That would seem to be an interesting bit of manipulation on KP’s part – with both McMillan and Roy being told “here ya go, make it work”.

…which teams would realistically consider trade for a veteran point guard?

We’re all talking about shipping Blake or Miller, but what is the market like for each of them?

As someone who is baffled sometimes by trades that go down, could this following quote actually be true?

Blake is easier to move and may have more trade value.

could we perhaps see a trade of Blake/Webster for Battier

http://www.realgm.com/src_tradechecker/3/

aren’t we glad that trade never happened last year?

sorry, the proposed trade talks for Hinrich. Can’t imagine we would have been any better off.

all for the low low price of 9 million

Don’t care for the implications, if its true this is an end-a-round to preserve Nate from upsetting Brandon. Having to trade Blake to avoid upsetting Brandon seems silly. If so, all these guys need to grow up. Nate and KP need to simply tell Brandon that Steve will play 10 minutes a game. Blake hasn’t stopped being a quality back-up just cause Nate’s overplaying him. For all my irritation with seeing Blake play so much, he deserves better. My guess is the writer is just guessing at motive or transmitting some other GM’s negative assessment.

together for Monte…rumor is nobody on GSW is currently safe. Although not a huge fan of getting yet another PG however I don’t think he is just another PG.

It is hard not to want to dump whatever player isn’t cutting it.

On the other hand, I know that strategy may be the exact opposite of the correct one.

Consider stock investing. The way you make money is buy low sell high. Look to acquire a player who sometimes is a great player but right now isn’t. That player will be cheap to acquire.

And trade away a player who is sometimes a poor player but right now happens to be playing well. Because that player will fetch you the best price.

Still, that is counterintuitive and most investors do the opposite, buy high and sell low.

And intuitively that’s what you want to do when it comes to sports trades too. For example, dump Blake, he’s not cutting it.

The reason we tend to want to follow a buy high sell low philosophy is that we judge a player’s long-term value based on what he’s doing right now.

And sometimes that may turn out to be right. Will Blake ever get back to playing decent ball? Hard to say. A lot of people felt last year he was playing the best he could possibly play based on his natural talent. If so, then there may not be a lot of upside with him. The best case scenario might be that he just gets back to where he is playing closer to how he played last year.

On the other hand, with Blake’s dismal shooting percentage this year, is any other team even going to want him enough to offer anything in exchange?

My guess is that they let him go when his contract expires, I believe that is end of this season?

Now, back to the buy low sell high thing. Consider Outlaw. Early last season we thought he was a gem, but by the end of the season we thought he was more or less useless.

I think the truth is somewhere in between. The point is, if we had traded him early last year we could have gotten something good for him. But after the end of last season if we had traded him we probably couldn’t have gotten much.

But just think how the fans would have reacted if the Blazers had shopped Outlaw early last season.

“How can you trade away a guy who is playing so well.”

So, I think there is a lot of inertia in trying to apply a buy low sell high philosophy.

Plus, while the best deal is going to be found where you are acquiring someone who is currently at a low ebb in their play, but what the Blazers need is someone who can help them right now.

It really seems like the Blazers need a #3 center. It was frightening the way Sacramento took over the game the minute Przybilla went out.

But maybe Pendergraph can serve that role. The fact is, centers are rare and if you want to acquire a decent center from another team you are going to have to give up a lot, maybe two good players or so.

All in all, I doubt there is much opportunity out there for a trade that will be good for the Blazers. If they happen to bump into one they should go for it. But I think it is fairly unlikely.

I think a lot of what the Blazers do is to try to hedge their bets because it is hard to judge how well the younger players are going to turn out.

But at some point I think they need to just bite the bullet. For example, Bayless. He has shown enough potential I think they should just plug him in as someone they intend to rely on in the future.

Most people feel his natural position is shooting guard but Blazers have 2 guys ahead of him at that position. But he is showing that he has enough skills to be a decent point guard. He’ll never be a Chris Paul, but that’s OK.

Part of biting the bullet also means that as the injured players get healthy, and they get back to logjam situations, the are going to have to have the guts to trade away some decent players.

Some people even complain about getting rid of Sergio and Channing, I think those were appropriate, yes Frye is playing pretty well but that is the way things should work in basketball, a player with talent isn’t much use for your team because he doesn’t fit your playing style, so let him go out and play for a team where he can make the best use of his talent.

In hindsight dropping Udoka looks questionable but until we see what Mills can do I think it’s too early to judge.

" KP should not be afraid for disrupting our chemistry now."

Another thing about chemistry- the team is facing at least one more full year of disrupted chemistry whether they like it or not. As the injured guys get back in, that will help provide them with more options but integrating those guys back into the rotation will be a chemistry-disruptor.

So the team needs to deal with disrupted chemistry- they face it on an ongoing basis for the forseeable future, trades or no trades.

“if people think Blake is shooting bad, wait until they see Captain Kirk 33% overall, 28% from downtown. oh, and 4.1 assists to 2.3 turnovers to boot. No thanks!”

Under a buy low sell high philosophy, someone in a slump like Hinrich is exactly the sort of player you want to consider acquiring, if you can get him cheap.

Hinrich and Blake are both in a slump but Hinrich’s upside is a lot bigger than Blake’s.

Although, I wouldn’t advocate acquiring a guard because the Blazers already have plenty of decent guards, even if they got rid of Blake.

I firmly believe if a player that is doing well like Bayless doesn’t get decent playing time then he will eventually walk and the team probably won’t get much in return. In other words, it is too rosy to look at logjams as “the kind of problem we’d like to have”

By the way, I have been wondering if Cunningham has any ability to take it to the rim? It’s nice for a 4 to be able to make jumpshots, but to be a well-rounded 4 you should be able to score in the paint as well.

I’m not sure whether we haven’t seen that from Cunningham yet because it is not his strong point or because his assigned role on the team doesn’t include that. Although, I would imagine that if he showed a good inside game on offense in practice they would try to make use of that.