Category: NBA (Page 439 of 595)

ESPN’s Mark Stein covered all sorts of topics in his “Vegas Chatter” column, but the thing that jumped out at me was this blurb about Dallas/Sacramento trade talk involving Ron Artest.

Yet the Kings continue to insist that the team that ultimately gets Artest will have to take Kenny Thomas’ contract as well. NBA front-office sources say the Mavericks were told several days ago, for example, that an offer of bruising power forward Brandon Bass, veteran swingman Jerry Stackhouse and $2 million to cover Stackhouse’s guarantee in the 2009-10 season would not be enough to reunite Artest with new Mavs coach Rick Carlisle. (Dallas has no interest in a Josh Howard-for-Artest swap in any incarnation.)

While the Kings just drafted Jason Thompson (who has looked promising in summer league play), they are still rather thin at power forward, and the possibility of adding Brandon Bass and his 15.95 PER has to be appealing. The Kings are likely trying to get a more established player and rid themselves of Kenny Thomas’ contract. Still, Bass is just 23 and played really well last season. He’s a former SEC Player of the Year, has a nice jumper and looks to be the real deal. If he were to get starter’s minutes he’d likely average about 15 points and eight boards. Did I mention that he was only 23? I think he’d make a nice addition to that Kevin Martin/Francisco Garcia core that the Kings are trying to build around.

If I’m Geoff Petrie, I’m thinking long and hard about this deal (though having to take on Jerry Stackhouse isn’t ideal).

The New Orleans Hornets signed 31 year-old James Posey to a four-year deal worth $25 million.

Because of future luxury-tax concerns, Boston was apparently reluctant to offer Posey, 31, more than a two- or three-year deal starting at the league’s mid-level exception (just under $5.6 million) in spite of Posey’s considerable contributions to the Celtics’ first championship since 1986.

Getting Posey would be a huge coup for the Hornets, who are coming off a breakthrough season and increasingly billed as a future power in the West with quality starters such as David West, Tyson Chandler and Peja Stojakovic surrounding face of the franchise Chris Paul.

In Posey, the Hornets have a good option to turn to when Stojakovic’s jumper isn’t falling. He can play either forward position and can knock down the three. I just hope the signing doesn’t hurt the development of Julian Wright.

Let’s see, how much is a seven-footer worth? Not much, you say? What if that seven-footer is a still-productive center and a former Defensive Player of the Year? What if he averaged at least 3.0 blocks per game in each of the last four seasons? How about a minimum of 11.6 rebounds per game over the last three? Did I mention his amazingly affordable contract (two years, $15.7 million)?

So, how much is he worth?

Well, the Nuggets have decided that Marcus Camby is worth the right to swap future second round picks.

WHAT?!?

That’s right, the Nuggets have traded Camby to the Clippers, and that’s all they got. There are trades that are head-scratchers and there are trades that are simply mind-boggling. Like the Pau Gasol trade earlier this season, this particular trade is the latter.

Camby is 34 and has a history of injury, but he only missed 15 games in the last two seasons and his last five seasons (all in Denver) have been the best of his career. The Clippers get terrific interior defense and rebounding, two areas that were hurt by Elton Brand’s debacle of a departure. They were flirting with the idea of using their newfound cap space on Josh Smith and Andre Iguodala (hoping they could make an offer that the Hawks or the Sixers would be reluctant to match), but instead they used that money on Camby.

The team says it plans to play Camby alongside up-and-comer Chris Kaman, and it’s going to be interesting to see just how that works. Camby does have a little range on his jumper, but he’s not a power forward type that’s going to be able to space the floor. One positive is that Camby’s contract runs out before the vaunted free agent class of 2010 hits the market, so the Clippers should be in position to spend some money in two years. Regardless, Camby’s arrival should make the Clippers competitive in the West, but they’re still not in any danger of playing deep into the playoffs. Brand’s departure ensures that.

As for the Nuggets, this is a straight salary dump that virtually guarantees that the team will be less competitive in the short term. It seems like Denver’s management finally realized that the ‘Melo/AI marriage wasn’t going to get them anywhere, so now they’re trying to trim salary in an effort to rebuild around their youngsters (‘Melo, J.R. Smith, Linas Kleiza, and maybe Nene). They should have garnered more for Camby, but they didn’t want to take on any salary, so this might have been the best that they could do.

When asked to comment, head coach George Karl said the following…

“I’m not going to talk philosophically about what’s going on and why we did it,” Karl said. “I think all of us, Marcus and all the coaches, we’re going to have to think about it a little bit. It was a situation where I know that Marcus was a big part of our success. Any time you lose a player like Marcus, you’re going to have a tough time filling that void.”

I think if I were coaching the Nuggets and I just lost one of the few guys on the roster that had any real interest in playing defense, I’d be pretty ticked too. Karl sees the writing on the wall just like we do. His time in Denver looks like it’s winding down.

I hate to say I told you so, but I told Ron Artest to opt out.

Of course, I was thinking that Artest would have his pick of five-year, mid-level offers and he’d be able to play deep into the postseason for the rest of his career. But he decided to play out his contract because he thought he was in the Kings’ long-term plans. Now that he knows that he’s not, he wants to be traded.

There is the ongoing rumor of the Lakers giving up Lamar Odom, but lately the rumblings are that the Lakers aren’t so sure they want to give up Odom for Artest. The Heat have come up as a possibility (with Shawn Marion as trade bait), and Miami would probably be a good fit.

The good news is that Artest has decided to act as his own agent, much to the surprise of his actual agent, so at the very least this should be entertaining. The downside is that the crazier he acts, the less interest he’ll draw. It’s a double-edged sword, I’m afraid.