Sam Amick of the Sacramento Bee reports that the Kings are considering a trade involving Hornets big man Emeka Okafor.

A source with knowledge of the situation says the Kings are discussing a trade with New Orleans that would send Kenny Thomas to the Hornets and bring center Emeka Okafor to Sacramento.

The deal would be ideal for the Hornets, as Thomas’ expiring contract worth $8.7 million is just the kind of contract that would trim their enormous payroll. The question, of course, is whether the Kings see Okafor as a big man solution worth the five years and approximately $64 million left on his deal.

I don’t get the Hornets plan of attack for the last year or so. They have the best point guard in the NBA, yet instead of making a clear commitment to spend to build around him, they’re slashing salary again. The confusing thing is that they tried to slash salary last year when they negotiated a trade that sent Tyson Chandler to Oklahoma City, only the Thunder sent Chandler back after their doctors had a chance to look him over. Then they turned around this offseason and traded Chandler (who has a short, expensive contract) for Okafor (who has a long, expensive contract). So it looked like the Hornets were willing to make a long-term commitment to build a winner.

Now, after a 3-7 start that has Chris Paul sidelined for a few weeks with a sprained ankle, they’re ready to give Okafor away. What kind of signal does this send to Paul? He’s signed through 2011-12, but at what point does he become disgruntled? They’ve already traded away Chandler and fired Byron Scott, and now they’re looking to move a sure double-double guy in Okafor. He’s not worth his contract, but he’s still valuable, and if the Hornets want to get back to competitive, they could really use him manning the middle.

It’s not like jettisoning Okafor’s salary is going to give the Hornets any immediate salary cap space. They’re sitting at almost $72 M for next season and won’t have any flexibility until the summer of 2011. Paul is 24, so he has plenty of basketball left to play, but David West is 29, and by the time the Hornets have a chance to be competitive again, he might be 31 or 32 and on the decline.

This is a sad situation. The Hornets looked to be on the cusp of competing for a title a couple of seasons ago and now they’re starting a rebuilding process that looks like it’s going to take a while.

The Hornets have two All-Star caliber players (Paul and David West) and a pretty good center (Emeka Okafor), but not much else. They need a wing or two who can knock down shots and take the pressure off of Paul and West. Peja Stojakovic and Morris Peterson are both past their prime and Julian Wright is a fine complementary player, but he’s not a shot-maker. Stephen Jackson and Rip Hamilton are reportedly available, and they’d both be a great fit in New Orleans if the Hornets are willing to take on some long-term salary to try to make a run this season.

I don’t know how he did it, but Chad Ford convinced 15 NBA GMs/executives to rank the top 13 point guards in the draft. If I were running a team and he asked me to do this, I would have told him to go jump off a cliff. (Or I’d have my secretary rank the players by how cute she thinks they are and pass that off as my list.)

Anyway, here are the rankings, along with an average ranking. Ford’s column has a lot more detail on each player.

1. Ricky Rubio (avg 1.9)
2. Stephen Curry (2.4)
3. Jonny Flynn (3.0)
4. Jrue Holiday (3.8)
5. Tyreke Evans (4.5)
6. Jeff Teague (6.5)
7. Brandon Jennings (6.8)
8. Eric Maynor (8.0)
9. Ty Lawson (9.5)
10. Patrick Mills (10.0)
11. Darren Collison (11.0)
12. Nick Calathes (12.0)
13. Toney Douglas (12.5)

I’m surprised that Stephen Curry moved up so much. Prior to the combine, there were still some who questioned whether or not he was even a first round talent. But apparently he put those concerns to rest. Besides, if you can shoot the ball like he can (and aren’t a complete stiff in other areas of the game), there’s a place for you in the NBA.

Brandon Jennings is hurting himself by skipping the combine and the Reebok Eurocamp. He’s going to need to go head to head with some of these players if he wants to stick in the lottery. Conversely, Jonny Flynn is impressing in his interviews and teams are happy to see that he measures over six-foot in shoes. He’s basically the same size as Chris Paul. So is Ty Lawson, but he continues to fall. I still think whoever gets him in the mid- or late-first round is going to have a starter-caliber point guard in a couple of seasons.

Florida’s Nick Calathes raised a few eyebrows when he decided to sign a three-year deal with Greek team Panathinaikos, but since he already has dual citizenship and a closer look at the contract reveals that he’d need to go in the lottery to match the financial windfall he’s going to enjoy overseas, it’s probably a good decision for the young man.

In the mock drafts that I’ve seen, Spaniard Ricky Rubio is the consensus #2 or #3 pick in this year’s NBA Draft. I saw him play a couple of times in last summer’s Olympics and I thought that he would make a solid NBA point guard, but I didn’t see the same things that the scouts are apparently seeing. TrueHoop’s Henry Abbott wrote a nice piece about how much potential Rubio has, and how it needs to be cultivated, not rushed to market.

At the lottery, everybody said the same admiring things about his feel for the game, handle, vision, leadership … but sometimes these ideas leap from mind to mind without ever touching ground. I found myself looking around the room and wondering: How much have you even seen Rubio play? What kind of vetting has he had?

Ricky Rubio will turn 19 in October. He has missed all kinds of games with injuries. He has played his entire early career in Spain. Almost everyone who makes the big decisions for NBA teams lives in the U.S. He has not done draft workouts.

That pretty much sums up my concerns about the kid.

Throw in the fact that he has a pretty suspect (but apparently improving) jumper, and the Steve Nash/Pete Maravich comparisons are very premature. Nash is one of the best pure shooters in the league and it’s that ability that pulls his defender out and allows him to beat people on the dribble. The Maravich comparison is more about body type than it is about how the two players play — Maravich was a scorer first and a passer second. Rubio is the opposite.

It’s tough to gauge Rubio’s future without knowing how much his shot will improve; in my experience, you can either shoot the ball or you can’t, and it’s tough to turn an average or poor shooter into a great or good shooter. It takes a TON of practice.

Now, the positives…

When Rubio has the ball, something sizzling and unexpected could happen at any time, and it often does. He not only makes passes that make you say “wow” but he also does everything imaginable to cleverly get teammates open and then deliver them the ball. He catches defenders snoozing. He beats his man and gets into the paint, and once he gets there, the ball could be going one-handed to the far corner, gently lobbed at the rim for the big man, shoveled at the last instant to an open teammate, or anything else.

Also worth noting from those highlights: The Joventut big men running their asses off. They know they’ll get the ball, thanks to Rubio. Getting big men out on the break is an important skill. Sometimes 18-year-old prospects don’t have any skills that are truly NBA ready. Not a problem here. He has elite ideas about what to do with the ball.

He also has an elite ability to think through the game when he does not have the ball. Thanks to extraordinary anticipation, he’s a persistent threat to pick off the ball on defense … he’s constantly out-thinking savvy opponents, closing angles, cutting off passing lanes, and anticipating what could be coming. He has uncanny ability to strip the ball without fouling.

Abbott goes on to say that Rubio is just an OK athlete and that whatever team that drafts him needs to exercise patience (i.e. he’s not ready to start right away and be successful). It sounds like he needs to land with a team that will allow him to come off the bench while he learns the intricacies of the NBA game. Unfortunately, when looking at the draft order, other than the Clippers at #1 and the Wizards at #5, there isn’t a team with an established point guard picking in the top six.

Here is what Chris Paul said about playing against Rubio in the Olympics:

“When I met Ricky on the court, I knew he had very long arms and I couldn’t play much with the ball or he would steal it from me. He is also very unselfish, he has great passing skills. He is like me, we don’t try to score, and we try to find the open man to help the team.”

Keep in mind that was at a joint appearance in Barcelona, so Paul might have been massaging his scouting report a bit since Rubio was sitting right next to him. Paul has also called Rubio “unbelievable,” so it’s clear that he does admire the kid.

…when I read a Bill Simmons mailbag.

Anyway, there was a really funny moment Thursday that could have only happened at a Lakers game. Near the end of a third-quarter timeout, the camera caught Val Kilmer and three of his chins on the JumboTron, punctuating the moment by playing “Danger Zone” by Kenny Loggins. You know, a “Top Gun” homage. He took a second or two to get the joke, then unleashed one of those “Very funny, you got me, just know that I’m on a lot of meds right now” smiles. And this would have been enjoyable on its own, but they cut to someone else in the stands. …

That’s right. …

Tom Cruise!

He caught on a little quicker and did the Tom Cruise Over-Laugh. And this would have been great on its own, but the Lakers pushed it to another level: They went split-screen with Kilmer and Cruise with “Danger Zone” still blasting. As far as I was concerned, this was the most emotional reunion in Lakers history. Cruise kept laughing; Kilmer looked mildly perturbed. (After all, he’s an actor, dammit! That was 23 years ago! He’s made a lot of movies since then!) At this point, I was praying they’d cut to Anthony Edwards in Section 312 but he wasn’t there.

Ha! Great one about Anthony Edwards sitting in the upper level.

Wouldn’t that make more sense than gutting the franchise like a fish (which they will), saddling [Chris] Paul with a terrible team and eventually pushing him to demand a trade? I can’t see any scenario in which Chris Paul is a happy New Orleans Hornet in two years. Which means he’ll find a better team. Sorry, N’Awlins. Over.

Not over. Chris Paul is signed through the 2012 season. The Hornets need to find a way to unload Peja Stojakovic’s contract, and it probably won’t happen until he’s in the final year of his deal in 2010-2011. They can either add a star-level player who has two or three more years on his deal (and his team wants Peja’s expiring contract instead) or they can wait until Stojakovic is off the books and reload. In the summer of 2011, David West will be 30, so he should still have three good years left.

It’s funny. Peja’s contract got the Hornets into this mess, but if New Orleans had continued to develop Julian Wright instead of signing James Posey for $6 million per season, they wouldn’t be a luxury tax team, and they wouldn’t be looking to give Tyson Chandler away.

A few readers e-mailed me after Barkley commented that Melo was the best “pure” scorer in the NBA (wondering what that meant), and my answer is this: It means Melo gets his points easier than anyone else does. There are six ways to score in a basketball game: Make 3-pointers, post up, beat guys off the dribble, score in transition, score in traffic and get to the line.

He forgot the offensive glass. And this guy thinks he’s qualified to be an NBA GM?

Maybe this will be part of my pitch to take over the Clippers: “If an outsider could turn Fiat around, an outsider could turn the Clippers around!”

Great. I want the Clippers to fire Dunleavy as much as the next guy, but not if it means 3,000 words from Simmons about why he should take over as GM.

The one fascinating thing about “Kobe Doin’ Work” was Kobe’s contrived interactions with his teammates; it’s like he was taking us for fools. Watch this, I’m going to talk Italian to Sasha Vujacic. And what’s funny was that his teammates all had a “Wait a second, he never talks to me!” look on their face as soon as he walked away. It was a massive miscalculation of the average NBA fan’s IQ, and digging even further, a blown chance to show people that he’s a ruthless competitor who demands the best from everyone around him.

I couldn’t agree more.

The difference in quality between pre-DUI Chuck [Barkley] and post-DUI Chuck has been jarring. In a good way. He even looks lively during TNT’s integrated commercial spots when he’s trying to seem excited about “X-Men.” And he was singing the praises of Orlando and Denver well before it became chic to do so. We’ve come a long way since the days when he was praising Dallas and Detroit for the Kidd/Iverson trades.

This made me think of that Charles Barkley T-Mobile video game commercial…

I love the skin tight black bodysuits. Classic.

Here’s a bonus one with Dwight Howard…

“I’m gonna try something fancy. Watch this.”

When discussing why Robert Horry is on a list of the players with the top overall winning percentages, Simmons made this comment…

Robert Horry’s career is going to be studied for months by John Hollinger’s perplexed great-great-great-great-grandchildren in the 2100s, and ultimately they’re going to throw their hands up, shake their heads and move on to a topic that actually makes sense.

It’s not that complicated. Horry was a solid role player who (a) could fit in anywhere (b) didn’t think he was better than he was (and never demanded an outrageous contract) and (c) was always in the right place at the right time. He played with the three greatest big men of recent memory in their primes: ‘92-’96 Hakeem Olajuwon (2 titles, 1 MVP), ‘96-’03 Shaq (3 titles, 1 MVP) and ‘03-’08 Tim Duncan (2 titles). A career 34% three-point shooter, Horry had the innate ability to hit shots in the clutch, and had plenty of opportunity with all of the double-teams that Olajuwon, Shaq and Duncan demanded over the years. Plus, he was a good defender, so he was always on the court in crunch time. Like I said — right place, right time.

That’s it.

We hear it all the time. NBA analysts call one point guard “pass-first” and another “shoot-first.” Or they say one guy is “turnover-prone” while another “takes care of the ball.” But really, what makes a player a “pass-first” point guard? How carefree must he be with the ball to be considered “turnover-prone”?

Taking an analytical approach to these questions, I decided to bust out an Excel spreadsheet and try to come up with some answers. Below you’ll see a graph that attempts to classify the top point guards in the league. But first, a little background…

I chose to categorize each player based on two stats. First, to determine if he’s “shoot-first” or “pass-first,” I calculated the shot-to-assist ratio for each player. The bigger the number, the more of a “shoot-first” mentality the player has. Second, to determine whether or not a player is “turnover-prone,” I calculated each player’s assist-to-turnover ratio. I thought about using turnovers per 48 minutes, but I like the idea of including assists so that playmakers are rewarded for the positive as well as the negative. Next, I calculated each player’s Efficiency Per Minute (EPM) to see if there is any correlation between these other statistics and the overall efficiency of the player in question.

The last step was to plot each player based on the two ratios. The graph is a little small, but if you click it, it will take you to a larger version.

Each player is indicated by a separate plot point with his name next to it. (Duh.) The blue diamonds represent the top 10 point guards in terms of EPM. One point guard was chosen per team. Usually, I went with the player that got the most starts at the position.

The further the player is to the right on the (horizontal) x-axis the higher his shot-to-assist ratio and the more of a “shoot-first” mentality he has. Conversely, the further the player is to the left, the more of a “pass-first” point guard he is.

On the (vertical) y-axis, the further the player is towards the top, the better job he does of taking care of the ball (in comparison to the number of assists he posts). Players towards the bottom of the axis have poor assist-to-turnover ratios.

Each axis is set at the average of the 30 players included in the study. The shot-to-assist ratio average is 2.12, while the average assist-to-turnover ratio is 2.66.

A few interesting things to note…

As a whole, the data set takes on a downward slope. Intuitively, this makes sense. “Shoot-first” point guards are generally that way because that is their strength – scoring the ball. They are generally not as adept at being in the playmaker role, so they won’t have a good assist-to-turnover ratio. Conversely, players that are “pass-first” are that way because playmaking is their specialty. They handle the ball well and have good vision.

The sweet spot is in the second (top-left) quadrant. Seven of the top EPM performers at the position – Jose Calderon, Jason Kidd, Chris Paul, Rajon Rondo, Deron Williams, Steve Nash and Chauncey Billups – all have a better-than-average assist-to-turnover ratio and a “pass-first” menality. The other three top 10 EPM performers – Jameer Nelson, Tony Parker and Devin Harris – are reasonably close to that top-left quadrant. The 10 point guards in the top-left quadrant play for teams that had a combined record of 471-349 (.574) in the regular season and seven of those teams made the playoffs. These facts are telling.

Jameer Nelson and Tony Parker aren’t in the ideal quadrant, but they are a good fit for their teams. Think about it – Nelson and Parker play with two of the best big men in the game in Dwight Howard and Tim Duncan. Point guards that play with a great big man will find that assists are a little tougher to come by. Typically, when someone feeds Howard or Duncan, they take their time in the post before they make their move, so the player that passed them the ball doesn’t necessarily get the assist. Plus, anyone can feed the post – it doesn’t have to be the point guard. Think about those seven players in the top-left quadrant for a moment. For the most part, they play with jump shooters (and are therefore more likely to rack up assists).

The Magic are built in the Hakeem Olajuwon-era Rockets mold. They have a dominant big man and the idea is to surround him with great jumpshooters to keep defenses honest. Conversely, Parker oftentimes takes advantage of the amount of attention that defenses pay to Duncan to get to the rim. When he attacks the hole, he’s trying to score and will only pass if the defense forces him to.

Finally, it’s no coincidence that Nelson and Parker are two of the most efficient scorers in this study. In terms of FG%, Parker is first and Nelson is tied for third. Both players shoot better than 50% from the field, so it makes sense that they’d have a “shoot-first” mentality.

Ramon Sessions is a keeper. Luke Ridnour got more starts than Sessions, but I like Sessions more and the Bucks have to decide whether or not to sign the up-and-coming point guard to an extension this summer. Here’s my pitch: He has the #11 EPM (just behind Chauncey Billups) and is on the verge of becoming a very good point guard. His Player Efficiency Rating (PER) of 17.65 is #13 amongst qualified PGs. Throw in the fact that the NBA is becoming increasingly dependent on good point guard play, and the 23-year-old looks like a great (and relatively cheap) prospect. GM John Hammond has to find a way to keep this kid.

Baron Davis isn’t a “shoot-first” point guard?!? Apparently not. His career shot-to-assist ratio is 2.05, so even when we consider his entire body of work, he’s still leans “pass-first.” This is underlined by his 2008-09 campaign, where he was even more “pass-first.”

Derrick Rose turns the ball over too much. I hadn’t yet looked at his numbers, but I could tell this about Rose just watching the Bulls/Celtics series. Every so often he throws a pass that might have made it in college, but isn’t going to make it in the NBA. Most rookie point guards struggle with this, so I’d assume that Rose will start to work his way into that top-left quadrant (or at least the top-right quadrant) in the next year or two. In fact, his assist-to-turnover ratio rose from 2.52 before the All-Star break to 2.56 after. I think he’ll eventually settle in somewhere near Nelson and Parker. He seems like more of a scorer than a pure playmaker, partly do to his incredible ability to finish at the rim.

Where would a healthy Gilbert Arenas fit in? Remember him? Agent Zero has only played 15 games in the last two years, so it’s not really fair to judge him based on those numbers. To get an idea of where he’d land, I calculated his ratios for the 2006-07 season. You’ll find him bunched with Jamal Crawford, Mo Williams, Randy Foye and Aaron Brooks in the bottom-right quadrant, which makes sense because those are all “shoot-first” point guards.

Is Mo Williams’ position on the chart due to his playing with LeBron? After plotting Arenas, it made me wonder about Mo. He was one of the top assist men in the league in his last year in Milwaukee. How does the 2007-08 Mo Williams compare with the 2008-09 version? It turns out that the ’07 version of Mo Williams is a lot like the ’08 Devin Harris, which makes sense considering that both players are very capable scorers and playmakers, but at heart are “shoot-first.”

CONCLUSION

I think the big thing to take away from this is that it’s generally better to have a “pass-first” point guard who takes care of the ball. However, if you have a dominant big man (or a superstar wing like LeBron or Kobe), a “shoot-first” point guard can be just as effective, especially if he can shoot it like Nelson or Williams, or get to the rim like Parker does.

Is there anything that I missed?

It was a disappointing season for Chris Paul and Co. as they were unceremoniously eliminated from the playoffs last night in Denver. After last season’s near-miss against the Spurs in the Western Conference semis, along with the addition of do-it-all forward James Posey, many pundits (including myself) thought that they might be the team best positioned to threaten the Lakers’ chances of a return trip to the Finals. But it was not to be.

According to John Hollinger’s PER, Chris Paul had an even better statistical season than last year, when he was in serious contention to become the league’s MVP. David West played his usual 21/9 ball as well.

So what happened?

1. Tyson Chandler wasn’t himself. He battled injuries all year and was even traded to Oklahoma City (and subsequently untraded due to the Thunder’s concerns about his foot). Here are his stats for the last three seasons:

‘06-’07: 9.5 ppg, 12.4 rpg, 1.8 bpg, 62% FG%
‘07-’08: 11.8 ppg, 11.8 rpg, 1.1 bpg, 62% FG%
‘08-’09: 8.8 ppg, 8.7 rpg, 1.2 bpg, 57% FG%

That may not seem like much of a fall off, but three points, three rebounds and a 5% decrease in field goal shooting certainly has an effect. It’s not Chandler’s fault that he had some nagging injuries, but that was part of the reason for the Hornets’ decline.

2. Peja Stojakovic went from average to bad. I’ve been railing on Peja’s game for the last few seasons, insisting that the trade that brought him over from Indiana was a bust and that his contract would ultimately put the franchise in a tough financial spot. Fast forward a couple of years and his PER dropped from a just-above-average 15.74 last season to a poor 12.54 this season. And it’s not like this guy is a lockdown defender whose value can’t be measured in statistics. He’s pretty bad defensively. He’s supposed to be a shooter that can space the court for Chris Paul’s drives, only he shot sub-40% from the field and sub-38% from long range.

Moreover, his salary runs another two seasons at the tune of $29.5 million, so he’s like an anchor hanging on the neck of the Hornets’ balance sheet. So much so that the Hornets were forced to (try to) trade one of the best defensive centers in the league in a straight up salary dump. What’s amazing is that Stojakovic played the third-most minutes (34.2) on the team, while promising second-year man, Julian Wright, is left to languish on the bench. Throw in Rasual Butler’s less-than-stellar PER (11.82), and you have a pair of very unproductive wings. (But least Butler can defend.) At some point, Byron Scott should have seen the writing on the wall and give Wright some of Peja’s minutes. Start Stojakovic and if he gets off to a hot start, great, if not, give Wright 20-25 minutes and see what he can do.

Unfortunately for the Hornets, Peja’s contract is unmovable at this point, so they’re just going to have to ride it out. Since they almost traded away Chandler, they don’t seem to be in a position to add any talent via the mid-level exception, so they are pretty much stuck with the roster they have. They have to hope that Chandler can get healthy (possible) and that Peja can rediscover his game (doubtful). Their best bet is to give Wright more minutes and hope that he can develop into a solid starter. That seems to be the only way that New Orleans can once again become a serious contender in the short term.