Starver is killing the Suns - the Colangelo moves that made this squad are being completely undone by this stingy and backwards philosophy. Instead of doing the smart thing by building depth at good value via picks (the Joe Johnson-->ATL trade), they're pissing away picks in order to compensate for bloated contracts (Marcus Banks - owch). When Nash drops out of the elite level, this team is going to be a garbage heap. Evan
Phoenix needs someone to buy them that is willing to spend money, if their owner wasn't so cheap, they could win it all but because saving money is more important then winning, they don't stand a chance of ever winning it all. They got rid of one of their better defensive bigs for nothing and went along with giving 2 first rounders, Nash and co deserve better, they play the best basketball but because they have a cheap owner, they will never win anything and it's a shame for the general basketball fan.
Well first of all, I think Minnesota would find two first round picks more appealing. When you trade away a superstar, the only way to possibly get back value in return is draft picks and young talent to kick start the rebuilding process. But more importantly, that 8 million dollar TE can't be used in a package for KG because TE's can't be packaged with players and 8 million dollars isn't within 125% of KG's contract.
I agree and I'm thrilled. Who knew that Colangelo going to the Raptors would be bigger than any superstar player moving out East?
Wait - a TE can't be packaged with a player? What's its point then? Just as a way for a team to dump salary? That seems ridiculously silly on the part of the NBA.
Can the 8mil TE be packaged with Atlanta's unprotected? I know you can't combine players with the TE. But that pick with the 8mil could be huge.
Nope. This has come up year after year when the Rockets had TE's. The point is you can trade that TE for a player with a contract of up to 10 million dollars. In that case, they get the player worth up to 10 million and the other team gets the salary relief. That's all they are there for. And I don't really know why you find that silly. Over 80% of the players of the league have contracts worth 10 million or less. On top of that, it's just an additional option. The team can let the TE expire for cap relief or they can use it to acquire a player in return so another team can get cap relief. As for that, I'm not sure. I'd think you could since it has no dollar value cap wise, but I don't know for sure. I'm sure aelliot, NIKEstrad, or Gater could answer that though.
This is even worse than the Glen Rice trade. 2 first round picks + a still-serviceable big for a second round pick and salary relief? At least we only traded one first round pick, and Rice ended up completely worthless after the trade.
This is a business deal all the way, and evaluating it properly would require some financial assessment of the value of 1st round picks. That being said, Kerr really looks like he's ripping himself off. Thomas is not a completely useless player, and he only has one season left on his contract. Did Kerr really need to throw in 2 first round picks to get this done? The equivalent for Houston would be this: Rockets send Juwan Howard + a first round pick and a second round pick to Minnesota for Justin Reed. Our wizard got a heck of a better deal than that.
This is exactly what the Rockets should do with the players they aren't gonna start. Cept try to get a first rounder..
This is what we did with Glen Rice. We got rid of him by giving Utah a first round pick, except Phoenix is screwing itself even harder by giving up 2 first round picks, and Thomas is still a usuable big.
