With only a few days left till the NBA trade deadline, rumors are flying right and left. Here's a quick run down of trades, potential trades, and contender's looking.
Dallas Sends Howard, Gooden, 2 Scrubs to Washington for Haywood and Butler
For the better part of 2 months Dallas has been a .500 team seemingly destined for a first round exit. As such Dallas was in many ways compelled to make the move. This is largely a classic salary dump trade for Washington. They get a series of expiring contracts that will save them $15 million while given luxury tax implications Dallas is taking on $30 million. In exchange for helping out the Wizards monetarily Dallas improves on both sides of the ball. Butler and Haywood are needed defensive stoppers. In addition Butler is a large upgrade of a washed up Howard.
The move makes Dallas good enough to be in the "Hey, maybe under the right circumstances they can challenge the Lakers" but you'd be hard pressed to push them any farther.
Proposed Trade: Amare to Cleveland for JJ Hickson and Part of Z's Contract
Ah here's the great unknown. The Cavs are right now the best team in the NBA but it's unclear if they are good enough to win the NBA Championship. On the table is Amare for JJ Hickson, a young but talented PF and an almost certain trade followed by buy out of Z. Which is the inevitable question does Amare improve the Cavs? Well offensively the answer is yes. Amare, while not the player he was, still finishes well and shoots extremely well from mid-range. In some ways it seems like a no brainer- Amare for a raw unproven young guy? On the other hand Amare has long been a defensive liability and would keep the Cavs second best player (Sideshow Bob) off the court. In addition would Amare has been known to be a selfish player unwilling to put the team first and is currently looking for a max contract. Which basically translates to adding Amare to the Cavs seems like Orlando adding Vince Carter - it only looks good on paper. So the Amare trade could and would be high risk high reward where you could go blind looking at stats and thinking it over. If a trade is getting done it'll happen early this week according to my sources....
Possible Trade: Boston's Ray Allen For ??
Boston since December has also been .500 team. KG's knee isn't getting better, Wallace isn't finding the fountain of youth, and the injuries keep piling up. Boston has fallen beyond Cleveland, Orlando, and Atlanta. Danny Ainge realizes this and has been shopping around Allen's expiring contract. Jamison, Amare, Ellis, Iguadela, and others have all been linked to Boston. The problem is that all the Celtics have is expiring contracts which doesn't seem to be enough. Without a move look for Boston to make a second round exit....at the latest.
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2 comments:
1) Dallas got a lot better. They got 2 starters for an underperforming Josh Howard and other unimportant players. It's a huge upgrade... but they still can't beat the Lakers.
2) i'm against the amare trade. amare has no interest in playing defense and didn't seem to have good chemistry w/ shaq in phoenix, so i really don't see the benefit... unless LeBron has stated that he would sign w/ the Cavs if Amare was traded here.
3) the celtics are done. i think that they are going to get stuck trading out ray allen for someone who's not that good (maggette?)
Actually Amare and Shaq worked very well together, it's just Amare has declined in his abilities and it was blamed on Shaq.
http://www.cavstheblog.com/?p=1246
I should also note that Phoenix led the NBA last year in offensive efficiency .
Not to say that I don't have my doubts about trading for Amare (defense, usage rates, chemistry, injury risk, giving up on JJ, etc) but working out with Shaq is not one of them...
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