All the FAs signed offseason are becoming eligible for trades on December 15, 2008. Lots of teams are not happy with the guys they signed, for example, Warriors may be shopping Reggrette. There are also a bunch of teams like the Clippers, Raptors, Wolves, etc. that may have given up on the season and have pieces available. Added to this is the economy... no doubt teams aren't making as much money as before and that makes them more likely to want to seek relief. Do you expect a flurry of activities in the league? Do you think Morey will get in on it in any significant way? (The Rockets, afterall, are over the tax threshold and probalby not looking to add even more).
Reggrette LOL I live in the Bay Area and even I haven't heard that one yet. LOL!!!!!!! I can't believe they signed his ass to a $50 million / 5 year contract. That's ridiculous. I hope they are regretting it. Reggrette LOL.
Apparently things are really really bad over there: http://48minutes.net/2008/12/07/thoughts-on-game-no-20-spurs-123-warriors-88/
Nelson just isn't the coach for (lulz) Reggrette. If the Spurs, Celtics, or Jazz get their hands on him... I don't see the Rockets as major players for anything.
I mean I'm not hearing much other than the usual fan grumblings when a player plays below expectations. But if the thing with Crawford is true... I mean talk about a sign and trade... BTW you didn't make up Reggrette did you? That is so funny. I don't know why. It just strikes me.
Ah well, not like Maggete's would've been better off with his former team, which has to use headlines like this to engage its fans. That's just sad.
This past offseason has set basketball back about 200 years in terms of free agency. Seriously, whenever you can make the argument that not one team made a smart signing for a player worth $5M+ that's terrible. Reggrette (LOL) isn't even remotely the worst case either. $8-10M/year for what he can do when happy/healthy/clicking is fair market value. You want "bad"? Right team, wrong player. The absolute worst: Monta Ellis. To get a hefty contract then act that irresponsibly is totally inexcusable. They're paying him to be the face of the franchise and he doesn't even enough respect or decency to even honor the terms of the contract. If I were the Warriors, the fans or somebody that had anything to due with his resigning I would be projectile vomiting all over the place. A close second is Baron Davis. Baron is one of those "Does he really care?" kind of players you always have to worry about. Talent is no question but the moment adversity peaks it's head around the corner you have to worry about him dogging it. Seriously, how long before he quits on this Clippers team? Both Iguodala and Deng are disgraces too. Okafor puts up OKAY numbers but definitely not worth the $15M/year he'll be making before his deal comes off the books. Pretty much same case with Elton Brand. Plus, Philadelphia spent too much money to be 9-12 in a cake conference. The closest cases to "smart" signings I can think of are Ben Gordon and Josh Smith. Gordon, basically by accident and a product of fumbled contract extension talks, and Memphis did Atlanta an enormous favor by signing Smith to a smaller-than-expected deal that Atlanta didn't even have to think twice about matching. $10M/year for Josh Smith -- one of the league's brightest young stars is certainly worth what he means to that team.
Reggrettee, LOL! that is genius! You know what else teams will be regretting? The summer of 2010. Because you have a TON of teams trying to have cap room, but only a a handful of TRUE deserving candidates. What is going to happen is that a bunch of teams will lose out on those guys and then feel the need to spend that CAP CASH on MLE type players. There are going to be some real bad contracts that summer for sure.
Actually, one of the dumbest signings was probably Josh Childress to Olympiakos. The european equivalent of a max-salary to a guy who is scoring about 10 ppg.
If you are looking at just scoring then your right. He is doing alot of other things besides just scoring. He rebounds and defends very well, plus it takes time to get ajusted to a new style of play.
4 rebounds per game? I'm going to guess that Olympiakos handing out the biggest contract in europe probably intended to get something besides Lonny Baxter's productivity level. Or else they could have just signed Lonny Baxter. I hope for his sake he cashed in his signing bonus and converted it to dollars last July....
I betcha he's back in the NBA next season. knote32, I hear ya on the Sixers. But I don't know if Mo Cheeks can get the job done. Plus, Iguodala makes me want to cringe sometimes. Maybe I'm bad luck to him when I watch them play.
Agreed. His shooting percentages are down so far, but that aside, he is doing exactly everything he's done historically, which is definitely worth what he was paid. He's basically shot 45% or better from the field 8 of his 9 seasons, so I expect his shooting to come around a bit. And as bad as it's been, it's still over 7% higher than our own Ron Artest. While he doesn't give you the intangibles Artest does, he does grab his fair share of boards, hand out some assists, get some steals, etc. Some players are losers themselves, and some players lose because of the situation - I can't tell with Maggette, though my intuition is that while he will obviously never will a team to be good, he could be that successful 3rd best player or awesome 6th man off the bench, on a good team...and those guys are getting that type of money in today's NBA. I don't think he's a great fit in GS, though...he seems like he is a better fit in a half-court system. Would anyone trade Shane + Luther for Maggette?
If GS is regretting signing Reggrette to that contract as a FA, wouldn't Morey be regretting even more actually GIVING UP TALENT in a trade for Reggrette and his contract?
Not if he was a better fit for us than GS. You could argue that GS doesn't need Maggette as he is somewhat of a clone of Stephen Jackson - though I think Jackson is generally better - they basically already have no playoff hopes (whereas if Monta was healthy, they're record and playoff hopes woudl certainly be better), and that his game isn't really a fit -again, I think he fits better into a half-court system. Plus, five years is quite a long contract to have now just realized all of the above. You could also argue that Ron and Shane are too similar (especially in the beginning of the season as Ron's offense to date has been so 3 pointer dependent), that Ron, Shane and Tracy are all more small forwards than shooting guards, and that the team still struggles to score regularly. Magette may take a lot of shots (touches more than shots, since his ft's don't show up in shots all the time), but is a good fit to a half court offense and, despite a bad start to the season from a FG% perspective, has been historically a solid FG% 2 guard, and fits the half-court system. And even if you hate him, he hasn't scored under 17 ppg in 6 years. I think it would be a mistake in that at some point you can only have so many scorers on your team, and the offensive struggles are as much about Adelman trying to force a system, and Artest adjusting to Yao and Tracy, etc. But it could be interesting - 4 players who all can go off any night and who all scored more than 20 ppg last year.
