From your recent comments it's obvious to me that you and I are not going to agree on strategies. You know for how much Nene resigned with Denver? Let's just say I'm mad at him for taking less than everyone expected. You talk about giving away two 20 ppg scorers, but they are one way players; giving away the other two is what I call consciously overspending a bit. With Pau and Nene you get two 2way players that are going to be way superior than Martin and Scola, add the Chuck Wagon and you are set with your big men rotation, Patterson is solid but he still needs to prove he can be solid down low and for him to be a double double guy he will have to raise his rebounding, last year he was not there yet; I think Ish and Lin are living proof of how much it takes to get a decent back-up pg. Gasol is a player, he would actually get over it pretty soon and would had raised his production here.
Don't you want to see if Scola and Dalembert work out first before you dump him? I mean Martin is the worse defender here.
I agree with you I would do it in a heart beat if Gasol and NeNe in their mid twenties. We could actually tutor them to get even better. I agree to an extent NeNe and Pau are 2 way players but neither was an impact player as the first banana. Pau never won a playoff game without Kobe, Odom, and Co. NeNe never led before. The experts projected Patrick become a borderline allstar.....I want to watch him grow before I dump him. Too much risk. I sense mediocrity again. I really like Scola, he is really classy and I want at least young talent for him. The least
........ You are missing some huge points here. A couple things about Nene. He has played alongside a guy named Carmelo Anthony for years. You need touches if you are going to average 20ppg. Nene was not given enough touches to do that consistently and it is proven statistically. Melo is one of the best rebounding threes in the leauge. After he was traded, Nene's rebounding went up. What people seem to ignore is the fact that he lead the NBA in efficiency last year. The fact that he scored 15ppg doing so makes him a very dangerous weapon. It is almost unheard of to score 15ppg on a 615%. That is just unreal efficiency. Although he averages only a block per game, (which isn't bad), he has become a very, very good pick and roll defender. Gasol would be a clear upgrade over Scola. If you can think back further than last year's playoffs, you would remember that he was an MVP candidate. His length, rebounding, passing and scoring ability all outweigh what Scola can do on the court in any of those areas. Given a player of his stature, it is pretty obvious we would have to give up Martin as well. I have never heard of a team severely upgrading a position without giving up more than a weaker replacement. Things just don't work that way. Getting rid of Martin would allow Courtney Lee to step into the starting role, evening out the roster. The team would have been very good defensively. We would have enough depth to compensate, and allow for further trades. Now we just have a whole mess of players. Gasol, Nene would come out to around 34mil. Which, if you look around the league, is an appropriate amount to spend on an elite frontcourt. Those two would surely be elite. To say that Gasol is declining or that Nene is turning 30 and will shortly be on the decline, would not be totally fair as both Scola and Martin are around the same ages respectively.
http://hangtime.blogs.nba.com/2011/12/13/nene-nuggets-agree-to-terms/# You might think 13.5 mill per year is not much but guess what...he is going to decline at the end. He would be 35 and was never much of a scorer. Well moot point unless you come up with an article that stated NeNe's first two options is to sign with Houston and not being used as leverage. Good point. I agree to disagree. I wouldn't want to take the risk to count on them because after those 2-3 years we have to plan from the beginning. I am not sure if we can contend with them.
man, i love all 3 of these guys, but that is one ****ty "big 3". depressing what has happened to this franchise. still excited for the season as always though. go rox
Since our goal is to apparently make the playoffs even as an 8th seed I would do this 3 for 1 trade. I would look to trade Hill, a Thabeet and Flynn for Anderson Varejao trade. Lowry/Dragic Martin/Lee/Williams Budinger/Morris Scola/Patterson/Adrien Dalembert/Varejao
All things you said are pretty spot on however things turn out nifty when NeNe clearly voiced he wanted to be in Denver and used Houston as a leverage to sign with the Nuggs. Unless you spot an article that says otherwise. NeNe is clearly a Morey type player, very efficient, but Morey, I would say, never wanted to sign him for 5 yrs.....I could be wrong but IMO that would be mistake, not a grave one but still.... NeNe and Gasol have never been intimidating, throughout their careers they have never been seen as rim protectors or unstoppable. Conclusion is you can't really compare them to Tyson Chandler, Dirk Nowitzki, top tier frontcourt material yet you pay them the same amount.
Why on Earth would you do that? I mean Anderson Varejao is solid and all, but he'll never be anything more than Al Pacino's sister in Scarface
they are so stuck/screwed. i'd do a variation on what we attempted with carmelo last year, but for howard, except i'd offer them literally any combination of players they want for him. take the 5% or so shot that they can convince him to re-sign. if he doesn't, oh well - rebuilding time.
Fair enough. I can see your point. They would demand much more than we pay Kevin and Scola. I was going to say that we would be set for the future, as we were only trading the vets, but you got me thinking. Although we don't trade any youth to acquire Nene/Gasol, the move could have very well broken up our young core. Lowry, Lee, Dragic, Patterson, Budinger and possibly Hill and Twill depending on their improvement, will all need to be paid far more than their current salaries to be kept. If I remember correctly, Lowry and Gasol's contracts would end at the same time, but re-upping Lowry and some of those other players even as soon as next year could pose a problem. It all depends on how they produce in the coming years. You are the first person to give me a valid reason as to why the trade is better off dead. Having said that, a Gasol/Nene frontcourt would have essentially given us three years to build a serious contender. With all of the youth on cheap contracts and overall depth on the roster, I think Morey could have pulled it off. It makes more sense to me to build from that foundation for the next 3 years, instead of banking on our current talent to take large strides (this could still very well happen). I definitely respect your opinion though.
I believe that Martin would have to be involved in any deal for Howard so I would like to hold onto Lowry and Lee given him a contract similar to Lowry's at season's end.
