FanPost

The 2009 picture

First of all, this is stepping outside of the whole running issue of
"Blake's here, so that makes JJ trade bait, what will we get for him?"
However, if something comes of that, it will affect this topic;
since that would be in unforeseeable ways, I'm not taking that into account.
But getting another major-minutes guy may affect the 2009 outloook;
a trade involving Channing Frye CERTAINLY affects the picture I'm about to paint.

And that 2009 outlook, as everyone's mentioning, is:
We're gonna have SERIOUS cap room.
As in, sign-a-big-name room--eight digits left of the decimal, bay-bee!

And then I look at a couple of high-profile examples of teams doing that,
and who they've gotten, and (most importantly) HOW they got them:
New Orleans getting Peja two years ago, and Orlando getting The Shard this year.
In both cases, the team had cleared a lot of cap room to acquire a big-money free agent,
came to terms and were ready to just sign that free agent,
and at the last minute, got the old team involved (Pacers-Peja, and Seattle-Shard),
which changed the straight-up signing into a sign-and-trade,
where what the old team received from the massively-under-the-cap new team
was a big, fat "trade exception", like the one we got from New York and used on Jones.
(Indiana used theirs on [snicker] Al Jefferson; Seattle is sitting on their $9mil exception.)

So that seems to be the rule--even when you're ready to sign the big free agent,
why not throw their old team a bone with a big fat trade exception for a sign-and-trade?

And then there's the bit I harped on a few days ago,
where I think Channing Frye CANNOT be kept in Portland beyond his rookie contract,
and that we either have to trade him as a Bynum-type hot, cheap commodity,
let him go in two years, or (and now this gets HUGE) sign-and-trade him in two years.

And so here we go and follow me on this one:
What about a Channing Frye sign-and-trade packaged with
a monster trade exception like New Orleans and Orlando sent to Indy and Seattle?

THAT, my friends, is a MASSIVE player's worth of trade package--
especially if we would've just signed him straight up, as happened with Peja & Shard.
The trade exception alone got Rashard out of Seattle--what does adding Frye to that get?
If the trade exception we can generate from being under the cap
is anywhere in the range of Orlando's $9million,
what does Frye fetch in a trade from a team that can only trade for him,
not sign him straight up? Another $6-8 million?
So now that package is somewhere in $15-17million territory.

A post-rookie-contract Channing Frye and a $8-10 million trade exception:
Does that get us into LeBron/Melo/Dwyane Wade territory?
While still KEEPING Roy, LaMarcus, and Greg Freaking Oden?!?

Something to chew on.
I just wet myself thinking about it.