Let me begin , now that I've either caught your attention or managed to get someone else to "ignore" me:
I will begin with Bob Finnan's article:http://www.news-herald.com/articles/2008/12/28/sports/nh283116.txt
Bobcats forward Gerald Wallace's name remains out there on the trading block. He'd look great coming off the bench for the Cavs. Could they pry him loose by trading Eric Snow, Sasha Pavlovic and Tarence Kinsey? Pavlovic's deal reportedly has just $1 million guaranteed next year, which the Cavs could pay.
Just the idea of trading Snow, Kinsey and Pavs for Wallace made most of us salivate. However, after we got finished dreaming of what a great tandum we'd have; reality struck us, and we immediately began to question Bob's sanity. Why would the Hornets trade someone who is worth so much to so many teams, for junk? And why would the Cavaliers trade Snow's contract, which can save the Cavaliers around 10 million dollars? Why not just trade Wally for Gerald + Filler?
After asking ourselves these questions, we quickly concluded that Bob was just coming-up with a scenario, and that he obviously hadn't paid attention in class, when he took NBA-Trades:101
Not so fast: The first thing I realized after looking at the trade Bob proposed, was that the Salaries we would be sending were more than Gerald's. So I asked myself why? Why add Sasha when Snow and Kinsey can be traded for Gerald without him? And why even trade Kinsey? Why not Jawad, who's contract is 40% cheaper than Tarence's, and would work with Snow for Gerald also?
This got me to thinking: Maybe Bob knows more than he is letting on. Why add Sasha? I kept asking myself why a guy (Bob Finnan) who has been covering the Cavaliers for 14 years would/could make such a blunder. Bob is not some hack journalist, he has won a lot of awards for writing (and he was a Golden Flash). Bob probably messes with trade machines more than any 2 fans do combined. And, he knows the team extremely well. So, this was no gaff. He knew what he was writing. He knew what the salaries were. Yet he wrote what he did, almost as an afterthought to his main article.
Understand, this is not the first time the Cavs have been rumored to have an interest in Gerald. Ferry reportedly had some talks this summer about Gerald and Felton...but those talks stalled after Mo Williams fell to us. In addition, Michael Reghi has been saying for weeks that he was convinced that Gerald was coming to the Cavs.
All of this is enough to give anyone hope, but not nearly enough to actually believe it. The same held true with me - until I decided to do some checking on a few things.
I was curious who the other player would be that the Cavaliers would get by adding Sasha Pavlovic to the trade, so I played with the trade machine, and amazingly, Nazr Mohammed just "barely" works. So, a trade of Nazr and GForce for Kinsey,Snow, and Sasha. Okay... that looks better, but even with the saved cap-space, it isn't fair. Seems like the Cavs would need to add 2 first round picks to the deal to make Charlotte want to deal.
Not so fast: After doing some more searching, it turns out that the Bobcats are over the cap - by $2,875,114.00. Amazingly, with this trade, they have an immediate $2,939,319.00 savings from their cap. Putting them under the cap by $64,205. This means they get 4 Million from the NBA for being under the cap (paid by the teams in the luxury tax). So, there is an immediate 6.9 mil swing right there. Lets also assume that the Cavaliers are sending 3 million (Most allowed per CBA). That means that the Bobcats get 9.9 million immediately. Hold on, we aren't done: Three days after the deadline, the team with the rights to Eric Snow, gets his salary refunded to them by the insurance company. Add 7,312,500, for a total of 17.2 million in immediate income.
It is important to note a few things now.
#1: The average income per NBA team, before taxes,etc is about 30 million dollars
#2: The Charlotte Bobcats are not your normal NBA franchise
The Charlotte Bobcats are ranked 29th out of 30 teams in net worth, at 284 mil.
Consider this article:http://www.forbes.com/lists/2008/32/nba08_Charlotte-Bobcats_322435.html
The NBA's return to Charlotte has been a nightmare. In four seasons, the Bobcats have won only one-third of their games and are already on their third head coach, the mercurial Larry Brown who was hired in April. A bigger disappointment for owner Bob Johnson is the team's poor financial performance. Johnson claims losses of $50 million since he paid $300 million for the expansion franchise in 2003. He laments the poor corporate support for high-end tickets and suites as well as sponsorships. Corporate support is not likely to pick up any time soon as bruised Charlotte banking titans Wachovia and Bank of America are headed for layoffs and cutbacks on spending. The team's fortunes rest on minority owner and head of basketball operations Michael Jordan, who needs to put together a winning product before fans and companies will support the Bobcats.
Back to the business at-hand:
Gerald Wallace is owed about 42 million dollars (assuming he picks-up his player option) after this year. Nazr Mohammed is owed 14 Million. That is 56 million dollars in savings. Add in the 17.2 million they get immediately; add-in the money from the second half of Gerald and Nazr's contracts this year, minus the contracts of Kinsey and Sasha, and you now have a total monetary swing of approximately 84 million dollars.
Some more things to consider: The Bobcats are 27th in home attendance (13,670), and 29th overall in attendance (14,623). So while the average team in making 30 million before taxes, the Bobcats are making about 21,300,000 before taxes (29% less than the average team).
Now consider the economy. The NBA has taken a hit overall, but some of the small market teams have taken sucker-punches. Charlotte is one of those teams.
That 84 million dollars that they saved during this hypothetical trade with the Cavaliers, if split-up over the life of Gerald's contract, equals 21 million a year That is double their current income (almost).
Now, you do have to take into consideration the players that will be signed and will take the place of the current players (Snow), but you also have to assume that they will be watching the pocketbook very closely. Add-in the fact that the Cavaliers will make it possible for the Bobcats to stay under the cap for the next 4 years, and that is another 16 million that they make by doing this trade (approx 4 million per year for each team under the cap).
Now for the inevitable question: Why the Cavaliers?
Well, quite simply, nobody else can do what we can
There are seven other teams that can trade the necessary 12+ million in expiring contract to get Wallace. However, of those seven teams, only Portland would be able to offer a similar deal to what we could offer. The thing that Portland and the Cavaliers both have, and can trade, is expiring players, that are injured. Portland could offer Raef LaFrentz, and would be able to actually offer more money (5 million). The problem is that Portland cannot take Wallace and Nazr, because they would then have to cut a member of their team. That by itself would not be a very big issue, however, the very large contract of Wallace, and the 3 year deal of Nazr would throw their team out of sync. They have LA and others coming-up for pay-raises, and will have to tread carefully. The reason for this is that Portland is 20th in the league in revenue, which is odd because they are third in the league in attendance, and have a very nice young core.
It is possible that Portland GM Kevin Pritchard may try to find a third team that could take the long contract of Nazr..with maybe Travis Outlaw as the piece he gives for incentive. However, I think that Portland will not try and get Wallace (although I think there may have been a couple rumors suggesting it). I think that he is happy with his current line-up...although I have also heard that they are very interested in David Lee.
When it is all said and done, I think that the Cavaliers will be the team that gets Wallace. This is just my personal belief, but as the information I showed above illustrates, it would be one hell of a coincidence if Bob Finnan "just happened" to pick those exact three players to trade for Gerald in his musing.
EDIT: One more thing I wanted to point out... as a "coincidence:" If the Cavaliers end-up making the trade outlined above, then I guess that the reports about Danny saying he isn't interested in trading Wally, would finally make some sense.
Also: A couple links I forgot to add:
http://mvn.com/cavalierattitude/2008/12/news-herald-cavs-interested-in-gerald-wallace.html
http://www.forbes.com/2008/12/03/business-basketball-nba-biz-sports-nba08-cz_kb_mo_cs_1203intro.html
EDIT II: One other thing that could influence the Trailblazers: The Darius Miles situation in Memphis. If Darius plays 10 games, Portland is stuck with his salary again... that changes a LOT of things for them.
), therefore the amount of monet received from taxed teams is much lower, and with the economy the way it is and sponsors backing out of contracts, some teams are really hurting. So an approximation cannot even be guessed, because there are too many factors that haven't been decided yet.
