Why would we do that anyways? I thought you were going to propose we get back something more valuable than the expiring contracts we’re sending out. But Lafrentz and Harrington? Huh?

If we are sending out expiring contracts, we need to get back someone who can play with Rose. If not, we can just keep Gooden and Hughes and let them expire.

over at ESPN.com, the Knicks now have enough room under the cap to sign both LeBron and another all-league talent such as Dwyane Wade or Chris Bosh. If this is true, I don’t think they need more cap space.

They get just a minimal benefit here. I think to get the Blazers to bite you have to take Martell Webster or Travis Outlaw off their hands.

This will help us locate the final destinations for Hinrich or Nocioni this season and perhaps Luol Deng next season if we really aren’t getting anywhere with him and Rose together. Then we can take our 2010 pieces to identify facilitators that could use our pieces or give us more flexibility in return.

One club I’m liking is the Indiana Pacers. They’re in too deep with Mike Dunleavy and Troy Murphy and they have the Granger contract starting next season. They’re on the hook for almost 42 million from those three alone through at least 2011.

Would you do a B.Miller & M.Moore for L.Hughes & T.Thomas &A.Gray deal?
Kings take on $288,000 & both teams stay under LUXTAX.

The Blazers HAVE cap space… they don’t NEED cap space. It’s not as if 2009 is the killer free agent class everyone wants a part of, and the Blazers already have 20-30 million in cap space.

They could very well move Raef’s 12 million, but they ain’t using up a roster spot to accomplish the same thing or make a superfluous move. They are packed to the gills with players they wanna keep (really, Raef and Shavlick Randolph are the only players who don’t have that much value for their own play, and since Raef is a very good expiring deal, only Shavlick (who is decent, especially for a 15th man) isn’t someone they wanna keep. Roster spots are important to the Blazers).

They are also definitely not trading Joel Przybilla for cap space, when they wouldn’t even trade him for a better player— Joel’s backup play, solid defense, and top rebounding kinda helps the Blazers, more than adding to the already 20+ in 2009 cap space.

I’ll add this, since I don’t think most non-Blazer fans know this: Raef’s deal is maybe THE MOST attractive expiring contract in the league, but not only for its size— Raef had shoulder surgery right before the season started and has been relaxing on his farm in Iowa all year. After game 41, insurance picks up his salary. That means that whatever team trades for him, not only gets an expiring deal, they pay basically nothing on the contract because insurance picks it all up.

That means Raef’s expiring deal is more valuable than just future cap space for a team; not having to pay a 12 million dollar contract for half a season is very attractive for cost conscious teams (like the Suns, Bobcats, Bulls, anyone not named Knicks or Blazers).

That also means that Raef’s expiring deal will only be traded for sumthin’ good n’ useful for the now and future, not ‘just’ more cap space (when none more is needed) since Portland can let it expire and play with the cap space while enjoying actually saving Paul Allen some money themselves… there is no hurry to trade it to make sure they get ‘value’ for it, like other teams over the salary cap would want to do.

I’m sure Raef’s deal will be used in lotsa fan imagined trades, so everyone who loves to make awesome trades, remember that his contract is almost free after game 41!

On this, all depends!

Mortimer

Where did you get the idea that the Blazers are looking for cap room? We have the expiring contract of Raef LaFrentz as one of our major bargaining chips.

Outlaw/Webster will not be going out the door in order to offload LaFrentz, just to bring back another big contract like Jerome James and a player like Gooden?