Knicks trade Patrick Patterson
Jazz trade Chris Andersen
Wow, great trade. Important to have a quality backup five who can anchor your defense when Dwight Howard is not on the court. Very valuable reserve. Much more so than Patrick Patterson.
I don't really understand why Utah did this. They were small enough up front already. This just makes them more vulnerable.
I think Utah is "going young", punting on its playoff chances to rebuild a bit. It's funny, I was just thinking yesterday how in this year's draft, we'd seen more balanced teams, rather than the strictly "win now" or "play for the future" teams we've seen in other years. That's more like the real NBA. Since that observation, though, we've seen a couple of teams decide to go the youth route, with first Chicago and now Utah leading the charge.
I understand that nobody wants to be "just" a playoff team, but in my mind there's nothing wrong with a soundly constructed roster with a mix of veterans and youth.
just to throw in an extra thought as the GM of Chicago on youth movement:
Knowing I couldn't realistically put together a team as good as the current one based on the current one having one superstar and some top-notch support and having a draft position way at the end of each round, I saw the one viable alternative as stockpiling youth for either a future trade or hitting it big with some players really developing. Not having the option of having a shorter roster but better players hampered the trading quantity for quality option.
Also, to address some of the beatings I took for my 2 trades yesterday, due to work commitments today, participating in 2 rounds during a workday is not conducive to my schedule so I had to compromise some of the quality of my roster to accomplish the task of dumping my picks scheduled for today, which I accomplished. if we had been on the single round a day with my pick scheduled for when I was available (like last week), I never would have pulled the Noah/Mcgee swap--it's not a comparable talent swap but it was the best deal I could get that would enable me to move today's picks.
Unfortunately, I won't be able to monitor what transpires during the day today but I hope it's a genuine free-for-all as people scramble to fill out their rosters. I'll pop into the team discussion later today to get everyone's 2 cents on my roster as it stands and hopefully a few comments on what they'd think about it if I didn't have to make that deal.
Good luck GMs