Funny stuff… unless you’re a Cavs fan.
Tag: 2010 NBA free agents (Page 13 of 54)
After (justifiably) nickel-and-diming Amare Stoudemire, and watching him sign with the Knicks, the Suns are reportedly about to trade for Hedo Turkoglu and Josh Childress in two separate deals.
The Suns, according to the Republic, have agreed to send guard Leandro Barbosa and forward Dwayne Jones to the Raptors for Turkoglu, who badly wants a move after a rough first season with Atlanta.
In the second deal, Phoenix will acquire Childress in a sign-and-trade with the Hawks, who still hold Childress’ rights after the restricted free agent spent the last two seasons in Greece. The Republic reported that Childress has agreed to a five-year, $34 million contract with the Suns, who will use a portion of the trade exception created in Friday’s Stoudemire sign-and-trade with New York to absorb Childress’ contract.
The Suns will save about $7 million per season for the next two years by trading away Barbosa, but they’re committing almost $78 million in new money to Turkoglu and Childress, for a net of $64 million. Stoudemire signed for five years and $100 million.
I like Childress a lot, especially in this offense, but trading for Turkoglu? Really? Wouldn’t it be better to hold on to Stoudemire than to ask a 31-year-old small forward to play power forward?
Granted, the Suns options are pretty slim now that the top free agents have already signed, but Amare signed early, so they had time to make a run at Carlos Boozer or David Lee and were either unable or unwilling to land either player.
Brian Windhorst of the Cleveland Plain-Dealer wrote an excellent blow-by-blow account of how the Miami Heat managed to convince LeBron James and Chris Bosh to come to South Florida to team up with Dwyane Wade.
Riley really put the plan into action last November. During a Cavs visit to Miami, Riley arranged a get together with Michael Jordan and James. Jordan, who was in town to do some Nike work with Wade, at the time did not own a majority of the Bobcats.
During the meeting, Riley talked to James about how more modern players should pay homage to Jordan. Riley always had led this effort, retiring Jordan’s No. 23 in the rafters at AmericanAirlines Arena even though Jordan never played in Miami.
The Cavs knew about it, and while it seemed like it could be classic tampering, they decided not to make an issue of it — mostly because the meeting technically wasn’t about free agency.
After the game, and after seeing Jordan and Riley sitting together courtside, James made an emotional statement on the court that he was going to ditch jersey No. 23 out of respect to Jordan. In fact, he felt all players should stop wearing No. 23.
It was controversial and got headlines. Riley probably didn’t care so much about the statement but how his conversation obviously influenced James.
That was a key moment for Riley, but the entire article is worth a read.
Now that the top 10 NBA free agents have made up their minds, let’s check in with my list of ‘sure-to-be-wrong’ predictions and see how I fared.
1. Dwyane Wade will re-sign with the Heat.
Check.
2. Chris Bosh will also sign with Miami.
Check.
3. LeBron and Carlos Boozer will sign with Chicago.
I didn’t think that LeBron would join what many consider to be ‘Wade’s Team’ and the Bulls gave him the next-best chance to win a championship, especially if Boozer landed there as well. The Bulls were wise to grab Boozer, who is a very nice fit alongside Joakim Noah.
4. Joe Johnson will sign with the Clippers.
I bought into the report that Johnson was in L.A. leading up to free agency and that he had a good relationship with the Clippers’ GM. The Hawks shocked the league when they offered him a six-year max contract and methinks they’ll be regretting it in 2-3 years. Who would have thought that when everything was said and done, that Joe Johnson would get the biggest contract of this free agent class?
5. Stoudemire will land in the Big Apple.
…”the Knicks will be sure to throw gobs of money to save face after pretty much striking out on the other top free agents.” Yeah, that’s pretty much what happened, though the Knicks were proactive and signed Stoudemire before being shunned by LeBron and Wade. And Amare was happy to lap up the dough after the Suns wanted to negotiate a deal that included incentives related to his health.
6. The Knicks will re-sign David Lee.
Donnie Walsh elected to conserve most of his cap space so that the Knicks can be a player in next summer’s free agency, plus the Lee-for-Randolph trade gives the Knicks a good (and cheap) up-and-coming power forward to replace Lee.
7. The Knicks will trade Eddy Curry for Gilbert Arenas.
This could still happen, but it looks like it won’t, at least not now. The Lee trade signals that the Knicks are going to be careful with their cap space, and trading for Arenas would be a huge risk.
8. The Grizzlies will match a max offer for Rudy Gay.
Technically, this prediction wasn’t correct. The Grizzlies once again raised eyebrows around the league by signing Gay to a max contract without letting the market set his price.
9. Dirk Nowitzki and Paul Pierce re-sign with the Mavs and C’s, respectively.
There were pundits out there that actually thought that Pierce could land with the Nets and that Nowitzki would join LeBron in Chicago, but Boston and Dallas made sure these players stayed put.
Overall, I didn’t do too badly, did I?
Now that the Miami Thrice is locked up for the next six years — well, for four years at least — it’s time for Pat Riley, the greatest general manager in the history of time, to fill out his roster.
Larry Coon, who manages the excellent NBA Salary Cap FAQ, wrote a piece for ESPN about how Riley can proceed with filling out the rest of the roster.
Sources told ESPN.com that James and Bosh signed for $14.5 million and Wade $14 million, leaving the Heat with nearly $8.3 million to spend.
One persistent rumor has the Heat using some of their leftover cap room to add sharpshooting Mike Miller to the lineup, and Miller is reportedly close to agreeing with the team on a deal totaling $25 million over five years — which would start at around $4.3 million. While he is a natural small forward (the same position James plays), Miller’s skill set would complement those of LeBron, Bosh and Wade, and there would be several ways of slotting him into the lineup. In addition to using Miller as James’ backup for the 8-12 minutes James is off the floor, coach Erik Spoelstra could play either Wade or James at point guard and put Miller at the vacated position.
Once Miller is on board the team would have just $4 million remaining to spend on free agents. It is possible Riley will try to use this money to persuade forward Udonis Haslem to return to the team. Since the Heat are without their own midlevel and biannual exceptions (sacrificed as part of the process to create cap room), the team would then be limited to offering players only minimum-salary contracts. Riley will have to sell some players on the idea of accepting the minimum in order to be a part of history. In return for their sacrifice the Heat could offer big minutes (including one or perhaps two starting roles), the chance to be part of a media phenomenon and a legitimate shot at the title.
What sort of player would be swayed by such a pitch? The likely candidate is an older veteran who has already banked his nest egg, and is now looking for a ring before he retires.
Coon goes on to mention Shaq, Earl Watson, James Jones and Raja Bell as possible targets for Riley. In my initial piece about how things would work in Miami, I listed the following players:
The list includes, but it is not limited to: Joe Smith, Kurt Thomas, Theo Ratliff, Brad Miller, Rafer Alston, Jerry Stackhouse, Juwan Howard, Eddie House and Matt Bonner.
The Heat could also target Brian Scalabrine, just for comedy’s sake.
It would be another coup if Riley is able to acquire Miller and convince Haslem to stick around at $4 million per season. Along with Chalmers (and possibly Joel Anthony), that would give the Heat a six- or seven-player rotation, and they would just need 2-3 more solid veterans (Derek Fisher, anyone?) to round out the bench.
In other words, this is not going to be as tough as some of the pundits seem to think it will be.
If you sign Wade, Bosh and LeBron, the vets will come.
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