note: from
viewtopic.php?f=16&t=909317&start=30moofs wrote:Ok, I'll go over them one by one.
Zaza is a tall Chuck Hayes - no blocks from him either. Slightly better rebounding. Worse defense I'm sure.
Mikki = old (34), frail, and not very good.
Rasheed is a Petrified chucker
McDyess is old but still effective and not cheap.
Magloire = Wasn't someone suggesting we should get Eddy Curry the other day?
Williams is a downgrade from Hayes
Collins = I like the Collinses for some reason, but nah.
I gave you Wilcox, but he's not cheap either.
Isn't Ratliff retiring? I'd take him too, thought he was a LOT older than 35-36
Gooden... he reminds me of Vin Baker. ... in a bad way.
Swift sucks royally.
i.e. either none of those guys can be had at a bargain price relative to their value, or none of those guys are an upgrade to our current backups (Scola/Hayes)
Look, I know this board gets stuck on getting a guy that's 6'10" to back up Yao. Anyone living will do, any price will do, just SO LONG AS THEY ARE 6'10" OR BETTER, like that's the ONLY criteria. I just don't see much point to any of those guys.
roxfashoballin wrote:daam you are one terrible hater or something, sheeeznuss.
that isnt the best list for backup centers, and i would rather look at another list, lol, but when you are talking about a backup center...wat the hell comes to your mind? rasheed is a legit starter how the **** is he not a legit backup center? slash power forward? drew gooden was 10/8 till chicago, and they have a crowded frontcourt there, i doubt he cant put up those numbers again. zaza has size, scoring, reboudning, defense, makes his fts, of corse he has worse defense then hayes, if you know hayes you know that he's a top 20/30 defensive forward.
plz tell me wat you think a backup center is.
A big, goofy-looking guy that can stand around in the post?
For starters, I think "hater" is a really stupid term. When you're looking at management things, you can't be an optimist, you have to determine both your costs and your benefits. I may not be the best at it, but it's what I try to do. If you only present the benefits, or only the options, I'm going to look at the costs first, especially if I
don't know the benefits and do know some of the costs. Convince me that the benefits are there, that they outweigh the costs, and that the proposition can actually be attained somehow (i.e. it somehow has to make sense for the other guy, too), and I'll agree with you. Looking at the costs first may not be the way to go, but I'm also not formally trained in business practices.
Rasheed is 35, and shoots almost half his shots from outside the arc. Before I looked at that just now, the thing I was thinking about was that his FG% had gone to hell (.419), but I hadn't previously checked his percentage of 3p shots taken (which comes back to a whipping point of mine - FG% is the dumbest stat in basketball - so easily misleading, and I wasn't double checking). His rebounding last year was also better than I thought it was (seemed like it dropped to like 5 rpg), and I wasn't aware that he was still averaging a block and a steal per game. That said, I've also read that his defense has slipped rather badly, but that may be with regard to his being the anchor of a defense as opposed to a piece of one. He WILL come with a price tag, whether it's deserved or not, which was the first thing that came to my mind, the second being ".419".
Drew Gooden averaged about 12/8.7 during his time with Cleveland and they hated him, iirc. Why would that be? He's also been with 6 teams in 6 years and had his salary quartered once his rookie contract was up. I don't know all the details, and at face value he does look good, and I was actually a fan of his after seeing him in preseason his rookie year, but there are warning flags all over him.
I wouldn't be surprised were Zaza to want upward of the MLE. We'll see if he can get it. His effectiveness looks to have been limited, on a per-minute basis, when he didn't get much PT. Some guys aren't great backups. Honestly don't know much about this guy, but again, he looks to be a minor upgrade over Hayes at best, and also looks like he'll cost a lot more for that (roughly double, at least).
Again, the things I'm looking for are how much of an upgrade is each option, how much will they cost us, do we have room for that, what do we have to give up to get them, what other ways does this affect our financial situation, and will they hurt our defense and/or generally fit into our system? If that's the list, you can probably expect either a reasonably significant trade, or that we're looking elsewhere (we'd be doing that anyway).
From a basketball standpoint, if we are indeed looking for a "real" backup center, we're looking for someone to take some combination of Scola's minutes at C, and Hayes minutes at 3rd string C. They need to provide better production for the system that we want in place with Yao out in some way, and maybe even be able to trump Scola/Landry at spells when Yao's in. Between the two of them, the costs for next year are $3,375,600 + 2,111,750 = $5,487,350, and whomever we add will likely be put on top of that unless Hayes and/or Landry is traded, and that's with the cap and tax threshold going down, and us already being at 64.6m next year with Artest and Wafer unsigned, which also leaves us with a huge, and imo more important hole at SG/SF that they may or may not fill (but if they are signed to be put in that hole, leave us with little financial leeway). Considering that we do have that huge hole, and that Scola and Hayes have managed to platoon the middle against other backup C/Fs rather nicely, tell me who fits best, and how the luxury upgrade at backup C warrants a trump over our other deficiency, barring the change in state that a nice, large trade would create. ("large" in this case being roughly 5-6m+) There may also be other options than free agency - foreign talent pools, draft picks, and trades - to name a few.
Now work from there and tell me how they're a good fit
