Rethinking Aldridge

I’m gonna have to pass on that!..

What does LMA have to do to get some respect?

He has been ballin’ like a man possessed and putting up all star numbers and beasting down in the low post like everybody has been desperately wanting him to do.

Guess what? Right now LMA IS our best player and he deserves some respect for it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

http://games.espn.go.com/nba/tradeMachine?tradeId=2es4oyu

why blazers do it-you get a scoring pg to go along with patty mills (as his backup or backcourt mate if things get dire), jeff foster is a great rebounder and solid post defender though not much else (sorta like pryz) and kurt thomas is that vet just in case you need that vet…you also get brandon rush, while he may not be rudy, he is a solid shooter, great size, and decent defender. He needs a new place to work sine indiana just has not been good to him. you are also getting a lot of salary off the books..

why the bulls do it-we dont give up anything major for sg help. With rose and boozer, its always nice to have shooters, which seems to be all babs is….wayne ellington is just there to match salaries.

why indiana does it-andre miller…thats pretty much it. They get a really good starting pg. They also are lower on a real wing players, so they get a nice pickup in project james johnson, who has good potential and right now is at least a role player. They also get bogans who can a solid role player for them….

Blazers get the role players they need, and expirings as well, get a big contract off the books…bulls get their sg, indiana reaps benefits in two years.

Greg Monroe. The rest are either past their best like Prince and Hamilton or born losers like Stuckey and Villanueva.
I ‘d like to see LMA play some center but not our main center. He can only play there for short spells otherwise he’d get pushed around.

“We get an up and coming PG and PF… For Detroit they4 don’t give up any potential”… Does not compute.

I haven’t even looked at the trade yet, but your fundamental premise “the value of centers is much higher then PF” is misguided. There are 5 players on the court, and as Freedarko has propogated, what the team really needs is the correct stack of skills: Ball Handler, Outside Shooter, Post-Up Player, Shot-Blocker, etc. If you’re using Andre Miller to post-up and Aldridge as your outside shooter, that’s just as fine (as a theoretical construct) as vice-versa.

Now, looking at the trade, i’ll break it down into components

PG: Andre Miller for Stuckey. Stuckey’s not as valuable as he once was, but I don’t understand how Detroit does this

PF/C: Greg Oden for Greg Monroe. I like Monroe, I wish we had drafted him. But I don’t think he’s a “banger” like you described, and I don’t think he’s got half the ceiling Oden still does. Also, he’s a potential headcase of the Aldridge variety.

SG: Austin Daye and Rip for Batum and Rudy. Rip is salary fodder here… except that he has 3 years left at 12.5 per. Too much. He’s going to retire before re-upping (well, he should retire). Batum still has a ceiling and I still think Rudy can break out.