Over on Hornets247, Michael McNamara argues that trading Chris Paul away would mean that New Orleans is adopting the philosophy of the Milwaukee Bucks, which just doesn’t work for him.

First off, it is necessary to acknowledge your own personal philosophy with regard to what qualifies as success in the NBA. Personally, I am an all or nothing guy and believe in only three directions: being a legitimate championship contender, building toward being a legit contender, and completely rebuilding. I look at a team like the Milwaukee Bucks, for instance, and see a direction that I would never take personally. They have a nice team that is built to make the playoffs for the next five to seven years, but have absolutely zero chance of ever winning an NBA title. Zero. A squad full of good, but not great pieces that play hard every night but will just not have enough talent to get through four quality teams come playoff time.

Now for some, they might be happy with Milwaukee’s future and consider their franchise a success considering the market they are in and the resources they have to work with.

As an all or nothing guy I can think of scenarios that are far worse than CP3 leaving in two years. I can imagine other players following Paul’s lead if we trade him out of fear. How do you say no to the next guy who feels entitled when you just appeased Chris Paul’s trade demands? I can imagine becoming a perennial playoff team terrified to blow up the roster; a team that overpays their own players just to remain slightly above average. (I am looking at you Atlanta). I can imagine an asylum run by the players, a front office with no control, and a coach who feels powerless. All of these things happen if you let fear of the future dictate the present. All of these things are worse case scenarios for me, but again it all depends on your definition of success.

With CP3 on the squad I know there is a chance. I know tha t with Kobe slowly declining, Howard not improving offensively, and Wade always one fall away from a serious injury that CP3 can be a top two player in this league if he puts it all together and stays healthy. I know that in at least seventy games per year the Hornets will have the best player on the floor and in the NBA that means more than it does in any other team sport. I know that if management makes the right moves and ownership is willing to pay the luxury tax that the Hornets at least have a shot. The same cannot be said for twenty to twenty five teams in this league.

As a Bucks fan, using the franchise’s current state/direction as a reason not to follow its philosophy is puzzling.

Milwaukee is a small market team in a cold-weather city in the Midwest. It is often ranked by NBA players as the least desirable place to play, even though when people stay for a few years they tend to warm up to the place. Given the circumstances, the Bucks are never going to be in a position to land a big name free agent unless the supporting cast gets so good that the player in question sees the Bucks as his best opportunity to win a title. It’s true — the Bucks would probably need a Reggie White-type signing to become a championship contender. (Football fans over 30 know what I mean.)

The author says that the Bucks have no chance to win a title with their current game plan, but GM John Hammond came from Detroit, where they won a championship a few years ago with very much the same philosophy. They had a group of star-less, yet talented castoffs and a defensive-minded coach to lead them all in the same direction. In the Finals, they beat a more talented (and a far more disjointed) Laker team.

Hammond knows the Bucks are never going to go into the season as championship favorites, but if the chemistry remains and Brandon Jennings develops, they could perhaps become the third- or fourth-best team in the East. The author looks at this like a death sentence, but what it really means is that the Bucks are an injury or two away from a Finals appearance.

(It’s really no different than the philosophy executed in small market San Antonio, only the Spurs have Tim Duncan, Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili to build around instead of Andrew Bogut and Brandon Jennings. The Spurs have a better core because they had the #1 pick in the right draft and found a couple of stars later on in subsequent drafts.)

How does this relate to Chris Paul? If the Hornets elect to trade him and get a few prospects in return, they’ll be going the route of the Milwaukee Bucks, at best. If they hold onto him, he’s likely to only grow more disgruntled unless the franchise is quickly able to turn things around and suddenly becomes willing to spend. The Hornets need a Pau Gasol-type trade to keep Paul happy, and those kinds of deals don’t happen every season. Even if they did, the Hornets don’t spend like the Lakers, and New Orleans is not L.A., so retaining the talent would be difficult.

Considering the Hornets’ summer moves (lack of a free agent signing, trading away the #11 pick), the writing is on the wall. Do Hornets fans want to hold out hope that the franchise can quickly transform its declining roster around a pouting Paul, or roll the dice on players with upside like Anthony Randolph and Danilo Gallinari, along with a ton of cap space?

As for Paul, look at it this way — if a girl doesn’t want to stay with you, why would you want her to stay? By the time she tells you she wants to break up, she has already checked out. No amount of convincing will work, so what’s the point? Why not move on and give yourself the best chance to meet a new girl?

When the Bucks swung a trade for Corey Maggette, most pundits thought it was the end of John Salmons’ tenure in Milwaukee, but the two sides have agreed to a five-year deal.

The Milwaukee Bucks have verbally agreed to a five-year, $39 million deal with free-agent guard John Salmons, according to league sources. Sources say that the last year of the deal is only partially guaranteed.

Salmons is 30, so the length of the contract is reasonable, especially since the fifth year is only partially guaranteed.

Less than $8 million a year is a pretty good deal for a player who averaged 20-3-3 in 30 games as a Buck, and helped to spearhead a late-season surge that secured a playoff spot. Against the Hawks, he pretty much offset Joe Johnson, who is slated to make about twice as much if he accepts Atlanta’s max offer.

The Bucks suddenly have a crowd of talented scorers on the wing. With Salmons, Maggette, Carlos Delfino and the newly acquired Chris Douglas-Roberts, Scott Skiles has plenty of options. All four players can play either shooting guard or small forward, and if Maggette or Douglas-Roberts do not play hard enough defensively, Skiles will have another player to turn to.

GM John Hammond also negotiated a five-year deal worth $32 million with Drew Gooden. The Bucks are his ninth team in nine seasons, which isn’t a good sign. But John Hollinger thinks Gooden is worth the money, though some of his defensive numbers at 82games are a little worrisome. Hopefully, Skiles can coax some better play out of him. If so, he brings a lot to the table offensively and on the glass, and could start for the Bucks at power forward.

The two long-term contracts take the Bucks out of the running for a max free agent next summer, unless the salary cap takes an unexpected jump to $61 million.

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The Golden State Warriors have traded Corey Maggette to the Bucks for Dan Gadzuric and Charlie Bell.

Seeking a scoring threat and willing to take on a significant contract, the Milwaukee Bucks acquired forward Corey Maggette in a trade with the Golden State Warriors on Tuesday.

The Bucks also got a second-round draft pick from the Warriors, giving up guard Charlie Bell and center Dan Gadzuric in return.

Maggette has three years and $30.8 million remaining on his contract, but this trade will actually save the Bucks $1.5 million next season because they are now rid of the contracts of Gadzuric (one year, $7.2 million) and Charlie Bell (two years, $7.9 million). The deal will eat up $6.2 million in cap space next summer, leaving the Bucks with a payroll of about $31 million heading into the 2011-12 season.

So, from a salary cap standpoint, it’s not quite as bad as it might seem. Maggette is a career 17-5-2 player and is one of the best in the league at getting to the line. He has averaged at least 7.9 free throw attempts in each of the last seven seasons.

The two strikes against Maggette is his injury history and his commitment (or lack thereof) on the defensive end. The Bucks can’t do anything about the first one, but Scott Skiles will demand that he play defense, or he won’t get minutes.

From a defensive mindset, I can’t imagine going from Don Nelson to Scott Skiles. That’s like night and day. Maggette is in for a wake up call on the defensive end.

The Bucks also acquired Chris Douglas-Roberts from the New Jersey Nets.

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Hammond received 12 (of 30) first place votes. OKC’s Sam Presti finished second with nine votes.

Here’s a list of the major (and minor) moves that Hammond made over the last year or so:

- Traded forward Richard Jefferson to the San Antonio Spurs for forwards Bruce Bowen and Kurt Thomas and center Fabricio Oberto.

- Selected guards Brandon Jennings (10th overall pick) and Jodie Meeks (41st overall pick).

- Signed forward Ersan Ilyasova.

- Traded forward Amir Johnson and guard Sonny Weems to the Toronto Raptors for guards Carlos Delfino and Roko Ukic.

- Signed guard Jerry Stackhouse.

- Traded forwards Hakim Warrick and Joe Alexander to the Chicago Bulls
for guard John Salmons and 2011 and 2012 second-round picks.

Hammond acquired/drafted three starters — Jennings, Salmons, Delfino — and three rotation players — Ilyasova, Thomas, Stackhouse — in the span of eight months that led to a 46-36 record and the #6 playoff spot in the Eastern Conference. He also shed Richard Jefferson’s contract, which got the Bucks out of luxury cap terrority.

Milwaukee projects to have about $32-$35 million in cap space next summer; they may elect to use a portion of that to re-sign John Salmons, who has played great since coming over from Chicago at the trade deadline.

Pacman Jonesin’ has a pretty good list of the ten worst general managers in the NBA. To his credit, the author — “Drew D” — revisited his list to see how the GMs have fared since he first wrote it.

For the most part, these are easy targets, but the author is eating some crow for including Sam Presti (at #10) and John Hammond (at #4), whom are both in the running for this season’s Executive of the Year award.


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Bill Simmons did a running diary of the Hawks/Bucks and Thunder/Spurs games last night. Here’s what he had to say about Bucks GM John Hammond…

9:30: Johnson posts up Salmons for two, followed by Carlos Delfino (21 points) draining a 3. Bucks GM John Hammond made three great moves in the past year: The Salmons trade; gambling on Brandon Jennings at No. 10; and signing Delfino for nothing last summer. (Not only does Delfino fill up the stat sheet, play both swing spots and give you solid D, but he has a giant tattoo of a lizard on his left shoulder that looks cool in HD. There’s a lot to like.) Meanwhile, Joe Dumars ran the Pistons into the ground in the 18 months after Hammond bolted Detroit for Milwaukee. Were the two events related? Hmmmmmm.

Hammond also signed Ersan Ilyasova, who first played for the Bucks during a rough 2006-07 season when he was just 19. After a couple of years in Spain, Hammond brought him back and he has played well, averaging 10-6, 44% FG%, 35% 3PT, and playing hard-nosed defense. The signing made Richard Jefferson expendable, so Hammond traded him to the Spurs and ended up with Amir Johnson (from Detroit), whom he shipped to Toronto for Delfino, who is averaging 11-5-3 and is shooting 37% from long range, while playing tough defense on opposing wings.

I criticized the Jefferson trade at the time because I didn’t think that the Bucks got enough for him, but it turns out that with Ilyasova and Delfino, they did. Plus they’ll have significant cap space in the summer of 2011 with Jefferson and Michael Redd off the books. At that point, they’ll have six players under contract — Andrew Bogut, Brandon Jennings, Ilyasova, Delfino, Luc Mbah a Moute and Charlie Bell — and $25 million or more to spend. That’s a nice little nucleus, especially if they can keep Salmons at a reasonable price.

I also thought Hammond should have retained Ramon Sessions, but with Ridnour playing pretty well, he was expendable.

Hammond got off to a rough start in his first draft where he took Joe Alexander at #8, passing on Brook Lopez, Anthony Randolph, D.J. Augustin, Jerryd Bayless and Marreese Speights in the process. Passing on Lopez is somewhat understandable if you’re drafting for need (with Bogut already on the roster), but the team’s future would be even brighter if they had a forward like Randolph or Speights on the roster.

Regardless, Hammond bounced back with the Jennings pick and has made a number of savvy moves to get the Bucks to where they are now. Is Milwaukee a threat to make a Finals appearance? No, but the Bradley Center is hosting some good basketball now and to fans in Milwaukee, that’s all that matters. Hammond seems to understand how to manage a small-market team and has put the franchise in a good position for years to come. That’s all you can ask for out of your general manager.

I’m not sure that this is what I wanted to hear, but Bucks GM John Hammond says he’s going to be careful with the payroll this summer.

The team’s financial discipline will affect the future and, more specifically, restricted free agents Charlie Villanueva and Ramon Sessions, and possibly European player Ersan Ilyasova. It will affect whom the Bucks select in the draft and whether they will be able to sign a free agent this summer, which right now appears highly unlikely.

The upside, though, is that if the Bucks are able to maintain that discipline now, as difficult as it might be, it will afford them the flexibility in a year or two to make some major moves and deal from a position of power rather than with their backs against the wall.

“We need to have discipline moving forward,” said Hammond. “That means that we need to have discipline from the financial side of our decisions. We are a team that is teetering at the (luxury) tax and for us to change our roster and to move the organization in a direction which we feel that we would want to go, we’re going to need some financial flexibility. And in order to get to that position, we have to have discipline here initially.”

In order to maintain the rights to Villanueva, the Bucks will have to present him with a qualifying offer (determined by a formula based on the player’s previous salary and where he was drafted) of $4.5 million. Unless the luxury tax turns out to be higher than anticipated, paying Villanueva that kind of money would take the Bucks into tax territory, which means the Bucks would not make him a qualifying offer. Villanueva would then become an unrestricted free agent and would be able to go to any team with no compensation to the Bucks.

That is where the financial discipline would enter in.

Last season, Villanueva was an asset at the $3.4 million that he was paid. But would he remain an asset at a $4.5 million salary – or even higher, if another team gave him an offer sheet that exceeded that figure – especially if it meant the Bucks would be paying the tax?

The same can be said for Sessions, who was an asset last season at a $712,000 salary. But would he remain an asset if another team offered him a multi-million dollar offer sheet that the Bucks would have to match to keep him?

I have no problem if the Bucks decide to let Villanueva walk. It would be nice to get something in return, but I understand if financial constraints force the team to pass on making him the qualifying offer to retain his rights.

Sessions is another matter. He averaged 12.4 points and 5.7 assists in 27.5 minutes of playing time this season. In 38 games as a starter, he averaged 15.2 points and 7.5 assists in 33.8 minutes of PT. His PER (17.65) is #13 amongst point guards and the fifth-best amongst point guards under the age of 26. His +/- numbers are the best on the team for anyone who played more than 1200 minutes. He has a knack for getting to the rim, which is a skill that has become more and more important since rule changes have reduced the amount of contact defenders can deliver on the perimeter. Since Michael Redd is more of a spot up shooter, Sessions is a good complement.

In short, the Bucks would be nuts to let him go. He’s still flying under the radar, so Milwaukee could probably lock him up for 4-5 years at $3-$4 million per season. If he continues on his current career trajectory, the Bucks could have a top 10 point guard in the next season or two at a very reasonable price.

Offseason Movement: New GM John Hammond was busy this summer wheeling and dealing. Two starters from last season are gone. The Bucks traded Mo Williams to Cleveland in a three-way deal that brought Luke Ridnour from Seattle/OKC. Williams was more of a scorer, while Ridnour is definitely a pass-first point guard. The team also traded Yi Jianlian (and Bobby Simmons) to the Nets for Richard Jefferson. This move implies that the team is in “win now” mode, which makes sense given the roster.
Keep Your Eye On: Charlie Villanueva
Everyone thought that Charlie V would be one of the first Bucks to go once Hammond took over, but the team dealt Yi instead and they’re expecting V to take over at power forward. In the 31 games he started last season, he averaged 15/8, so if he can play enough defense to make new coach Scott Skiles happy, he could be in for a big year. The Bucks sure need him to break out, and there’s a good bet that he will, especially if he takes the ball to the hole more.
The Big Question: Can Scott Skiles whip this team into shape?
For the last several years, the Bucks have lacked a defensive mindset and toughness. There’s definitely enough talent to compete; a starting five of Ridnour, Michael Redd, Jefferson, Villanueva and Bogut makes for a good young core of skilled offensive players. If Skiles can get them to increase their effort on defense, the team should make a jump in the standings. It’s no sure thing that all the players will buy in; it’s just as likely that the Bucks will be looking at a losing record two months in and Skiles will have a revolt on his hands.
Outlook: Encouraging. The addition of Jefferson is a huge upgrade at small forward, which has been a weak spot for the last two seasons. The loss of Yi is a loss of potential only, as Villanueva should be able to produce better numbers from that position. Assuming good play from Redd and continued growth from Bogut, the Bucks are one of the darkhorses in the East. If Ridnour helps the team meld into a single cohesive unit offensively and Skiles can get them into the middle of the pack defensively, then the Bucks will be in business.