You've gotta stop and ask "which scorer" But BEFORE that, you need to look at the impact Battier has on 'team defense'. During his time at the Grizzlies he was an integral part of a sound team defense, and they were a 50 win team. Personally I don't think it's worth even entertaining the idea of trading him - PARTICULARLY since we only really missed a scorer when Ming got injured! Getting guys who can score is much easier than finding guys who you can organise a defensive structure around! Roger Mason JR isn't going to go for full MLE, but he's certainly a combo guard who can come in and put the rock in the hoop! I totally forgot about Mihm as a FA option to play backup C. Surely he's a real option since the Lakers will be looking to keep Gasol/ Bynum/ Turiaf as their main bigs!
I agree. I really wanna keep Shane and add a quality swingman through trade. I think there are going to be several deals materialize and we can get good quality (Artest/Miller/Maggette/Jefferson/Carter) without giving up Shane, just using expirings and picks. We may have to give up Brooks. I'm okay with that if we can draft another backup point guard and we have a trade lined up to get a quality point guard to at least split minutes with Rafer and knock down some shots when Rafer is in the middle of a 2 for 18 string.
You must not remember the beginning of the season but our offense struggled big time even with Yao. We actually started scoring more when Yao went down. We need a 3rd scorer and have needed a 3rd scorer for some time.