We all looked forward to a fun season and have been rewarded with heartburn.  There are many things we need to improve, but we need to be smart.  We need to make moves not out our pain but smart moves that work in the long run.  We still have a good young core.  They may not be good enough this year, in this system but Deng, Gordon, TT and Hinrich are still young and in the right system could be useful.  We need to figure out if there is a role for Gray in our future.

Let's focus on the main problem - Ben Wallace.  He takes away precious minutes from our young players and his 15.5 mil consumes about 25% of our cap.  This results is minimizing flexibility to make changes.  BW does at times do a decent job on defense, but his lack of interest and striking offensive absence cannot be ignored.  For me his biggest sin is he takes a large chunk of minutes from Noah, TT and even Gray.  It is unlikely we turn the season around by either benching BW or being able to trade him.  However, not having BW play will provide opportunity to see where TT, Noah and Gray can or cannot help us over the next 2-3 years.  

It has been said that Wallace is not tradable because he is terrible and has a horrible contract.  This may be true.  Close to the deadline, borderline teams may become desperate and be willing to take him for a problem and expiring contract.  We need John Paxson to work his butt off looking for some deal that gets him off this team and give us some salary cap flexibility. Even if we cannot get rid of him we need to deal with the cancer causing the the team sickness which is Ben Wallace taking away minutes from young players and his terrible contract.  Freeing up his minutes may cause us to be worse in the short run, but in the long run we will better understand Noah, TT and even Gray's potential to be part of our future.