Candace Parker is a shittier player than at least half the guys on a D2 roster. Her biggest claim to fame is robbing way more deserving players (including Josh Smith) of a dunk title. As for Shelden Williams, there is a strong chance he simply gets waived.
Hey, I got something right. I still don't understand the point of that trade. I don't really think it makes the Knicks better. Anthony and Stoudamire are both sub-par defenders and both need a lot of touches.
Dolan wanted it done. His reasoning is partially that Anthony will bring more revenue into the Knicks, but having gutted the team, it will come at the expense of actually winning games.
But she covered her eyes!!! And I think he may have been joking... As far as the trade, I think Melo is a bit overrated. Not as a scorer, which he is prodigious at, but in terms of making his team better. We've mentioned he is not a great defender, and he's not a great passer. I don't know. I agree with people saying this isn't going to necessarily make the Knicks alot better. I think the loss of Gallinari is gonna hurt.
Personally, I think there's a gap between the top 6 or so point guards (Rose, Rondo, Paul, Westbrook, Williams, and Wall in no particular order) and the remainder of the guards. Felton is a serviceable guard, but he was viewed from the start as a two year rental while the Knicks could set up to pursue either Paul or Williams. (not saying this is a good strategy, just explaining what the Knicks' plan was from the start). Billups offers the same type of contract and while he averages fewer assists than Felton, he shoots at a higher percentage and scores at a comparable rate. Once you account for the usual inflation of stats under D'Antoni, I don't think you'll see a huge difference in production. Chandler will be a restricted free agent at the end of the year, and the interest he would receive would likely put him out of the Knicks range. Had they kept him and offered a salary in the 10 million range, the cap flexibility would be shot to hell and another superstar would certainly be out of the question. Trading Chandler before he tested the market allowed the Knicks to receive some value from a player that they would be unable to keep. Mozgov is an unknown commodity, but I don't think his talent or skill set will translate to anything worthwhile. I would have liked to keep him to bolster the bigs on the bench, but he's little more than a throw in for the trade. The same goes for Curry, Randolph, and the second round picks. Essentially, the trade boils down to Gallinari and a 1st round pick for Carmelo. Gallinari is talented, a fantastic shooter, and an intriguing young prospect. Yet, he does not nearly approach the production of Anthony. He's a slightly better defender than Melo but his offensive production is much lower. I wish that Walsh had enjoyed more control in this transaction, but at the end of the day the Knicks lacked any true leverage. They might have been better off waiting until the deadline to try and remove some players from the trade, but that dangerous game could have left them shit out of luck for acquiring Melo.
Why won't anyone come to the Nets???? P.S. I know why they won't, so please don't answer. My question was rhetorical. Just add sympathy below...
I know; I just can't let a mention of Candace Parker go without mentioning the Basketball Robbery of the Decade. I partially agree; Billups and Felton are two very different points, but while they might be comparable in a vacuum, Ray Ray's game suits the D'Antoni's system better. Namely, he is an inferior shooter to Chauncey and a slightly worse scorer overall, but he is, at this stage, a significantly better passer and much quicker on both ends of the floor. The latter suits the Knicks' up-tempo style much better, and if anything, Chauncey might be even more of a defensive liability than his predecessor was. I actually have a ton of faith in the Nets and what they can do with Prokhorov, but it might take a few seasons...
I think there's one major factor in this Knicks/Nuggets trade that a lot of people are overlooking--this is not necessarily a trade that is supposed to win in the short term. Billups is approaching the end of his career and is still a hell of a player, but NY has essentially set up a 2-man core of players (with a seemingly great prospect in Landry Fields to boot) that will act as some damn good leverage in locking up a major missing piece within the next two seasons: an elite point guard. D-Will or Chris Paul would seem like the obvious choices, and considering their personal strengths, they'd be insane not to team up with Melo and Amar'e. I'd imagine the NY front office will look for serviceable bigs in the draft and free agency in the future as well, but by 2012-13, this could be a nightmare of a team for the rest of the NBA. I'd be much more excited to see how Williams/Paul, Melo and Amar'e would perform than the current Heatles. Maybe not as strong defensively as a whole (as much as I hate them, I've gotta give it to Wade and LBJ in that aspect), but having a facilitator like either of those two as a hub would create a complementary offense in an up-tempo system that would crank up scores like nobody's business. Denver may have lost some star power, but they have a hell of a core of mid-tier talent going forward. We'll see what their front office does going forward here. There's no way they had the short-term in mind in this deal, either. Now I'm just interested in seeing whether or not Cleveland tries to gut the team for some young talent and/or draft picks by the deadline. Gonna be a fun week.
You forgot one thing, and it's kind of a little bit important: the CBA. Nothing like having 85%-ish percent of your cap wrapped up in two players who can only play on one side of the floor.
That's a very big gamble; the new CBA might implement a hard salary cap, effectively making that acquisition impossible.
With all of the superstars recently who've stressed over and over again "It's not about the money. I just want to win," I think we might finally see who is and who isn't full of shit after this new agreement.
I would be surprised if the small-market owners don't try to use the new CBA to nip this "super team" shit in the bud somehow.
I hope they do. You know, when the Celtics added Ray Allen and KG to the team, I thought it was a little over the top, but I thought, "Oh, what the hell, they are all getting older, how much time do they really have left?" Then, the Lakers fucking ROBBED Memphis to get Pau Gasol, and I thought that was a pretty shitty move. Remember, this was the trade: Two of those guys are no longer in the league, one shouldn't be, and Marc Gasol is so-so. Then this Miami "super team" of guys who basically decided between themselves that they were going to play together came along. They didn't care where they played as long as they all got their money. If there was a new team in Seattle that could pay them, they would have gone there. They are all young, maybe not even in their primes yet, and it's a bit fucking ridiculous. Next, you have New York, and the rumors I heard were that Melo had already decided to go to NY regardless, and Chris Paul has already told them, "See you guys in summer 2012!" I don't want to watch 3 - 5 "super teams" and 20+ teams of shit. Nobody wants to see that. It's like playing it on your PS3 where you stack a team and blow everyone out by 50. What's the point? Now sure, it's a gamble, because the CBA might make that impossible, but what are the odds they are really going to crack down that hard? The last time there was a lock-out, the NBA's popularity went in the shitter, it took years to recover, and I know Stern remembers that.
Maybe instead of considering it a problem, we can talk about how foolish it is to have so many small market teams in a league that can't support them, financially. If they get a new CBA that doesn't allow players to coordinate free agency plans, the NBA ought to also get more involved in how front offices manage their teams. If a star player is on a shitty team that stays a shitty team due to poor management, but can't leave (at least not to go wherever he wants) due to the CBA, something has to give. If the Minnesotas, the Sacramentos, and the Clevelands don't want players to skip town, perhaps they should learn to manage their teams better. I don't see how 2-3 star players constitutes "super team shit," anyway. In Boston, all the talk after getting KG and Ray Allen was "they don't have any good players left on the roster" and "Rondo is an awful point guard and will be a major liability." Even in Miami, who's the next best player after their star trio? Halsem? Ilgauskas? Chalmers? It's 3 stars and a bunch of role players. I don't see why these guys shouldn't be allowed to play with one another, or why people are up in arms about the trend. It started with Boston, then Miami, soon New York, and I'm sure others will follow suit. Part of it is money, sure, but there's also a competitive edge to be had. As for the Carmelo trade, mrburgundy covered it all in his post. It's essentially Gallinari and a mid-first for a top-10 player in his prime. Chandler was as good as gone anyway, Mozgov is an unknown entity, and Felton is good, but not expendable. I've said before that I preferred if they kept Gallinari, and I don't doubt his ability to reach his potential, but I didn't expect that to happen if they acquired Anthony. I'm still not comfortable with Anthony's defensive or passing abilities, but I'm crossing my fingers that playing back home will revitalize his game. That's all biased, wishful thinking, but it's all I got. And how cool is it that Balkman is back in NY? He was my favorite Knick when he was here, and hopefully he can be the spark off the bench that he was then.
I don't want to see player movement or free agency restricted. I'd rather see a hard cap like the NFL. I don't care that James, Wade, and Bosh went to Miami. I did have a problem with the fact that the Heat had 3 players on their roster for a while so they could get them. They don't really have much else this year, but give them two years of mid-level exemptions. By then they'll have expiring contracts to trade, too. I don't like the fact that a few MLB teams can buy their way into the playoffs, and the NBA should try to avoid going down that road.
I might agree with this, but it's a bold statement about a very complicated question. What small markets do you think are incapable of supporting an NBA team? The NBA will never, ever be as retarded as the MLB, since there is at least a soft cap; in the NBA, a team with low salaries is still paying $40 million, and one with very high salaries is at $95 million, and is penalized again by paying an additional $40 million to the rest of the league as a luxury tax. In baseball, the Brewers spend about $24 million a year, and the Yankees spend $300 million in a season...without penalty.
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.usatoday.com/sports/columnist/hiestand-tv/2011-02-08-nba-tnt_N.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.usatoday.com/sports/columnis ... -tnt_N.htm</a>
I worded that a bit strongly. What I meant is that every time I have the discussion about smaller markets (in any sport, not just the NBA) with friends or see it online, invariably someone will try to say that those teams need to be given a "fair chance" because they have a hard time competing for free agents (even their own) against the major market teams, which tends to leave them with inferior rosters, when then makes it even harder to retain players as well as fans. It's sort of cyclical, especially in the NBA, in which teams change cities much more so than any other major sport. I feel like the real problem isn't that players are stacking themselves on rosters while still somehow making max contracts, but that there are a few too many teams in the league and not enough "stars" to go around, which is a real problem considering individual players have more influence over a game's outcome in basketball than in other sport. It's not a coincidence that the same teams play poorly year after year. Part of it is poor management (David Kahn and Isiah Thomas), but money, as always, plays a big part. This slideshow kind of explains what I'm getting at. If these teams have such a hard time staying afloat, why do they continue to exist and be, from where I'm sitting, a burden to the league and a black hole for players' careers? It doesn't even have to be a small-market team: when Blake Griffin was drafted, the first thing my buddy texted me that night was, "So how long until he signs a contract with someone not named the Clippers?" It also slightly bothers me that the reactions fans have over star players banding together in the NBA is so much more negative than over the Phillies, Red Sox, and Yankees snatching up all of the best players. The negativity is still there with baseball, but it's different: in the MLB, the disgust is directed at the teams for "bullying" the smaller, less competitive franchises; in the NBA, it's directed at the players themselves. Long story short, I feel the competition would be healthier for the NBA if it was limited to 24 teams. Whether that would make sense financially, I have no idea.
I feel 24 teams is far too little, considering the incredible number of talented players in the league right now. There are currently 9-10 very stacked teams, and with a dispersal draft, that number would rise to over 12, or more than half the teams in your scenario. That might sound great, but the non-stacked teams would be the remaining small market ones, and they would get crushed worse than ever! Meanwhile, there are fewer NBA jobs, and the profitability of the league suffers. More importantly, what 6 franchises would you get rid of?