Cut Davis or Powe to sign Smith? Are you out of your mind?
No. They are both free agents next year and they are both (realistically) about 6-6 or 6-7. The C's are not going to re-sign both of them. If that's the case, why not cut the one you aren't going to re-sign now and pick up a legit big man with playoff experience in Joe Smith?
Ideally, I'd rather cut Gabe Pruitt, who isn't under contract next year (team option) and isn't going to play this season anyway with Marbury here. And if the team really wants him back next year when Marbury likely walks, I highly doubt there are going to be many teams competing with us for his services. And even if he does sign with someone else, Pruitt is hardly irreplaceable.
You can sign-and-trade the one you don't plan to keep, and get something in return that addresses our bench needs next season. Bonus: you don't have to use MLE money to do so.
Powe and Baby are chips, and have value. You don't give them away for nothing. I'd cut Pruitt first.
I agree that you cut Pruitt first. I was talking about just not playing the one the C's didn't plan on re-signing.
As for a sign and trade, how is that going to happen? Both players are coming off 2 year contracts, thus the C's do not have Bird rights on them yet. They do have early Bird-rights, but that doesn't allow us to offer them much more than minimum contracts anyway. Thus, in order to give them any sort of significant money, we'd have to offer them part of or all of the MLE, just like any other team. Thus no team is going to give us anything in a trade when they could just sign them for part of or all of the MLE.
Edit: actually, the above is only true for Big Baby. Powe is in his third year now, so we would have Bird rights. So assuming we wanted to deal Powe, that could work. However, in this economic climate, I don't think that Powe is going to get a big contract from anyone. There's talk that next year the likes of Allen Iverson and Rasheed Wallace might only net the MLE. Thus, why not just use part of the MLE or LLE to sign him if you're another team? Why give up anything for him?