Rudy Gay working harder than ever, Wolves target?

[shangrila]

And to add to this, why keep a player who doesn't want to play for you anymore? The only difference between Grizzlies Pau and Lakers Pau is effort. Why keep someone giving no effort and continue losing with him?

Stop the Lakers from winning?

[Esohny]

That's a good point, and MEM needed to add salary to make the NBA minimum payroll. However, in my mind, this goes to show the lack of planning. If you need a big contract, wouldn't Gasol's have made more sense than gambling on Zach Randolph? The few fans MEM was drawing were paying to see Gasol .. Zach Randolph didn't sell any season tickets for his $17 mil/yr salary.

I think the one thing I should add when Pau's contract is compared to Zach's is that Pau's contract would have been as long which would have kept the Grizzlies from making any decent moves over the last few years. Although I felt Pau should have been traded after the third straight playoff sweep. At least trading him at that time opened things up for the Grizzlies to make moves even if they haven't always been liked by fans.

And to add to this, why keep a player who doesn't want to play for you anymore? The only difference between Grizzlies Pau and Lakers Pau is effort. Why keep someone giving no effort and continue losing with him?

Memphis didn't have to keep him, but they shouldn't have taken the first deal that came along and traded him for 15 cents on the dollar.

[bgassassin]

Stop the Lakers from winning?

Why should I care about that when my team is nowhere near in contention? About the only fans who could voice any real complaints are the ones of legit championship-level teams.

Memphis didn't have to keep him, but they shouldn't have taken the first deal that came along and traded him for 15 cents on the dollar.

Technically that wasn't the first deal as Chicago made a slight push the season before. The value of the trade isn't really the issue either. It's who Pau went to that made it such a problem for everyone. If that "15 cents on a dollar" trade had been with say the Clippers it would be bashed some initially, but would be virtually irrelevant by now.

I'm not bothered by it because I look at the trade like this.

Kwame Brown <-> cap space <-> cap space eventually used along with Quentin Richardson to acquire Zach Randolph
Aaron McKie <-> cap space <-> see above
Javaris Crittenton <-> traded to Washington to get rights back to draft pick <-> reacquired rights eventually used to acquire Ronnie Brewer
Marc Gasol draft rights <-> On his way to being a top 5 center in the league
2008 first round pick <-> Donte Green <-> through a series of draft night trades Grizzlies acquire Darrell Arthur
2010 first round pick <-> pending

Now it can be said that the trade indirectly impacted us getting O.J. Mayo due to possibly winning a few more games. That would have prevented us from being in, and then losing a tiebreaker with Minny to take Love. And that even then we may or may not have taken Love if we still had Pau which could have prevented the Mayo/Love trade. This trade had some other benefits, but I don't consider the Mayo/Love trade to be a direct part of the Pau trade so they aren't relevant to this.

So here's a condensed version:

Zach Randolph
Marc Gasol
Ronnie Brewer
Darrell Arthur
2010 draft pick
O.J. Mayo (indirectly)

[shangrila]

Stop the Lakers from winning?

Why should I care about that when my team is nowhere near in contention? About the only fans who could voice any real complaints are the ones of legit championship-level teams.

Well, it was a joke, but I can understand how you could be testy with someone attacking your team like some of the guys in this thread have been.