I did see the Terry part of the trade and to me Terry and Stack are players that are holding back a lot of what our depth should be. I believe that JET is a great player, I also believe that Avery relies on him (and Stack) more than he should. On our side of this trade, the upside comes from unjamming the minutes we have at the 2 spot currently. More of an addition by subtraction type thing.
As far as Z for Damp, the deal is swapping a mostly Defensive C for a good post scoring C with decent defensive ability too (two way center). We need offense coming from the post. We have many games where the offense boggs down because of all the attempts to drive then kick out 4-5 feet for a contested 3. Devin and JHo are the only ones who can get to the rim with consistancy. The rest dribble 3 times to the FT line and kick it out (that's not far enough in the lane to draw any defenders most of the time), that's why the 3's are contested or not even attempted.
JapanAir said:
What exactly is wrong with our offense? I don't quite see how upgrading offensively would do. He's a post player yes but a lot of his points come outside as well. Offense have never been a problem for the mavericks, yes they don't score much in the post, but when was the last time we did? Defense is a better option in this case if were talking about big z. A lot of players in this league look good on paper because there's no real options, like players in seattle, minnesota, and other teams. I believe the same could be said for cleveland, lebron can't score all the cavs points by himself. Big z is the secondary scorer for the cavs but if we had him he'd probably be the fourth if not fifth. If we're going to get an offensive presence, get a big SG
Z doesn't need to score as much as he does on the Cavs here and that's also good for him. That means he doesn't need to force a shot, what he does do is suck the defense toward the lane while Dirk and Josh set up at the 3 pt line. That's how a post player helps a team. If they don't sag off their man, then Z makes and takes an easy post move and puts it in the hole.
Also, yes this trade switches our team up quite a bit (we become less of a jumpshooting team and more of a traditional post up team). We stop living and dying with the three, and start playing more real traditional basketball. Still gonna be boring to watch (we are currently not as exciting to watch as we once were), but it wins championships (if that is your goal).
The switch out of Damp for Z lowers our defense, however the loss of JET at the PG and SG spot with replacements of Snow at PG and Hassell/George/Jones getting more minutes at the SG spot raises our defense too.
I don't value Damp as low at Pootie does. I believe Damp is great at what he is needed to do on this team. I think Z is good enough defensively to not be a liability, and he spaces out the offensive end well enough for us to get a really good shot.
I still believe we are a championship calibre team with no trades, because this team is that good at shooting jumpshots. We also now have a very good drive the lane guy in Devin. It's the little things though that help us out at this point.
To me this trade makes sense, I also can see why those of you would say it isn't worth it. To the extent that you are saying it, I might have to disagree. Even if it is a bad deal, I don't think it is as bad as some of you are making it out to be.
