early season bottom feeder thread

[wiley]

Discuss Philly, Charlotte, Minnesota, Clippers, New Jersey, Detroit, Cleveland and Washington
(I excluded the Rockets obviously, and included 2-win Cleveland and New Jersey.)

What should these teams do next?  With special attention to Melo.

Philly:  Should trade Iggy imo.  Should not trade for Melo.

Charlotte:  Franchise in trouble?

Minny:  In good shape.  Start Brewer at 2, Wes. Johnson at 3, Beas. at 4.  Start K. Love at Center or trade him.

Clippers:  Excellent.  Don't trade for Melo!  Big mistake.  You have the best chance to be the next Ok. City.  Trade B. Davis.  Start your team of the future:  Bledsoe, Gordon, Aminu, Griffin and Kaman, and land another high draft pick.

New Jersey:  Added to many vets, but still in good shape.  Start Favors and Terrence Williams.  Trade Murphy and Dunleavy, and include Outlaw if you need to (if he doesn't like the bench)....you'll get some nice pieces back and another top draft pick.  Trade for Melo ONLY if you are sure you can land Chris Paul later.  Otherwise, hang onto Favors and be more patient.

Detroit:  Trade Prince and Hamilton, and Stuckey if you need to.

Cleveland:  ?

Washington:  Keep trying to trade Arenas.  Trade for Carmelo to pair with Wall. 

Clippers in best shape of the above teams imo.

[Fafnir]

Minnesota is not in good shape at all, Kevin Love is not a center. Beasley's or Love's (maybe both) development is going to be held back. Especially if Rambis keeps giving Tolliver minutes....

[Who]

Minnesota Timberwolves

Short term

• Play Kevin Love (26mpg) more minutes. He is by far the best player on your squad and should be up above 32mpg at the very least.
• Secondly, continue the Michael Beasley @ SF experiment until the end of the month and then decide whether it's working out or not. I expect it'll fail and if so, the Wolves should move W.Johnson into the starting lineup preferably alongside Martell Webster (once healthy). From there, Beasley should only play K-Love's backup PF minutes (12-18mpg) while Minny look to trade him on to another team.
• Wesley Johnson and Martell Webster should get the majority of available minutes on the wing. Corey Brewer is third in line.
• Darko should continue as their starting center. He has confidence issues and the coaching staff has to stay firm and show faith in him for Darko to come out the other side.
• Try to trade Jonny Flynn. The Wolves can probably get a low lottery to mid first round pick for him. That pick is more valuable than Flynn ... especially in that Triangle offense.

Long Term

• Not enough elite talent or trade assets to try and move forward yet. The Wolves need to stay in the lottery and continue to build up their talent base.

[moiso]

Good luck to the Clippers in finding someone to take Baron Davis off their hands.  That team will never reach it's potential until they do get rid of Davis.

It must be frustrating to have one of your primary players be so indifferent.  If he's not milking an injury, he is out of shape, ignoring the plays, or going 2-11 from 3pt range.  This guy is truly deserving of KG's cancerous comment.

[Who]

Good luck to the Clippers in finding someone to take Baron Davis off their hands.  That team will never reach it's potential until they do get rid of Davis.

It must be frustrating to have one of your primary players be so indifferent.  If he's not milking an injury, he is out of shape, ignoring the plays, or going 2-11 from 3pt range.  This guy is truly deserving of KG's cancerous comment.

Yeah, Baron Davis has been shockingly bad so far this season. He might be finished.

It would be a shame because this team is a very good fit for him.

[Fafnir]

Good luck to the Clippers in finding someone to take Baron Davis off their hands.  That team will never reach it's potential until they do get rid of Davis.

It must be frustrating to have one of your primary players be so indifferent.  If he's not milking an injury, he is out of shape, ignoring the plays, or going 2-11 from 3pt range.  This guy is truly deserving of KG's cancerous comment.

Yeah, Baron Davis has been shockingly bad so far this season. He might be finished.

It would be a shame because this team is a very good fit for him.

Eric Gordon/Bledsoe make the Clippers offense look much better than Davis.

I think Davis's poor workout habits and injury prone nature have finally caught up with him.

[Who]

Detroit Pistons

Short Term

• Use a three man backcourt of Rodney Stuckey, Rip Hamilton and Ben Gordon. Nobody else.
• That means gluing W.Bynum's rear end to the bench. He's killing his teammates' effectiveness.
• It looks like the Austin Daye at PF experiment will fail, at least for the time being until he fills out some physically, but I am still curious about it (I want to see if he can settle down offensively first).
• When the Pistons decide to move on from that experiment ... they should put Greg Monroe into the starting lineup and shift Ben Wallace to the PF spot. These two will be somewhat interchangeable defensively. Monroe isn't ready to be a quality contributor but he'll hopefully be serviceable + the Pistons lack of bigs makes him their best bet. I also think it'll be easier for Monroe to function when playing alongside Detroit's most accomplished (especially defensively) and experienced players (the starters rather than the backups). If he can give them 25-28 minutes a night, that would be great.
• At that point, Daye should become the backup SF to Prince.

Long Term

• Look to trade Rip Hamilton, Tayshaun Prince, Charlie Villanueva, Will Bynum and Ben Gordon over the next 12 months.
• Keep Rodney Stuckey, Austin Daye and Greg Monroe. They are the early stages to your new foundation.
• Their trade assets are fairly weak so they are likely going to have to enter a long term rebuilding process. Joe Dumars is going to have to show some patience and not try to spend whatever cap flexibility (that comes his way) right away.

[Who]

Charlotte Bobcats are fine. They've just gotten off to a slow start. They have a good chance at making the playoffs again this season. Keep going in the direction they're heading in.

The long term potential of the group is low. They'll have to undergo some major squad reconstruction at some point in the next two years. They could start that now and try to build through the lottery again or they could wait 2-3 years for FA money and build then.

[Fan from VT]

LAC trades Baron, Kaman, Aminu, Gomes, Foye, Own#1, Minny#1 for Nene, Melo and Billups:

LAC
Billups/Bledsoe/Warren
Gordon/Butler
Melo/?
Griffin/?
Nene/Jordan

Denver:
Davis/Lawson
Afflalo/Smith
Harrington/Aminu
Williams/Kmart
Kaman/Andersen/Forbes.

-Treads water with a semi-drawable lineup
-Sells it's fans on "the future"
-continues to look for ways to flip Kaman/Davis/Harrington
-Plan on keeping Lawson/Afflalo/Aminu as pieces
-Get a good pick themselves
-count on a franchise player from the Minny pick
-add in the LAC pick to start building through the draft
-Be patient and let K-Mart, etc. go.

[guava_wrench]

LAC trades Baron, Kaman, Aminu, Gomes, Foye, Own#1, Minny#1 for Nene, Melo and Billups:

LAC
Billups/Bledsoe/Warren
Gordon/Butler
Melo/?
Griffin/?
Nene/Jordan

Denver:
Davis/Lawson
Afflalo/Smith
Harrington/Aminu
Williams/Kmart
Kaman/Andersen/Forbes.

-Treads water with a semi-drawable lineup
-Sells it's fans on "the future"
-continues to look for ways to flip Kaman/Davis/Harrington
-Plan on keeping Lawson/Afflalo/Aminu as pieces
-Get a good pick themselves
-count on a franchise player from the Minny pick
-add in the LAC pick to start building through the draft
-Be patient and let K-Mart, etc. go.

When are those draft picks? If they are for this year, which may be one of the all time worst drafts if no labor agreement is reached, then I'm not sure Kaman is worth Melo, Nene and Billups. Foye and Gomes are dime-a-dozen guys that anyone can sign as free agents if they are interested. I'll confess I don't know much about Aminu apart from him being new.

And why would Denver want any part of Baron Davis? Baron Davis almost subtracts value from a trade package. Considering that the Clips could make the playoffs with that new roster, the #1 pick is also of questionable value.

Sometimes it is better to let Melo walk than to get stuck with roster flotsam.

[action781]

This thread has brought a trade idea to my attention (maybe I'll split it later).  What do you guys think of:

Gilbert Arenas for Baron Davis and Craig Smith

Why for LAC:
For reasons mentioned by moiso, Baron Davis is just so... unpredictable.  That Clippers team has a LOT of talent on it.  Way too much talent to be 1-5 (0-3 with B-Diddy).  On paper, this team should be a playoff team.  But when Baron goes 11/34 with 16 assists and 9 TOs in 3 games, that's why this team isn't winning.  And now he's injured.

Gilbert, while even more unpredictable off the court, is far more consistent on the court... when he plays.  I think this team is talented enough to make some noise in the early playoff stages now.  Gil played really well last season (22ppg, 7apg) before the gun incident.  People forget that this guy still has game.

Why for Washington:
Gilbert Arenas is a point guard.  Yeah, he's a scorer, but he needs the ball in his hands a lot to be effective.  The problem here is that John Wall also needs the ball in his hands a lot to be effective.  This John Wall-Gilbert Arenas backcourt pairing is not going to work.  John Wall is obviously the future and Washington was never so eager to trade Gilbert earlier because their front office didn't realize how soon Wall would splash in the NBA.

So, why not trade Gilbert (a player who won't fit in your system) for B-Diddy (another player who won't fit into your system) and save $38 million in the process.  That's a ton of money.  Then, you can put Hinrich into your lineup as SG (and backup PG minutes) and have a different contract in B-Diddy's which will be tradeable a year sooner than Gilbert's will be.

[More Banners]

Minny's roster is getting better, but there is no way the triangle has any chance with a roster that young that also lacks a genuine bailout guy on the perimeter that can make something happen when it breaks down.

Wrong coach, wrong system, decent (and improving) roster despite very, very bad moves.

Kahn will likely keep Rambis and blame the roster, and consequently trade talent for nothing (i.e. Big Al for what?) and spin the franchise in circles.  They need an experienced coach to make up for the inexperienced roster.  Kahn is an idiot.

[youcanthandlethetruth113]

Minnesota is not in good shape at all, Kevin Love is not a center. Beasley's or Love's (maybe both) development is going to be held back. Especially if Rambis keeps giving Tolliver minutes....

Rambis + Keuster will be the first coaches fired.

[PosImpos]

The Rockets, though not on your list, should look to trade some of their assets for Andre Iguodala.

The FIBA World Championships showed how Iggy can thrive if he is allowed to be an elite garbage-man, jack-of-all-trades type player, not the 1st or 2nd option on offense.  If he were inserted into Houston's starting lineup alongside Aaron Brooks, K-Mart, Luis Scola, and Yao / Dampier, he'd be able to fill that role very nicely.  

He'd also provide Houston with something they desperately need - an elite athlete.  They have a roster filled with efficient, undersized (except for Yao), scrappy players who thrive by working hard and playing in a fundamental way.  That's great, but they need some athleticism.  Iggy fits the bill.


It makes sense for the Sixers...they need to look to stockpile assets and get rid of long-term contracts.  The Rockets have a surplus of assets.

[Who]

The Rockets, though not on your list, should look to trade some of their assets for Andre Iguodala.

The FIBA World Championships showed how Iggy can thrive if he is allowed to be an elite garbage-man, jack-of-all-trades type player, not the 1st or 2nd option on offense.  If he were inserted into Houston's starting lineup alongside Aaron Brooks, K-Mart, Luis Scola, and Yao / Dampier, he'd be able to fill that role very nicely.  

He'd also provide Houston with something they desperately need - an elite athlete.  They have a roster filled with efficient, undersized (except for Yao), scrappy players who thrive by working hard and playing in a fundamental way.  That's great, but they need some athleticism.  Iggy fits the bill.


It makes sense for the Sixers...they need to look to stockpile assets and get rid of long-term contracts.  The Rockets have a surplus of assets.

What type of trade package are you thinking of?