Can anyone post the whole article from John Hollinger? Here's the link. Thanks in advance.... http://insider.espn.go.com/nba/insi...?columnist=hollinger_john&page=PERDiem-100222
Monday, February 22, 2010 Deadline aftermath: Biggest non-deals -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- By John Hollinger ESPN.com The trade deadline is over and the trades have been made; we've already gone over them in tremendous detail with last week's trade grades. However, with a little time to reflect, it's time to ponder an entirely different set of events from the trade deadline: the trades that weren't made. In some cases, in fact, these are a lot more interesting than the ones that were made. Several big names were in trade rumors leading up to the deadline and ended up not changing teams, most notably Amare Stoudemire but also Ray Allen, Monta Ellis, O.J. Mayo, Richard Jefferson and Andre Iguodala. Meanwhile, some of the deals that were made also left us to ponder alternate scenarios -- different deals, perhaps, that might have been done instead. Several teams that made trades passed up different options that might have been just as compelling. So now let's take a look at what might have been, and how those decisions may shape the league going forward, by asking the big questions about last week's non-deals: Why didn't Phoenix trade Amare Stoudemire? Phoenix has been criticized in a lot of quarters for not dealing Stoudemire when they might lose him for nothing after the season, but you won't hear such noise from this chamber. The Suns did the right thing here (for more on who didn't, hang on a minute). They made it clear they were receptive to offers for Stoudemire, listened to what everybody was willing to do, and then decided it wasn't enough. Granted, they were more public about this than they needed to be and have to do some damage control with Stoudemire. Nonetheless, what they did is good trading, in its own way: They saw everybody's hand and decided to fold their cards. You don't have to play every hand you're dealt. Phoenix had plenty of reason to hold out for a good offer. It would have been very, very odd for a team 10 games over .500 to salary-dump a star player; trading an All-Star like Stoudemire is very different from Utah's decision that Ronnie Brewer was fungible. Thus, the Suns' incentive to deal Stoudemire was pretty small unless they got bowled over; haggling with Cleveland over J.J. Hickson fell considerably short of that benchmark. The Suns still have several options if they feel Stoudemire will opt out and become a free agent. (Given the uncertainty that awaits in the 2011 market, he probably will.) The two things everyone forgets are that (1) they still have until the end of June to extend his contract, and (2) trades get done at draft time. What this means, in practice, is that Phoenix can do an "extend-and-trade" deal with Stoudemire on draft day, similar to the one the Celtics made to get Kevin Garnett three years ago. The Suns can also sign and trade him if he opts out, or re-sign him as a free agent (Phoenix still can give him the longest deal and the biggest raises, remember). Bottom line, the Suns have enough options remaining that they didn't need to give up on a playoff team to get pennies on the dollar in return. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Would that Monta Ellis to Memphis deal have made any sense? Supposedly the Memphis Grizzlies offered O.J. Mayo and Hasheem Thabeet to the Warriors for Ellis. We don't know yet if this was one of owner Michael Heisley's ill-conceived ideas ("We already tried the old Iverson; let's try the new one!"). What we do know are two things: (1) It made no sense that Memphis offered this, and (2) it made no sense that the Warriors turned it down. The Warriors have convinced themselves that Ellis is a big star, but he's not. He's a combo guard who shoots a lot without being terribly effective. And while he creates lots of middlingly accurate opportunities for himself, he creates very few for others. In an offense in which most of his buckets come on run-outs and as a secondary option, he's devastating; witness his work with the Warriors as a complement to Baron Davis. As a first option, however, Ellis is a black hole that sucks the life out of the offense. It's no accident that Golden State plays so dramatically better when he's not on the court. On Sunday night, for instance, Atlanta outscored the Warriors by 15 with Ellis on the court, but Golden State routed Atlanta by 19 in the eight minutes he sat. Ellis scored a team-high 26 points, but used 28 possessions to get them and shared only four assists; that's a fairly normal night for him. Why the Grizzlies would want this type of player when they already have a problem with too much one-on-one play is a mystery. So is the salary-cap math. Mayo is a true 2 who is signed through 2012 at less than half the money Ellis makes. Thabeet evens the salaries in the trade for cap purposes, and while I realize he's -- how can we put this kindly? -- developing ... the fact is he's a 7-footer who leads the league in blocks per minute. Even if the Grizzlies decided he was deadweight, he could be off their books after 2011 (so could Hamed Haddadi if he'd been included, as some reports suggested), which is more than can be said for Ellis, who makes $11 million a year through 2014. Either way the Warriors would have come away with a better roster and a better cap situation. Mayo hasn't been quite as productive as Ellis, but in terms of PER he's not far off. He's also two years younger, a better defender, and a better fit with Stephen Curry. The more I look at it, the more perplexed I am. I have no idea why Memphis offered this trade, and no idea why Golden State turned it down. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Why didn't Miami do any deals? In retrospect the Heat might wish they did, given that so many teams have opened cap space to make a run at Dwyane Wade. In the end there was a not-so-serious pursuit of Stoudemire and eleventh-hour talks about Carlos Boozer that may have been window dressing; it's possible the Heat talked just to convince Wade that they were serious about getting him help. Additionally, the Heat are a tax team. You'd think if they weren't going to spend up they'd at least spend down, since they needed to cut only about $3 million to get under the tax. But they never found the right deal to get them under, especially after the Grizzlies (who had a Dorell Wright deal in their back pocket since at least January) decided to use their open cap slot on Ronnie Brewer instead. That wasn't the only option, however. Miami could have paid somebody to take James Jones, for instance (the Heat would have had to bring back a lesser contract), or traded Quentin Richardson to Oklahoma City for Matt Harpring; several other possible options didn't involve Wright and didn't infringe on the Heat's 2010 cap-space hoard. Perhaps they looked at all these possibilities and didn't find any of them to their liking, but it still surprised me. As a result, the Heat didn't get under the tax and didn't "pre-spend" their 2010 cap space on Stoudemire or Boozer. Heading into Thursday's deadline, I was all but certain they'd do one or the other. Instead, they're in about the worst place possible: a middle-of-the-road team that's paying the luxury tax anyway. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Why did Houston end up with all those assets, and not anybody else? And now we get to what are the two biggest unanswered questions from the trade deadline: How was it that the Rockets, armed with only Tracy McGrady's expiring contract and Carl Landry's cap-friendly one, walked away from the trade deadline with the best haul of anybody ... by far? In retrospect, this is puzzling. Houston wasn't the only team with enough expiring contracts and luxury-tax room to take on Jared Jeffries, nor were the Rockets the only team with a star player on an expiring deal who could have helped the Knicks immediately. What the Rockets were was (A) persistent, and (B) clever. And that makes them stand out in relation to their partners in this deal. Consider the Kings, for instance. They had a coveted star in Kevin Martin, $13 million in expiring contracts belonging to Kenny Thomas, Sergio Rodriguez, Hilton Armstrong, Ime Udoka and Sean May, and $1.6 million in cap room to do an unbalanced trade. They should have been controlling the entire game on deadline day. Unfortunately, they didn't choose to play. Sacramento didn't let teams know Martin was available, and in fact insisted he wasn't available; unlike Phoenix with Stoudemire, the Kings have no idea if Houston's offer was the best one they could have had. In fact, there's considerable evidence they could have done much better -- possibly by bypassing the Rockets entirely. Consider, for starters, what would have been the perfect home for Martin: Boston. The Kings could have sent Martin and little-used Andres Nocioni to the Celtics for Ray Allen and a first-round pick, and cleared $18 million in cap room (the Celtics, given their current time horizon, would have blurted out yes to this offer in a nanosecond). They then could have used Allen and Kenny Thomas in a deal with the Knicks and walked away with the exact same trove of assets that the Rockets did. If so, Sacramento wouldn't have Landry, but look at what they'd have instead: Jordan Hill, New York's 2012 first-rounder, Boston's 2011 first-rounder, the right to swap picks with New York in 2011 (admittedly, an item of more value to Houston given the two clubs' likely records next season), and the same cap room they cleared with the Martin trade. The only reason they don't have those assets, it would appear, is that they didn't ask. While the Kings fiddled, Houston forced the action and squeezed all it could from New York. When the Knicks wouldn't flinch, the Rockets scrambled to get alternate deals in place: first an all-smoke, no-fire rumor with Chicago, and then a late deal with Sacramento that both pried Martin free and thrust the Knicks into action. That story echoes a fairly constant background noise that's been heard about Sacramento in recent years. The Kings have a small front office and nearly everybody in it has been there forever; one gets the impression not that they've lost their basketball acumen, but that they aren't putting in the legwork anymore. A series of lazy deals -- giving Beno Udrih the full midlevel rather than checking out the point guard market, or signing Francisco Garcia to a ridiculous $35 million extension -- were the first indicators, and this is the latest. Sacramento made an OK deal with Martin -- I gave the Kings a B-plus on the merits of the trade itself -- but the Kings had the assets to put together a great deal and failed. The reason they didn't isn't because the Rockets had some master computer program that outsmarted everybody. No, this had a more simple cause: The Kings got outhustled. The irony here is that a dozen years ago the Kings were the ones outworking other teams to unearth good deals. They were the ones discovering a trove of hidden talent in Europe (Peja Stojakovic, Hedo Turkoglu) and beating the bushes to pluck players like Jon Barry, Scot Pollard and Doug Christie off the scrap heap. And the last time they traded a star shooting guard, they didn't come away with Carl Landry: They got Chris Webber. The Kings weren't the only ones who sold themselves short, by the way. Several other NBA execs were disappointed they hadn't been told more openly of Martin's availability, feeling they had the goods to make a substantial offer for his services. Boston was a perfect fit, but by no means the only one. Thus, we get to perhaps the greatest unknown of this year's trade season: What contender might have been able to win the Martin sweepstakes had such an event been held, and how might that have altered the coming postseason? ESPN Insider John Hollinger • On Twitter | On ESPN.com | On TrueHoop | On e-mail | Hollinger's stats • Follow ESPN.com's NBA coverage on Twitter --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Memphis was accused of the same thing (not shopping around for the best deal) in the Gasol trade... except that this time it benefited the good guys Rockets, not the evil Lakers, and I am cool about it.
From Hollinger: Consider, for starters, what would have been the perfect home for Martin: Boston. The Kings could have sent Martin and little-used Andres Nocioni to the Celtics for Ray Allen and a first-round pick, and cleared $18 million in cap room (the Celtics, given their current time horizon, would have blurted out yes to this offer in a nanosecond). They then could have used Allen and Kenny Thomas in a deal with the Knicks and walked away with the exact same trove of assets that the Rockets did. If so, Sacramento wouldn't have Landry, but look at what they'd have instead: Jordan Hill, New York's 2012 first-rounder, Boston's 2011 first-rounder, the right to swap picks with New York in 2011 (admittedly, an item of more value to Houston given the two clubs' likely records next season), and the same cap room they cleared with the Martin trade. I'm not sure if this is correct. Hollinger doesn't mention that the Kings would also have had to take back Jared Jeffries' contract in order to do the deal with NY. Wouldn't that have left them with much less cap room than what they actually got? But still, Hollinger makes very good points, especially considering Ainge said he was interested Martin but did not have the asset Sacramento wanted - a big man with offensive skills. Morey also mentioned that he was able to do the deals because he was willing to do two things: give up a scoring big man for Martin and accept Jeffries' contract from NY. No other GM wanted to do either of these things.
Also, Feigen mentioned that Houston went after Marcus Camby before the trade deadline. But the deal didn't happen because Morey refused to give the Clippers Kyle Lowry. Good non-deal, Morey.
Hollinger's scenario has them dumping Nocioni on Boston. He and Jeffries cancel each other out. The fact is Kings preferred having Landry to a late 1st rounder and a Nocioni salary dump.
Take into account the Boston deal Hollinger lines out where the Celtics takes on Nocioni's contract. Minus Nocioni, Plus Jeffries = Same Cap Space.
actually in hollinger's scenario, the kings would have been preferring Landry over Hill, getting a late 1st rounder from Boston, right to swap 2011 pick with NY and a 1st rounder from NY in 2012. Dumping Nocioni would be canceled out by getting the contracts of Jeffries/Hill (picks) in exchange for Ray Allen. Although JJ's contract has the added plus of being shorter than Nocioni (3yrs vs jj's 2 yr) So the question is... Is Landry > = < Hill, late 1st rounder, 2012 knick's 1st rounder, 2011 swap picks as well as getting rid of an extra year of contract to Nocioni? The answer would depend on how one evaluates Landry, personally i'd rather have the package of picks, hill and cap savings (nocioni 6.65mill in 2011-12)... Landry is good, but two 1st rounders, a swap (assuming sacto negotiate Bostons pick to be swap) as well as Hill is too much to pass on. As a GS fan i'm conflicted about the warriors possible trade. When i thought it was just mayo, first reaction was a definite NO. With thabeet, its a yes. Though hes a project he does have potential and his value makes the trade palatable, despite Ellis being a better talent/player than Mayo. But the fact is Ellis and Curry cannot play effectively together and one of them needs to go, and it sure isnt going to be curry. i know it seems like the ROY race is all but over, but just check the last two month play by Curry and it doesnt seem all that obvious that tyreke is ROY.
No way... Imagine if we offered Sac Jordan Hill, our 2010 first round (which unfortunately is starting to look better every day...), NYs2011 Swap and NYs2012 for Landry (plus some deadweight to make the numbers work...). I would do it in a second. And I do not hink Sacramento would go for it. Fact is, they really wanted Carl Landry.
It does seem like Sacto got lazy with exploring trade options for Martin. Then again, we know Sacto had already sifted through lots of Martin offers, maybe they just loved the Carl Landry option.
