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Look Charlotte fans....I'm born and raised here...and I'm still a Hornets fan...but I do support the Bobcats and I've followed them since their inagural season. Anways lets fast-foward to now...Okafor is a "good" player but the guy cannot be anything more and he will be injury plagued his entire career. I say if you're not already in them (Bobcats brass) start talking to Josh Smith and give him the money he wants. And just let Okafor walk the plank. Josh Smith is good and he will getmuch better. Okafor wont get "that" much better.

and how do you propose we get 13 mil under the cap in order to sign josh smith? and you still cant stop atlanta from matching the offer no matter what we do.

I could be vastly mistaken but if the Bobcats renounce Okafor then they would have *some* cap space ... maybe even enough with the increased salary cap. It's hard for me to be certain through since I haven't really followed the Cats cap stuff as closely as I could have recently. It works via HoopsHype and one of the other sites I tend to trust.

If the cap space can't be created then, in theory, the teams could do a sign & trade of the two players with Atlanta getting Okafor and the Cats getting Josh Smith. In practice though both teams would be REALLY reluctant to do this just in case the other got the better end of the deal since the two are so close geographically.

If that Boozer trade had been a reality & this could be done then it might have been really fun to have Boozer and Smith instead of Okafor and Crash.

Two different positions, and Smith hasn't really proven himself at the 4 either as a consistent scorer. He plays great D though and obviously can jump out of the gym.

No.

And I already went through this on the Observer blogs.

Josh Smith would be a good player to go along with Okafor.

But he would not be good to replace Okafor.

He cannot anchor our defense like Okafor, he is not as good a rebounder, and the difference in ppg can be explained away in shots/game. I guarantee you that if Okafor got the amount of shots that Smith did, he would be right around 17ppg as well, and most likely on better shooting.

So why would we want him to replace Okafor again?

Best case scenario: We get Boozer and Keep Okafor
Ok case scenario: We get Boozer and Don't keep Okafor or We don't get Boozer and Keep Okafor.
Worst case scenario: We don't get Boozer and We don't keep Okafor.

It's that simple. If the Worst case scenario happens, then we're going to have a hard time in free agency and bringing fans to the stadium. Who in the hell wants to go see a team who can't make a committment to keeping talent like Okafor or bringing in talent like Boozer?

salary aside, i'm not sure that josh smith is a player i want to build my franchise around. he's not a superstar or a franchise player, he's not a player who makes everyone around him noticeably better and outside of espn highlights he's not box office draw or or a guy who seems highly marketable and this is excluding some questionable character questions i have. if i am going to offer okafor or smith 13 mil i would go with okafor due to the simple fact that he plays center. if i'm overpaying for a guy who isnt a franchise player, a player who makes others better and a player who isnt a marketing draw i'm overpaying the center not the hybrid forward. plus, in 3 years, if neither player gets much better, okafor will be easier to trade. but hey, thats just me.

I would rather much have Okafor than another athletic wing player. Sure Josh Smith is talented but you can get guys like him every year in the draft. Okafor is a talented defensive minded big man. You can't find talent like him every year.

Well Smith type players don't happen to be that easy to find. He is a stud!! But I do see what your trying to say.

Yeah, agreed with Getjazz, lets not get crazy here... Smith is much closer to a one-of-a-kind player than Emeka is.

Obviously Emeka scores more efficiently and rebounds better... but of course Josh is a perimeter player and can create his own shot, and defenses have to consider him more. If Emeka gets the ball more, perhaps he becomes the more valuable player... but on the other hand I would say Smith has much more upside. Overall, I'd rather have Smith than Okafor, simply because I see more superstar potential in Smoove than Oak.

Obviously letting Okafor walk is a HUGE risk that I do not support.

i guess he will be guarding D12 and all the other PF/ C's in the NBA too?

...why not? He played almost exclusively PF this season for the Hawks (unless you think Marvin Williams was the PF with him as SF?) and he gave them a whopping -7.0 +/- per 100 possessions. His opponent PER wasn't terribly great, but this is a guy who makes a HUGE difference on defense, mostly off the ball. Nobody would put him on Dwight Howard, but I think he could be okay guarding Bosh and Jamison and the other rangy PFs we're discussing here.