Well, if its sacrilege to hold the NBA trading deadline in the same esteem as Christmas, then consider me out of the church. As it is right now, the trade winds are gathering strength by the day, and its fun to read columnists make half-hazard trade scenarios with no knowledge of the salary cap.
For the Bulls:
I've spent plenty of time in the past couple of weeks expressing my plans
for Curry, Crawford and Chandler (summary: keep curry/chandler..deal crawford
only for the right package). And it seems that
Jay Mariotti
has removed his face
from Michael Jordan's rear long enough to make his rallying cry to GM John
Paxson:
At the moment, some people are getting excited about him again because he has been avoiding drive-through lanes, responding to Scott Skiles' whip-cracking workouts and delivering impressive offensive stretches in recent games. But in my mind, any positive momentum only serves as another good reason to trade Curry, with hopes another team might relinquish a quality player and give the Bulls a chance to rejoin the NBA one of these decades.I still think that Curry's value is in fact too low to be even thought of being tradeable. And perhaps its yet another tease, but this road trip makes me think that a half season and full offseason with Scott Skiles may finally unlock the mystery that is Eddy Curry. Kostas Bolos over at RealGM says it best:
And so if Skiles can transform Curry in particular in nine short weeks, just imagine what he can do with a full off-season and training camp under his belt. The Thornwood High School product is only beginning to carve his niche, and the sky remains the limit as far as his impact in the league. Curry is just beginning to scratch the surface of his vast potential.Step back, see the big picture. There's nobody the Bulls can get for Curry that has a better shot of bringing the Bulls to title contention than Curry himself.
So forget about him being showcased in any potential deals before Feb. 19. It just isn’t going to happen. Curry will be wearing white, red and black for the foreseeable future and beyond- as long as Paxson does not fall into the same trap that Mariotti has of wanting to win now just for the sake of getting into the post-season, instead of building a potential championship-winner.
So now that Paxson himself has pretty much taken the 3 Cs off the market, there's lesser deals rumored involving Marcus Fizer either going to the Clippers for Keyon Dooling/Melvin Ely, or in a package to Detroit for Corliss Williamson. While the idea of trading Marcus Fizer for Williamson (the rich man's Marcus Fizer) is interesting, his contract is too much for an undersized power forward who has few skills outside of scoring. I for one prefer the Clippers package.
Hawks/Blazers deal:
Rasheed Wallace was finally dealt today, going to the Atlanta with Wesley
Person for Shareef Abdur-Rahim, Theo Ratliff, and Dan Dickau. As like most
deals, this helps both teams, but I think is an absolute coup for the Hawks.
After their ill-fated "playoff guarantee" team centered around an all-star
frontcourt of Rahim, Ratliff and Glen Robinson, all 3 have been traded in one
year for players who have expired contracts this summer (Terrell Brandon,
acquired for Robinson, is expected to retire). Looking at
their salaries,
they'll have only 6 players under contract next year, and are now added to the
list of the Clippers, Nuggets, Jazz and Suns of teams with the means to go after
Kobe Bryant. Even if massive cap space can't lure a free agent, they can be
major players simply by taking other teams' expensive contracts back in trades.
From the Portland side, GM John Nash got exactly what he wanted, good character
guys who will help them extend their playoff streak. And all 3 contracts
acquired will expire after next season, which will make them very
tradeable assets again. Or they can simply wait and have them come off the books
(along with Dale Davis and Damon Stoudamire) next summer.
Whew...remember when trades were about talent? me neither.