Geaux_Hawks wrote:I understand why this thread was made and it is pretty much under the premise of "Would you sell high on Josh Smith?". My answer is basically no. The way you are making it seem like, is that Al Horford is either untouchable or couldn't fetch Gasol or any legit 5, period.
Yes, you do whatever is needed to be done to improve the team, but their are other ways of doing so, and OTOH, when you have a focused Josh Smith, you easily have one of the best 2 way players in the league. Not trying to compare Josh to anybody, but do you trade Al Jefferson over Paul Milsaps after Jefferson just had a 20/20 game or do you sell high on Kevin Love after his spectacular 20/15 per game season just so you can move Beasley to his natural spot?
Actually that wasn't the premise, nor did i mean to make Al Horford untouchable or unable to fetch Gasol. I used Josh because over the course of the year the general sentiment on the board was to get Horford to his natural position of PF and that he was the best piece to build around. While I assumed that Josh was peaking in terms of fan support, I had no idea that the support of Horford had waned so much. I also chose to go with Josh because I felt that Al would more reliably do the dirty work if Pau is the soft skilled center than Josh in the same PF role. Finally I remember the Josh for Pau trade idea from when Pau wanted out of Memphis.
I also didn't even think of it as selling high on Josh because it was really just one game. I'm not sure that changed perceptions with GMs around the league because they probably already realize that Josh is talented. They would still have the same questions about consistent performance. If those questions were resolved then Josh would probably be untouchable. My comments on the original post was an acknowledgement that his most recent performance would likely affect the fans weighing of the issue. Part of the idea of this poll was to ascertain how much 1 stellar game convinced everyone to stay the course with Josh.
However, really what prompted the poll was the Lakers talking about breaking up the roster. Pau Gasol is one of the most skilled bigs in the league offensively. He plays C at least half the year because of Andrew Bynum's frequent injuries. He's not complete, but if he was he would be untouchable as well. I wanted to get a sense of whether his post season slip up this year had caused fans here to sour on him like Lakers fans seemingly has. He has the height that we've craved and the consistent low post scoring that we've needed, but he's soft more often than not and wouldn't be cheap to acquire. I wanted to know if Atlanta fans thought he was too soft.
I know there are more than one way to improve a team, but realistically Marvin has no trade value and Joe's trade value is lessened by his huge contract. The only pieces that could possibly return a truly valuable piece to restructure the lineup are Josh and Al. Kirk Hinrich's expiring deal might be able to return an usable piece albeit not an exciting piece. We could have threads about whether it is best to build around Josh, Al or both. We could have threads about who is worth more in the trade market Al or Josh. We could have threads about best way to improve the team. This thread was meant to gauge a specific hypothetical trade. Much like the players involved the thread need not be perfect.
That was mindset in bringing up the topic. By the way if Josh plays consistently like he did Sunday I'll gladly buy a 4th Josh Smith jersey (I don't have an alternate jersey for him) even knowing that we're heading into a lockout.
