a point guard. Ford is a fine energizer as a 20-minute guy off the bench, but as the Bucks learned last season, he leaves much to be desired as a starter.

Ford's inability to shoot makes it easy to defend him in pick-and-roll situations and encourages opponents to play zones -- especially since the Raptors don't have a Michael Redd to keep opponents honest. And on defense, his 5-10 frame (or 6-0, if you believe the official listing) makes him ripe for abuse by all but the smallest opposing point guards.

Ford is also a major injury risk, missing the entire 2004-05 season after bruising his spinal cord -- the result of a condition called spinal stenosis that makes him vulnerable to this sort of injury. Plus, at 165 pounds, it's not like his neck is the only body part that's at risk.

Then there's the salary angle. Ford is eligible for an extension this summer, while Villanueva will be playing for peanuts for three more seasons.

Since the Raptors just traded for Ford, from a face-saving perspective it will be very difficult for them not to extend his deal -- otherwise, why trade a popular rookie for a guy who leaves after one season as a free agent? And since Ford's agent undoubtedly knows this, the price is likely to be much higher than it ought to be.

Even if they made the same money, or had the same injury risk, or were the same age (Villanueva is more than a year younger), this deal is a tough one to fathom.

Villanueva finished second in the Rookie of the Year voting after a stellar 2005-06 season which include a 48-point explosion against the Bucks in March. He is 6-11, rebounds well, can handle the ball and has 3-point range. Basically, he's the prototypical modern power forward. Yes, he sometimes loses concentration and his defense needs a lot of work, but the talent disparity in this trade is simply enormous.

The thing that really puzzles me about this deal is that Bryan Colangelo was the one pulling the trigger for Toronto. Nearly everything he touched turned to gold in Phoenix, and his first move with the Raptors seemed just as astute -- swinging the little-discussed Rafael Araujo-Kris Humphries deal that bought him some extra cap space this summer and, if he gets lucky, a real basketball player instead of Araujo.

But trading Villanueva for Ford? Sorry folks, I have to call 'em like I see 'em, and I see this one as being just astoundingly stupid. Even if they'd decided to get rid of Villanueva -- a defensible position, considering the Raptors' surplus of big forwards -- they had to be able to get much more than this in return. And if this was really all the market would bear, they should have waited till the trade deadline.

But most of all, they shouldn't have done this deal. Villanueva is a rising star. Ford is a backup-quality point guard who will cost more and has much greater odds of getting hurt.

By swapping the two, Toronto took a major step backward, and Milwaukee an equally big step ahead.

Always need to grab Pistons players to make championship runs. 1st Rodman and now Ben.

um....what?? at the least, rodman wasn't even a piston any longer when he signed with chicago.

i have a bit of buyer's remorse with b wallace (stats dropping off each of the last few years, a broke clock is right more often than he hits a pair of free throws, can he put in 10 pts-ish per game? at least the ball won't be magnetically repulsed from his hands a la chandler) but who else could they have had a realistic chance of getting that would be better?
how quickly things change. at the all star break all you heard was how the pistons perfectly embodied the team concept. how the starting 5 put aside their egos and worked together to form a seamless unit of 1. how flip reinvorgated them and perfected them by adding offensivity to the league's best team defense. 5 months later and ???

I like Marquis Daniels! It isn't really his fault that he isn't as good as Stackhouse or Howard. He played his ass off in the playoffs.

The alternative is to play two PFs instead of hunting for a center for no reason. It's not like there was a problem with the Bulls' defense. It's offense they couldn't muster much of.

How often to you play a team with a center who can only be guarded by another center these days? It's pretty rare. Shaq is pretty old, and most everyone else is a PF playing center. The true centers are mostly oafs and goiter cases at this point.

I resent the implication that the Bucks are a real basketball team!

Pittsnogle was undrafted, he's on the Mavs summer league team. I wish the NBA would open up minor league affiliations more for undrafted FAs. Let teams put together an NBDL team of undrafted FAs (and the two rookies/sophomores they're allowed anyway).

Dallas might be the only team that likes having a stable of goofy white guys more than Utah.

so what PF could they have picked up that would make them better than with wallace? it's not like ben is the old-model lumbering ogre center---he's more athletic and nimble than a lot of PFs. i think they should've gotten someone with more offensive skills, but simply by getting rid of chandler, the offense got better. deng and nocioni will hopefully continue to get exponential better offensively, and sweetney---very proficient in the post---will only have to be at his default john kruk-level of fitness in order to play the number of minutes he'll be limited to.

also Spanish Chocolate will play in Rookie League, then back to Spain, then probably back to NBA this year oh yeah

How about a sign-and-trade of Chandler for Al Harrington? I'm sure there are plenty of other guys as well. But beyond that, Ty Thomas and Chandler very well could have been a good, athletic 4/5. But instead you have a cap killing contract that could very well make it difficult to sign Thomas when his extension comes up, especially since there are a bunch of other extensions on the table between here and there... Nocioni, Deng, etc.

it's not like ben is the old-model lumbering ogre center---he's more athletic and nimble than a lot of PFs.

Except when he has a ball in his hands.

but simply by getting rid of chandler, the offense got better.

And then in getting Wallace, the offense got worse.

An expiring contract.

i mean, he's not completely made of money, but the mavs will never go under the cap so long as they're in contention. i get what you're saying but i were cuban, after getting close in the finals, i would be popping for one more free agent rental or swinging just one good trade (not daniels-for-croshere, which is fine but basically wheel-spinning) to improve the team that last bit.

al harrington (al HARRINGTON?!?) isn't the kind of player skiles and paxson want, whereas ben is exactly it. they are "stuck" with a huge $60 mil contract, but they got rid of one, too.
who knows, it could wind up being a move they regret, but i don't think it's at all clear that it is now, before wallace has played one sec in a bulls uniform.

John Hollinger

Let's start with the winners, or rather The Winner. Actually, there are two other teams that qualify as winners, but the Chicago Bulls are the runaway winner from early July on my scorecard.

I have them in that spot not only because of the signing of Ben Wallace, but for the ancillary moves they've made (and are still making) that has them positioned to be a major player in the East for years to come.

The story begins with Wallace, though, since he's the main piece around which the others will revolve.

The Bulls have become a pretty decent team even without an All-Star caliber player -- they won 41 games in 2005-06 and took Miami to six games in the first round. If they were able to do that with a frontcourt in which Malik Allen, Mike Sweetney, Darius Songaila and Othella Harrington played major roles (starting 94 games between them), one has to think their odds of joining the 50-win elite in the East improve significantly with Big Ben in the middle.

Moreover, they didn't overpay as grossly as some might fear. They gave Wallace some serious wampum at $15 million a year, but for an All-Star center that's not horribly extravagant. A year earlier, for instance, Zydrunas Ilgauskas got five years and $55 million from the Cavs, and his health concerns were more serious than those for Wallace.

I won't even talk about what Erick Dampier, Samuel Dalembert, Eddy Curry and Tyson Chandler got in the last two offseasons. Even Wallace's former team, who presumably would be able to gauge his value the best, offered an average of $13 million a year. Chicago overpaid, but it wasn't by a lot.

Additionally, the Bulls gave Wallace a four-year deal, not the standard five or six-year fare, which means if he turns out to be a bust they won't spend the next five years trying to dump his contract.

That may seem like a minor point now, but it's an important consideration when you look at some of the recent big free-agent contracts.

Over the past two years, 34 different players signed free-agent deals worth at least $35 million. Of those, by my count, there are at least 15 whose teams would gladly give them away if they could. I mean literally give them away, just to be rid of the contract.

(Those lucky souls would be Dampier, Dalembert, Chandler, Darius Miles, Kenyon Martin, Brian Cardinal, Marquis Daniels, Adonal Foyle, Marko Jaric, Troy Hudson, Mark Blount, Quentin Richardson, Etan Thomas and Derek Fisher, whom in fact the Warriors did just hand over to the Jazz.)

Beyond those, there are at least another five whose teams deeply regret signing them (or should) -- Curry, Carlos Boozer, Larry Hughes, Stephen Jackson, and Bobby Simmons.

So basically, out of 34 players, at least 20 have worked out absolutely terribly for the team that signed them. Even that list leaves out a few deals that don't seem so fragrant now and could eventually make the list (Cuttino Mobley in L.A., for instance, or Dan Gadzuric in Milwaukee).

Twenty busts out of 34 contracts. Isn't that amazing, considering these teams are the supposed "winners" of free agency? And shouldn't that be a huge signal that teams ought to be more careful in taking risks like this in the free agent market?

Thus, teams need to factor in the possibility of needing to dump the contract at some point, and the risk of being stuck with a cap-killer like K-Mart's deal in Denver. By limiting the years on Wallace's deal, Chicago did that. Yes, they still overpaid, but in this market you have to. The Bulls at least limited their risk as much as they could.

Additionally, the fit couldn't be more perfect. The Bulls are hardcore about defense, so Wallace should be right at home at that end of the floor. He'll take over the role previously filled by Tyson Chandler, only he'll do it much, much more effectively. And because the Bulls like to push the pace offensively, he should be able to benefit from more easy transition baskets than he got in Detroit's plodding system.

But I like the Bulls' moves for more than just the Wallace signing. As I mentioned above, they've done yeoman work in getting the proper surrounding pieces in place. Most notable is the deal the Bulls have made that will send Chandler to the Hornets for forward P.J. Brown and guard J.R. Smith.

If and when this trade is consummated on July 12, as expected, it will be a huge win for the Bulls on several levels.

In terms of the talent acquired, it's exactly what Chicago needs. Smith is a 6-6 shooting guard with massive potential as a scorer, and the two things the Bulls need most desperately are scoring and big guards. And in terms of the talent departed, it's exactly what the Bulls don't need -- in Wallace, they already have a center who defends and rebounds but can't score, and he's better than Chandler.

Second, there's the salary angle. Brown's contract expires after the season, while Chandler still has five years left on his deal. This is hugely important for the Bulls because it will pull them far enough away from the luxury tax that they can keep adding to their core next year -- even after they extend the contracts of Kirk Hinrich and Andres Nocioni, who are both eligible for deals this fall.

Finally, there's the big fish they're still trying to catch. The one thing the Bulls lack is a genuine superstar, and there's a certain fellow in Minnesota who has Chicago roots and could fill that niche nicely. Even if they can't obtain Kevin Garnett this summer, the Chandler deal keeps the Bulls in position to make a run at him in the next 12 months by adding an enticing young trade pawn in Smith and maintaining enough luxury-tax room to absorb Garnett's behemoth salary.

Besides, it's tough not to like Paxson's trades when he chooses his partners so well. His trading strategy of the past few years can neatly be summarized as "find the biggest sucker at the table and take all his chips before everyone else does."

Just look at what happened when Isiah Thomas took over in New York. Right away, there was Pax-man on the phone, happily dishing out a Jamal Crawford appetizer before serving up the Curry main course.

In the 2006 draft, Paxson expanded his trading universe only slightly, keeping his dealings limited to the lost-at-sea, GM-less Blazers and the Sixers' embattled Billy King and ending up with high-flying forward Tyrus Thomas and Swiss swingman Thabo Sefolosha.

So now I have to wonder -- is the Hornets' Jeff Bower Paxson's next target? Bower hasn't seemed a fool in his brief stewardship, but perhaps Paxson knows something we don't. Certainly the Hornets' moves this summer leave a lot to be desired as I discuss in my rundown of July's losers.

Regardless, it's hard not to like these revamped Bulls. It's not just that they added a cornerstone in Big Ben, it's that they did it while keeping their risk somewhat limited and staying in position to strike if Kevin Garnett becomes available. They seem ready to make the leap to the Eastern Conference's elite, and for that reason I'm crowning them the big winner of the first week of free agency.

oh forget it

TROY MUST GO.

multiple flips!

Hard to see how this helps the Blazers, who have already committed to Przybilla and drafted LaMarcus Aldridge superhigh, and it's not like Przy or Mags can play any other position than center, so I kind of expect them...actually, I don't know what is going on here. Some reports say they might move Darius Miles plus Aldridge somewhere else, because no one will take Miles without Aldridge or Brandon Roy, and they ain't trading Roy.

It's hard loving two teams.

Also I agree that the Bucks look very nice. I bet they use Villanueva as their sixth man for some instant o-fense. Wouldn't be surprised if the Bucks finish around the 3 or 4 seed.

Austin Croshere + Devean George = one hella weak off-season. Maybe they should re-sign Keith Van Horn while they're at it.

MULLIN, THIS IS YOUR CHANCE.

The kid they drafted is pretty nice.

The recent Jamaal Magloire-to-Portland trade is really about the future. He gives the Blazers a valuable asset come the trade deadline. Teams that feel they are one player away from contending are always willing to deal assets or draft picks for players like Magloire in February. He's big and has a pulse. The Blazers will get a lot more back for him than Steve Blake in a few months.

Makes sense considering Blake and Magliore both have expiring contracts.

Jesus, this offseason is depressing.

of course he's more mature and better now and playing him at PF, shifting jermaine to center and generally going smaller will probably help them fit better with the post-detroit world, but really, indiana's moves are probably going to just keep them on the playoff bubble.

Also, I don't see Carlisle adjusting to the new reality of the Razzle-Dazzle O-Fense-minded NBA. I could see him getting the boot after this season.

So you're saying I should be watching The Closer.