EXACTLY Which Is why I would do the deal but for NICK VAN EXCEL Rocket River Get rid of Moochie AND Cato . .for the second best back up Pt guard in the league???? NO BRAINER
You get LaFrentz only if you get rid of Cato and either EG or MoT. Instead of paying a 4 and a 5, u pay him to play both. That is the only justification. (The same argument can be made for any other decent 4/5 combo too).
Two problems with your response. 1. You fail to mention that only Star players normally get contracts that average 10 million a year. 2. Reaf is not a decent 4/5 combo. Eddie is better...period. And that aint sayin much. With the size of Reafs contract and the lack of production, he is quite possibly the most impossible guy in the NBA to trade. Only an idiot like the GM in New York would even consider it.
From http://www.***********.com/nba_salaries_midwest.shtml Raef LaFrentz $7,270,000 7-yr; 69.97M 2006-07 Kelvin Cato $6,696,000 6-yr; 42.0M 2005-06 Maurice Taylor $7,150,000 6-yr; 48.75M 2006-07 Eddie Griffin $2,161,920 4-yr; 9.42M 2003-04 EG has a rookie contract. EG has never played the 5. Replacing 2 of them with LaFrentz is a good deal to me. LaFrentz is the only among those 4 that can and have played both positions.
I don't think Dallas is that high on Cato. Cato had not shown much before this past season. There is absolutely no proof that he can be consistent. He is a bigger risk. Methink they would prefer (teams not in "direct" competition with them in terms of division and conference); Nets Dikembe Mutombo (since they have 3 centers now). Cleveland's "LongHorn". (with entrenched there for a long time baring injuries). Milwaukee's Earving Johnson (consumate pro. Available with the presence of Joe P) Heck if they really want a REALLY BIG guy in the middle - I mean a REAL shaq stopper, why don't they go for BIG Stanley Roberts who recently declared that he rearing to go again.
That last quote is very wrong. The EG logged quite a few minuites at the 5 spot in his Rookie year. LaFrentz also happens to be the worst player, by far, out of the four mentioned. So what is your position? For or against the trade. All of your data support the fact that LaFrentz is grosely over paid. Lafrentz is almost 10 million a year MoT is almost 8 million a year Cato is almost 7 million a year
Wrong, Matt Maloney is, considering we're still paying him. I'd say he's getting his money's worth for his output (Damn that kills me).
1) EG played center in his rookie yr? I must have been asleep the whole time! I sure don't remember that. Even if he did, u don't suggest that the Rockets make plan to play EG at the 5 spot now, do u? 2) LaFrentz is valued more than any of our 3. I guarantee u that. His career stat as a whole is better than them all. He plays at both end of the floor. He plays inside and outside. He can play the 4 and the 5 now (unlike EG if he ever did). We will be very lucky if Dallas is willing to trade him for Cato. We probably will have to throw in something xtra. 3) All these 3 guys are overpaid (good thing we have not had a chance to throw money at EG) . If we were to overpay someone, we might as well overpay a guy that plays major minutes. Instead of Cato's 13-15 mins and Mo T's 20-24. we can play LaFrentz 32-35 minutes.
Cato (+ something if needed) for La Frentz makes sense for both teams as others mentioned. We can play Frentz at the 4 and 5. He can back up Yao and he can start the 4 or back up the 4, depending on how EG develops. We can then trade MoT to a team that wants inside scoring. We can possibly pick up a good 1 and 3 for him.
ragingFire Holy Cow! You think Reaf is worth Cato+ there are Mavs fans in Dallas that would love for you to be someone elses GM just so they could unload Reaf. Scott Layden was the most popular person in Dallas last week because everyone here thought that he was going to take Reaf off of our hands. EG most definitely played center in his rookie year both when Cato or Collier were hurt. I have not missed more than a couple of Rockets games over the course of the last few years and I will see all but a couple again this year. EG did play center for the Rockets in several games his rookie year. I just can’t believe that you are complaining about some of the guys on our team being overpaid and then you support a trade that would bring in Reaf with a much worse contract for a longer period of time. That just makes no sense. And just for the record Reaf does not play major minutes on a team that desperately needs him to play major minutes. He only averaged 23 minutes a game last year because he could not stay out of Nelsons dog house or out of foul trouble. Reaf is not starter quality and there is just no way you bring a guy to your team that makes that much money when he can’t even stay on the court. I would not even consider a trade of Reaf for Cato. Cato plays the center spot a hundred times better than Reaf plus he plays defense and rebounds. Reaf is just horrible, watch a few Mavs games this year and there will be no doubt in your mind that Reaf sucks.
I started out by agreeing that Lafrentz, MoT, Cato are all over paid. The 1st 2 contracts run thru 07, the last 06 so we still come out ahead with LaFrentz. Again, I want to stress that if we did not have to unload contracts for Cato and MoT, I would not have agreed with the amount paid to LaFrentz either. Nelson needs a 5 who plays defense and rebound. LaFrentz is not that man. Don't know why they got him in the 1st place. Cato plays the 5 better but we don't want to pay him to play 10-15 mins. MoT is paid too much to play part time also. What more, when he is in, Yao has to move out of the low post. La Frentz fits us better. We only need LaFrentz to back up the 5 for 10, 15 minutes and play 15, 20 mins at the 4. He is better suited at the 4, especially for our team. If opp. double down on Yao, he is the best 4 in the whole league to make them pay. I watched LaFrentz since his days in Denver. He is not a superstar but he is definitely a star.
I agree with RagingFire, Raef for 25 MPG for his contract is a better value for us long term than Cato for 10-15 MPG for his contract--which is all Cato can give you as Yao gets more NBA accustomed. Their contracts are not that much worse. Raef extra year is expensive, but that amount is not amortized across the years of the contract (by then he might of interest for someone wanting a big expiring contract anyway) and the difference through 06-07 is less than half a million per year. Dallas's fans had too high expectations of Raef as we had about Cato. Raef would be one of the best back-up Cs in the league, who also can play some 4--as with Cato he can go from all-time goat/gold-digger to valuable bench commodity in a fickle fans year.
I'm not necessarily saying I would be a fan of this trade, but I think something like this would make me feel better about it: Cato + Moochie for LaFrentz + Najera We'd almost certainly have to make another move(s) after that (trading either MoT or EG plus getting a backup PG). The possibility of dumping a contract like Moochie's in addition to picking up a big-body hustler like Najera makes the trade a little more appealing.
Hell NO!!!! Raef makes around 80-something million dollars and is one of the most overrated players in the league. The last thing we need is another big contract for a scrub.
Reaf is not a star...not even close. Man I wish you had lived in Dallas the last year and a half so you could see some of the games that I have seen and heard how the coachs talk about him on the radio shows here in Dallas. Reaf was not even as good as Shawn Bradley last year. He has disappeared in almost every big game he has been involved in since he has been in Dallas. He can not stay out of foul trouble. Cuban paid him big bucks because he thought he was getting someone that could put up 15 points a night grab 7 or 8 rebounds a game and block 3 or 4 shots a game. Reaf has not come close to those numbers and has completely disappeared in almost all of the big games. Nelson never asked Reaf to bang on the inside against the likes of Shaq and Duncan. What Nelson has stated many times in paper and on the radio is that he wanted Reafs perimeter shooting to draw guys like Shaq and Duncan away from the basket. Unfortunately Reaf could not provide good perimeter shooting for the Mavs and he was always in foul trouble so he never played much. Even if you think Reaf is better than MoT or Cato etc..it would only be a marginal difference. Reaf does zero to improve the Rockets. MoT, Cato and definitely Eddie are all easier to move than Reaf because of their salery is significantly less than Reaf's. If we move Cato, Eddie or MoT then we need to move them for something that will actually improve our team and not an underachieving, heartless stiff like Reaf.
