Trade Deadline Deals GAME

If we like Howard, we keep him for the same price Deng cost us. We get a legitimate backup PG. We can throw in Pargo or a cheap filler to make salaries match perfectly if needed.

We get a pick to deal or utilize this summer.

What more? We get out of Deng’s long, growing contract. If Salmons opts in, we can play him at SF, and we have another 11 mil to spend on a FA for the SG and PF position. We can likely afford a combination of Lee/Joe Johnson even if Bosh and Wade fall through.

A lineup of Noah, Lee, Salmons, JJ, Rose and probably enough left to at least fill in the bench pieces along with Taj and Hinrich. We can also more easily deal Hinrich this offseason or early next season to solidify the bench with his 8m contract. Hinrich will only have 2 years (minus however late into the season we are) on his contract then.

Mavs do it because they value Deng over Howard, they aren’t going to pick up his team option after this season and they don’t penny pinch. They get better this year and have a solid 3 from here on out. Deng is a good defender who may be forced to play more on the block with Dirk taking mid range shots. All the better, as Deng excels particularly when he’s aggressive on offense, something our coaches don’t seem to force him to do often enough.

The other 5m in expiring deals can be some combination of Madsen/Smith/Skinner/Davis/Butler.

The Bulls have a real PF for the rest of this season, and one that can play a bit of center too when Miller is lagging (or if Noah doesn’t heal right away).

The SF spot is replaced by Salmons. We get a guard that can at least crack the rotation (Telfair) and we just buyout anybody else we can’t utilize in this deal.

We get rid of Tyrus, whom the org seems to hate, and we get out of Deng’s contract, which loses value as the cap is reduced (imagine what we can get for Deng’s 11m salary this offseason).

LA does this because they immediately improve. Tyrus might actually play well in the up tempo that Baron Davis is now running with Dunleavy out. Deng obviously fills a nice hole at 3 guard for them (They have the center, they will have the PF next year with Blake and they have the guards in Davis and Gordon). Next year they will now have a legitimate starting lineup, with Tyrus either resigned, qualified or cut. They get rid of Telfair and his possibility of opting in for 2.7 mil and they are just much better balanced.

If we’re going to get a former all-star SG to start this year and come off the books next year (and possibly re-sign for a smaller contract), i’d prefer T-Mac to Ray. The Rockets have much more incentive to trade T-Mac than the Celtics do Allen, and T-Mac wont throw a hissy fit until he is bought out so that he can go sign with his former team, like Allen probably would.

We offer Tyrus Thomas, Luol Deng (gasp), and Jerome James to the Houston Rockets for Tracy McGrady and Chase Buddinger.

Hear me out. Yes, the loss of Luol would suck, but if the Bulls do make a cap clearing move, it’s probably going to be either him or Kirk anyway. We get Tracy McGrady and his gigantic expiring contract. That puts us more than in position to make a large offer to a top tier free agent, as well as gives us the option to re sign T-Mac at a lower cost deal if he really works out for us well.

T-Mac wouldn’t have to worry about the dribble-drive nearly as much with Rose handling the Ball, and he could depend on Rose to set him up for open jump shots, and could get himself under the basket without dribbling as well. (Basically taking Luol’s role).This would help space the floor, and would take some defensive pressure off of Rose, because defenses would have to respect him simply because his name is Tracy McGrady, and the fact that he wouldnt have to handle as much, nor would he be the focus of the offense, would help him avoid injury.

McGrady would start at SF with Hinrich still at SG, and when T-Mac came out, Salmons would continue his role as 6th man. This move would also enable us to bring back Salmons (who the Bulls do like) next year for the bench (or to start, depending on who we sign, if we bring T-Mac back, and other factors), without it keeping us from offering a max deal. It doesn’t, however, force us to bring back Salmons because we would also be getting Budinger.

Budinger is a younger player who could fill Salmons’s role off of the bench nicely. He’s not the 3-point threat that Salmons can be at times, but he also has time to develop and the 3-point shot is usually one of the later things that come to players after college, unless they are a 3-point sharp shooter ala Brandon Jennings. Budinger will only improve. He is on a 3-year deal, but it is extremley cheap and he’d be a bargain.

We would have T-Mac’s 21 million coming off the books at the end of the year, in addition to what we already have. That would be more than enough to offer a max contract to anybody, and still have enough remaining to re-sign the players we’d like to keep, and get one more additional free agent or two before hitting the danger zone.

http://games.espn.go.com/nba/tradeMachine?tradeId=yzjrynx

Your thoughts?

With the cap shrinking and the CBA that will at best phase in a more restrictive salary structure, players with big contracts that aren’t performing great are vastly poor values.

I know I probably sound like a broken record, but for Deng’s 11 mil or Hinrich’s 8 mil, you can get vastly superior talent (and you have choices on who you get to put around Rose) for that money this summer.

The point is, if Deng somehow got out of his contract this summer, as well as Hinrich, they would not get 11 and 8 mil each. It would probably be closer to 8-9 and 4-6. That’s called a bad value, even if you like Deng and Hinrich.

So in theory, just trading them for expirings should give us a net positive result this summer. I’m not saying that’s the best play out there, but I can’t really see how it could be labeled as a terrible one. It’s just the economics of the situation.

When you throw in an owner that won’t go into the tax, that makes our per player value that much more important, which should make trading those bad value contracts for expirings even more of a good play.

It’s a lot to grasp, especially for the casual fan. The idea of trading away Deng or Hinrich for expiring deals is probably too much for many to fathom.

If it helps, think about a player you dislike that is being paid a lot of money but is still decent. Sam Dalembert, perhaps. I believe he makes around 12m now. He’s probably not worth more than 6-8 mil at most. So if you can get Boozer for 12m in the offseason, wouldn’t it make sense to trade Dalembert away now for expiring contracts and pick up Boozer with the money you saved?

The same principle can be applied to Deng or Hinrich. Unfortunately, I suspect our management will not trade away Hinrich for expiring contracts, they will want more and it will end up in them not pulling the trigger for anything but Salmons or Tyrus. We’ll see though, they surprised us last year with a very good basketball trade.