Being Realistic with Trade Proposals

[warren weel im]

Good Day Mods, I just wanted to share my 2 cents on a matter that would greatly help the trade board.

Fellow GM-wannabes and self-proclaimed basketball experts, I want to greet you all a pleasant day.

In my 7 months as a member of RealGM, I have found this site to be a good place to solicit ideas on how one could improve your respective teams. Remember that in proposing trade ideas, the idea has to be acceptable to both camps (more or less) for a trade to actually go down. Its not like the GMs need our help, but you will never know that some in-the-knows visit this site from time to time wandering for ideas to call their own. Of course in the real world, its harder to come by.

I am calling this my pre-requisite to posting - sort of my 10 commandments (more like 4) before I decide to post something to be discussed about. If the board allows me, here they are:

1. Motivation - all trades have to come from somewhere. Without motivation, GMs do not "feel" the need to trade. Why do so when you risk losing your players that come back to haunt you later on? Without motivation, a team will feel there is no need or urgency to make a trade. As the cliche states "We will not trade just to make a trade."

In discussing motivation, there are 3 areas in which a team may be inclined to do something:

a) depth - its what playoff contenders look to do. From a roster of role players, you always look to "fill" every meaningful position with players that can play that role for you and help you win the coveted trophy. The best way to add depth to your team is through free agency but it can also be done through trades.

e.g. - Hornets are looking to strengthen their bench.

b) upgrades - if one team decides to "upgrade" its roster, its exchanging a player or sets of players to help them in an area of need. It would be like putting a better version of your own player to your team by adding a valuable commodity as a bonus to convince the other team to do so.

e.g. - Chicago courting Pau Gasol for their post scoring option.
e.g. - Lamar Odom + Crittenton for Jermaine O'neal.

c) cutting salary - yes, cutting salary can be a big motivation to trade. This is why Kenny Thomas is this trade board's whore. Kings fans want to know if there is any team out there willing to take him in. Of course, since they are basically leaning toward rebuilding, expiring or shorter contracts are enough to pry him away.

e.g. - Seattle, Minnesota and Sacramento all qualify as "looking to cut salary anyhow" teams.


2. Salaries - yes, the CBA (collective bargaining agreement) dictates that salaries of incoming/outgoing players have to be within 85% + 100,000 from each other. This is a rule that covers all trade proposals that's why the Trade Checker and ESPN's Trade Machine is in good business lately. They automatically compute the players' salaries and match them in accordance to the restrictions that go along with it. If you haven't tried it, it opens a world of possibilities for you Mr. GM-wannabe.

Please note that the Salaries Matching IS THE 2ND REQUIREMENT. The first one being the motivation. So if the salaries match but the motivation for both camps does not, there is no deal. If the motivations match, matching salaries will be an easy proposition to do.

Note for the Youngsters:
YOU CANNOT TRADE BYNUM FOR J.O STRAIGHT UP!


3. Logic - is hugely subjective as it is objective. What might make sense for you MIGHT NOT make sense for the others. That' why understanding a team's needs and wants is a third requisite for a trade proposal to be acceptable. For instance, trading Shaq to Golden State's high-octane running offense will be shot down as a crime. Shaq fits a more deliberate half-court team to be effective and his age and injury history dispermits him to do so.

Logic can also be synonimous to motivation in the right circumstance. However, due to its hugely subjective nature, fans of the same camp will most-often disagree with themselves if it is a "logical" thing to do or not.

e.g. Kwame + LA's 08 1st for Brad Miller stirs up debate whether that package is enough for Kings fans to accept, and stirs up another in the Laker board as to whether adding a future 1st to accept Brad Miller's atrocious contract would be within the bounds of sanity.


4. Value - most realGM members only look at value without looking at the logicality of it. Just because Andre Iguodala is fresh, young and promising does not mean he is an automatic fit in the Triangle Offense of the Lakers. With this, some fans go to the extent of offering Iguodala ++ for Bynum when the Lakers have a ton of guards/forwards to work with while having very little depth in the frontcourt.

Another scenario would be the Emeka Okafor dilemma. Most fans consider Okafor to be a franchise player. Is he? His expected contract next year does not equate to his "value" to the team. He is a defensive specialist that definitely commands more than the MLE but NOT the max. There is a world of difference between him and Dwight Howard at the moment. So we all have to be careful in proposing for and with a player like Meka. Same applies to Ben Gordon, Luol Deng and Andris Biedrins.

Over-all, I hope I may have helped enlighten a fresh, young mind today - mine included.

[warren weel im]

As a quick addendum, I would like to add a 5th commandment.

5. Numbers - remember that you are trading players, not sheep. So its not about how many but more on the "whos" to make the trade more likely to be acceptable.

In other words, do not propose a 10 for 8 player swap. Chances are, the most I have seen in recent actual memory is 5:1 for KG, and the 4:4 trade that Golden State and Indiana did last year.

[Bac2Basics]

I'd say that some of these things that you mentioned should be able to figure out without to much trobule.

7 for 2 deals and such things should have some kind of "common sense override.

Other things are harder to figure out.
How much value 2 players have, say, Ron Artest & David Lee have in relation to each other will vary between posters, but I guess that what makes some of the decussions interesting. Most of the time it's not that hard to agree that one player is better than another but fitting that jigsaw puzzle of value to make both sides reasonably satisifed with both what they're giving up and what they get in return.

I agree wholeheartedly that people should at least keep these things in mind when trying to come up with these deals, but even when you do, not everyone's going to be happy with what you post.

[moocow007]

Hey definitely, if posters follow even part of these guidelines, it'll make mods lives a whole lot easier. They just don't pay us enough otherwise.

[deviljets7]

As a quick addendum, I would like to add a 5th commandment.

5. Numbers - remember that you are trading players, not sheep. So its not about how many but more on the "whos" to make the trade more likely to be acceptable.

In other words, do not propose a 10 for 8 player swap. Chances are, the most I have seen in recent actual memory is 5:1 for KG, and the 4:4 trade that Golden State and Indiana did last year.

I think this one is key in terms of regular season trades. Since you are months away from the start of the season, the 5-for-1 deals, while not likely aren't completely unrealistic. The idea of a 5-for-1 in the middle of the season when you have a 15-man roster limit is completely insane.

[Friend_Of_Haley]

The one that annoys me most is trades that don't fit the CBA guidelines or at least don't come close.

Also, I don't use trade checker or trade machine or whatever. I know that doing it yourself requires a little more time, but if you do the work yourself I think you'll understand the trade process better and be able to contribute to a better board discussion. Also if it isn't so easy to just click and pick players, we'd see more quality trade proposals that would take more thought.

Also if you have a general idea of what your team needs and what players might be available, I think a much more interesting topic develops if you present your available players and what you need and allow other fans to make offers. This is better than just searching for your own solutions because you don't know teams trade situations as well as them, and you can evaluate the value of players better if compared league wide with many different offers.

Great post though, and I think it would be great for posters to follow guidelines like these.

[SacKingZZZ]

Logic also must be based on some sort of presidence as well. If people simply took presidence into account this board would be a much much better place.

[DanTown8587]

Thank you for addressing that subjective belief and the amendment about 4-1 trades. They don't work at all. But if I had to add a sixth amendment, it would definitely be take a look at a teams salary cap before you run will nilly into a deal. For example, Cleveland is over the cap, so they are not looking to add long term salary for expiring contracts.

[SacKingZZZ]

Thank you for addressing that subjective belief and the amendment about 4-1 trades. They don't work at all. But if I had to add a sixth amendment, it would definitely be take a look at a teams salary cap before you run will nilly into a deal. For example, Cleveland is over the cap, so they are not looking to add long term salary for expiring contracts.

Ah yes, but the logical side says that they have no real expiring $$$ as of now so why would that be too much of a concern? If the reward is worth it, it would make sense to me that they would within reason.

[SacKingZZZ]

Another example of presidence.

Warren, you say that Okafor is not worth the max. Well, was Rashard Lewis? If he is, I think it could be somewhat believable that Okafor could very well be worth that to someone.

[warren weel im]

Five rules for managing the salary cap (and not paying Rashard the max) Jul 13, '07 9:46 AM
for everyone
They are popping the champagne corks in Orlando this week, celebrating the signing of Rashard Lewis to a six-year, $113 million deal.

Congratulations, Orlando. Good luck with that.

History doesn't look kindly on this type of contract. The NBA salary cap can be brutally unforgiving. Manage it well, as the Detroit Pistons and San Antonio Spurs have done over the last five years, and your team has a shot to remain relevant and competitive year after year. Mismanage it, as teams like the New York Knicks, Los Angeles Lakers, Houston Rockets and Minnesota Timberwolves have done, and you have painted your team into a corner.

While owners obsess over finding GMs who have a great eye for talent, in the NBA, that's only half the equation. Front-line talent does win championships. But if you can't manage the cap in a way that gives a team a chance to add the right players to your star or stars, talent will take you only so far.

We've seen evidence of that in the past few weeks with Kobe Bryant demanding a trade and Kevin Garnett's agent looking for greener pastures for his client. No one doubts that Bryant and Garnett have been two of the 10 best talents in the league over the past decade. But because of bad trades and poor cap management, their teams have been unable to put the right players around them.

Here are the five rules every GM in the league should follow. As you can tell, most do not. In fact, a handful don't even understand them. And when it comes to the Lewis signing, I believe Orlando GM Otis Smith violated every single rule.


1. Don't bid against yourself.

In other words, don't pay a player more than you have to.

This rule seems obvious, but it's often violated.

In perhaps the most infamous case, the Knicks gave Allan Houston a six-year, $100 million contract even though the competition could offer him only a five-year, $56 million deal. The Houston contract ended up as a disaster for the Knicks.

There are a couple of reasons that the rule gets violated.

First, some GMs simply misread the market. They often panic, believing that if they don't offer a certain amount, another team will. Agents work overtime to fuel the perception of the rising market value of their clients.

In many cases, the battle between agent and general manager is not a fair fight. On one side you have the agent, a professional negotiator who spends all year thinking about how to drive up the player's price. On the other side you have GMs, many of whom are former players who have seldom handled negotiations. They usually had agents for that.

A second main reason is loyalty. Sometimes teams "reward" their own free agents for years of loyal service. The Pistons did that with Chauncey Billups this summer. On the open market, Billups wouldn't have received as much money as the Pistons are giving him. But they felt like he was a key fixture in the franchise and they needed to "make him happy." And, it's worth noting, Billups' contract is far smaller than Lewis'.

Overpaying based on loyalty is usually a bad idea, but it's understandable. There's a human element in every negotiation, and it's tough to tell a player that you value that you're going to lowball him because the market stinks in a given year.

So what about Rashard Lewis? Why did the Magic give him $113 million?

Was there a team out there that would matched such an offer? No, not even close.

His previous team, the Seattle SuperSonics, could have given him a similar amount, but their offer was for far less.

The other team with enough salary cap room to offer Lewis a similar contract, the Bobcats, didn't want to spend anything close to that on Lewis. Other teams, including the Rockets, were interested in a sign-and-trade deal, but as a number of teams learned in the past week, the Sonics didn't want to take back any long-term salaries as part of a sign-and-trade. That eliminated virtually everyone else.

Not only did the Magic offer Lewis far more than any other team was willing to pay, but they also added an unnecessary sixth year to the deal. Without a sign-and-trade deal between Seattle and Orlando, which the Magic didn't need to do, Lewis was eligible by NBA rules to sign with the Magic for only five years.

The sixth year is worth $22.7 million, if paid in full. While only $10 million of it is currently guaranteed, a league source revealed that the remainder will be guaranteed if certain performance incentives are met. According to this source, it boils down to this: if Lewis remains healthy, he'll get the money.

The Magic could have secured Lewis with a five-year, $60 million deal. Of course, Lewis' agent and the Magic won't admit that, but that's what the market tells us -- along with a number of GMs and agents.

So when the Magic broke the first rule and "bid against themselves," the price was an extra $53 million.

2. Give the max to franchise players only.

More GMs are getting clued into this one, but it still gets violated with shocking regularity.

If you're going to give a player a maximum-salary contract, he had better be a franchise player. Pay a lesser player that much money and he becomes a millstone around the team's neck.

So who qualifies as a franchise player? I think the list is pretty small actually.

Here are the players who deserve it: Tim Duncan, Dirk Nowitzki, Steve Nash (the only guy on the list who doesn't have a max contract), LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, Dwyane Wade, Kevin Garnett and Yao Ming. You might consider a max deal for these players as well: Chris Bosh, Gilbert Arenas, Amare Stoudemire and Carmelo Anthony -- and for Dwight Howard, who signed a max extension on Thursday.

We can grandfather in a few other players who have shown they were max players in the past -- Shaquille O'Neal, Allen Iverson, Tracy McGrady and Jason Kidd -- though now those contracts seem pretty burdensome.

But here are some others players with max contracts: Zach Randolph, Andrei Kirilenko, Paul Pierce, Pau Gasol, Ray Allen, Joe Johnson, Antawn Jamison, Stephon Marbury and Steve Francis.

While some of these are very good players, they are not the kind of franchise players that deserve max dollars. What might have seemed like a good deal becomes a nightmare when you realize they can't carry your team. And those contracts make it very difficult to trade them away and get back similar talent.

We had two great examples of that on draft night. The Sonics received only the No. 5 pick, a role player and Wally Szczerbiak's bad contract from the Celtics for Ray Allen. The Blazers sent Zach Randolph to the Knicks and had to swallow a $30 million buyout of Steve Francis' deal to make it happen.

Lewis just received a max deal, or very close -- as close as the Magic could offer. So is Lewis a max player?

Some questions: Was he the best player on his team? (No.) Was his team good? (No.) Is he the best player on his new team? (No.) Do we really need to ask any more questions?

3. Stay away from the luxury tax.

Owners hate the luxury tax -- the penalty that teams pay for going over a certain team salary threshold.

While owners like Paul Allen (Portland), James Dolan (New York) and Mark Cuban (Dallas) have shown they are willing to pay the luxury tax, even they have tried to slow down their team's spending.

GMs have a way of talking their owners into paying the luxury tax for a specific player. But once the team is there, owners tend to scrutinize every move more closely. In some cases, they don't want to reach to bring in the next free agent, use the midlevel exception or pay a premium to retain their own free agents.

It's pretty clear why. When a team is paying the tax, a $5 million contract (plus the $5 million tax) means that $10 million in real dollars is going out the door. That's a lot for a role player who might not even be worth the first $5 million.

An unwillingness to pay the luxury tax limits a team's flexibility to make important trades, sign draft picks (that's why the Suns have traded or sold first-round picks for the past four years) and land free agents. It essentially freezes spending and freezes the team.

So what does this have to do with Rashard Lewis?

Starting with the 2008-09 season, the Magic will have approximately $60 million a year going Lewis, Howard, Jameer Nelson (assuming he gets an extension) and six role players. If they add a draft pick and a midlevel contract, they will be very close to the luxury tax threshold.

That's fine if a combo of Howard, Lewis, Nelson, Hedo Turkoglu and J.J. Redick can deliver a championship. But if not, Orlando will have very little flexibility to make significant changes.

4. Keep your options open.

This rule really sums up the first three.

It's another way of saying, don't overpay. When you overpay, your ability to make additions and even subtractions to a team is damaged.

Again, let's look at the Magic. With so much money invested in two players (Lewis and Howard), and without a lot of supporting talent on the roster as trade bait, Orlando will find it difficult to make deals.

The team could try to use the expiring contracts of Carlos Arroyo, Pat Garrity and Keyon Dooling to bring in a player or players with longer-term contracts. However, if they do that, they'll run even more risk of crossing the luxury tax threshold (starting in 2008-09).

To take advantage of the flexibility that the Magic had before signing Lewis, and to keep their options open for the future (given that it will be extremely hard to trade Lewis), Orlando could have taken a different tack. Had they decided to keep Darko Milicic (with a three-year deal) and pursue free agent Gerald Wallace, they would have potentially made themselves both more competitive and more capable of making moves in the future.

Wallace is more than three years younger than Lewis, and he just signed a six-year deal for about half of what Lewis did. Wallace averaged 18.1 points and 7.2 rebounds per game last season, and posted a very similar player efficiency rating to Lewis. He also is a much better defender. While Wallace does not have the kind of outside shot that Lewis does, the Magic have players who do -- especially Redick and Turkoglu.

The combined production of Milicic and Wallace will very likely match or outpace what Lewis will do for the Magic this season. Essentially, Orlando is paying him the price of two players.

5. Don't give away assets.

This is the rule that most teams follow, which is why many around the league were shocked that the Magic didn't try harder to get something in return for Milicic. Say what you will about Darko -- whether you think he is a bust or still has potential, he is a roster asset.

The Magic mishandled the Milicic asset in several ways.

First, they gave up their 2007 first-round pick to land Milicic, without being committed to a strategy for this asset. (Detroit used that pick to draft Rodney Stuckey.)

Second, they chose not to keep a 22-year-old center, when they said it was their top priority and could have rearranged their roster slightly to do so. Now they have the thinnest frontcourt in the NBA.

Third, they essentially gave him away, rather than trading him for another player, a draft pick or a trade exception.

Fourth, they mishandled the entire episode to the point where they are ineligible to use the midlevel exception this year. With a sign-and-trade to move Darko to another team and receive an asset in return, Orlando could have stayed slightly over the salary cap and used the exception. By waiving Milicic, the Magic fell a little below the cap and lost their free agent exceptions. Now they can sign only minimum-salary players.

Darko's agent Marc Cornstein said more than 20 teams inquired about Milicic once he became an unrestricted free agent, and several teams attempted to work out a sign-and-trade with Seattle and Orlando to land Darko.

While Smith said publicly that the team was working feverishly to find a way to keep Milicic, Cornstein said that he received just one phone call from the team after it withdrew its qualifying offer, and the call wasn't related to a deal for Darko.

A source in Seattle also said that the Magic weren't very interested in exploring various sign-and-trade scenarios and in the end "just wanted to get their guy and be done with it."

Instead of asking Lewis to wait a few days while the team tried to explore trade options, the Magic waived Milicic early Wednesday to expedite the Lewis signing. Later that day Milicic agreed to a three-year, $21 million deal with the Grizzlies.

So where does that leave the Magic? The team gave Lewis one of the most lucrative long-term deals in NBA history -- along the lines of historic deals for Shaquille O'Neal and Kevin Garnett. His sixth year salary of $22.6 million (if and when it becomes guaranteed) will be higher than that of all but two players -- Garnett and Tim Duncan. To get the right to pay him that much money, the team renounced or dropped qualifying offers to a whopping 12 players. Two key players for the Magic last season -- Grant Hill and Darko Milicic -- are gone.

Once Orlando extends the contracts of Dwight Howard and Jameer Nelson, the team will be essentially capped out for the next five years. This is their team.

If the Magic win and win big, no one will care about how much Rashard Lewis makes. But if they stumble, it could be the deal that sucks the Magic right out of Orlando.

Chad Ford covers the NBA for ESPN Insider.

I don't believe Rashard is even worth more than 10m. So does Emeka Okafor.