1/22/12 Blow up the roster! Trade Editon

I understand the reasoning in a proven player for a proven player thing but a first overall?

If we could trade Batum for the number pick in the draft everyone here would pull the trigger and it was also let me know that every GM in the NBA was a member of this website.

for Livingston that he would one day be healthy for awhile. He finally did it & has actually played quite efficient the last few seasons too.

Aldridge/Bogut front court with depth like Camby(Who we should resign next year to a deal like…) Kurt Thomas, Craig Smith, not to mention the possibility of adding Kenyon Martin once his CBA contract expires mid season, makes us the deepest team in the league at the 4/5 spots. They might ask for Oden’s bird rights or a draft pick & I would oblige.

Wallace would probably sign eals wear after the season, so that doesn’t do them any good.

I’d push Atlanta for Kirk Hinrich. Plays good defense at both guard spots & a solid 3 point shooter. He can fill in start at the 2 because he can defend most at that spot & keep Crawford on the bench. While that muddles the 1 spot by patching the 2, it will allow us to see if Nolan Smith or Elliot Williams are worth anything.

Then at the deadline trade Camby + Felton for Tyson

and take my chances on finding a C in free agency, or playing LA out of position.

Just what we need, we let CP3 slip away lets steal Rondo from the Celtics

championship experience & the kid has the will to win. Perfect age (25, same as LaMarcus). He is also oddly abrasive, which kind of tailors to the “keep Portland weird” motto, i’d rather have that then happy go lucky Raymond Felton. But then instead of shipping Felton to LA, give the Hawks a draft pick + Felton for Hinrich(Resign him next year for mini MLE)

Rondo/Hinrich
Hinrich/Crawford(Soon to be replaced by Jared Cunningham OR Terrence Ross in draft)
Wallace/Babbitt(Though, soon to be replaced by Mike Moser OR Terrence Jones in the draft)
Aldridge/Kenyon Martin(Sign him after his chinese league contract expires)/Craig Smith
Kurt Thomas/Marcus Camby(Resign him next year to a deal like KT)/Stiemsma

This makes us arguably the best defensive team in the NBA & with perimeter defenders like this we could play Nate’s SOS defense with great success. If McMillan reverts back to his old 1vs5 ISO ways while still bringing a team like this to the table, fire him & try to bring Larry Brown out of retirement. If not make a splash Coach/GM hire, like Rick Pitino?

He’d inspire the culture change Mark Jackson is looking for.
I’d also like to see us swing something like THIS: http://games.espn.go.com/nba/tradeMachine?tradeId=7oncko6
Gives us a starting lineup of:
Felton (Who’s been an undeserved goat of this team)
Ellis
Batum
Aldridge
Thompson

If we can get him for wallace do it, a trade for him would look like this
Wallace, Matthews, Williams, Cash, Picks
For
Ellis, Wright

I’d take the rebuild.

But a center alone doesn’t solve the most painful weakness we have right now… We can’t hit any shots!

Getting Nic on the floor and adding a PF like Bass does give us more options at the 4 & 5. A Bass/LMA combination could see some time resting Camby and Thomas and Bass and Camby/Thomas could hold their own while LMA rested. Throw in an occasional dose of Rhino and it seems we’d have a rotation that could keep LaMarcus around 35 mins. per game.

Thanks for your input on the trade. I’ve purposely avoided the “Machine” until now but I has to give it a try.

…with the absolute lack of outside shooting we have right now teams would be free to collapse in the lane and stop Kaman or any other available center we may get.

If teams feared our outside shot it would make life for LMA a tone easier.

Kaman is a type of Center that needs the ball, he would take away shots from LMA

He may only have 2-3 years left on him but this trade also includes Wallace who…with his style of play… may have about the same window of effectiveness.

The trade also nets us 26 year old PF who is ok not being the starter but can play starter minutes if necessary.

The other benefit in some ways is that it gets the longest contract we have on the book…outside LMA… off the books and makes us very, very flexible in two years.

I’m not saying this trade saves us but it takes a lot more to make a deal “terrible” then trading young for old. Would you trade Nolan Smith for Steve Nash? I for one think Ray Allen has more left in the tank then Nash and people talk about trading for him.

Coming out of Marquette, Matthews was a four-year product with little upside. He is who he is, which is a so-so 7th man on a decent team. Or, in Portland’s case, a below average starting wing on an average team. Matthews isn’t a prospect, a’ight. On the contrary, he’s a garden-variety, run-of-the-mill role player.

Nothing more, nothing less

I don’t know what I would do with myself.

Does Houston get a raw deal? Yeah, to an extent. However, Orlando and New Jersey are the ones that get bent over a barrel and reamed like there’s no tomorrow.

it’s not for two young guys that are somewhere between the roles of starter/role player

With Brandon Roy finished and Greg Oden’s career having one foot in the grave, the previous core is all but shattered.

If this was the NFL, I’d advocate a semi-rebuild. If this was MLB, I’d advocate adding more pieces. In the NBA, however, rebuilding is necessary except in the rarest of cases — such as the Lakers getting Shaq O’Neal to sign outright as a free agent in the summer 1996 or the Pistons forming one of the most elite defenses in NBA history during the mid-2000s — so holding onto LMA only postpones the inevitable for Portland.

With that, I still think the report of a three-way deal with him going to Orlando for such a huge return was exaggerated. Crash just isn’t worth that on the trade market.

how about we just steal some of the genius scouts/assistant GMs out of their front office with Paul Allen’s money and then we don’t even have to tank to rebuild because they can find all-star players with the 58th pick in the draft. and maybe grab tiago splitter because they aren’t playing him enough and kawhi leonard cause he reminds me of wallace.

Let’s play a game of “let’s pretend”.

Let’s pretend you have two choices. Stay the course with minor rebuilding, or blow it up.

If you stay the course, you have a 0.50 chance of making the playoffs at least 5 times in the next 10 seasons. But a 0.05 chance of winning a championship.

If you rebuild from scratch (getting value for your good players in trade, not pulling a Rasheed and trading when your trading partner has the advantage), you have a .15 chance of making the playoffs at least 5 times in the next 10 seasons, but a 0.15 chance of winning a championship in the next 10 years (based on the luck of the draft year and lottery as much as anything).

That’s really the key to this whole thing: Would you rather have a noticeably higher chance of enjoying regular playoffs, or a slightly higher (but still very low) chance of actually building a contender?

That’s patently false.

with a starting 5 of Williams, Matthews, Wallace, Aldridge, and Howard.

I can see D-Will doing it, but not Howard. And they want to play together, so the only way we even get a remote shot at D-Will is if LAL sign and trades for Dwight. And even at that, I think the Knicks and Dallas would still present interesting opportunities for Williams.

that could mean trouble LOL

We dont mind his big contract

I believe he is in there for the long-term. They expanded his offensive role and is doing a good job adapting to it. For how young he is and cheap, i’m sure they want to keep him.