Post#9 » by FreeRon » Mon Jun 30, 2008 5:41 pm
The first is horrible. Ford may not be a great contract, but he's a proven NBA player. The only way I can see Augustin being better than Ford is if Ford gets injured, and we have 80% insurance. I've certainly missed on guessing how a lot of players will pan out, but Augustin is one that I like less every time I look at him. To be honest I see him as TJ Ford minus a little size and a lot of defensive ability. He would have been a great pick maybe as high as 12, but not good enough to give up a guy who is really his best case scenario for. Hibbert for Aijina is silliness. I'm not going to say that Hibbert is going to be a Hall of Famer, but I will say that last year I was elated that he stayed in school because we had no shot of him, and his play this year made me shy off him a bit, but I'd take him 11 times out of 10 with the 17th pick, and I'd burn down Conseco Fieldhouse with count if we'd trade him for Aijinca. Morrison is certainly better than Williams, but unless you're going to look at the game he played against the Pacers when he put up 35 he's just not a huge upgrade, and even if he was he's not good enough to beat out Granger for the starting spot so we're trading our only proven PG and a C who could be starting for us by the end of the year (if not earlier) to upgrade a position that we're drowning in depth at already.
The second deal is a lot better, but still has a lot of the same problems. To clarify, if it were straight up I would trade Ford for Augustin straight up right now. I don't think Augustin will be as good, but I don't see him being so much worse that it wouldn't be worth cutting the salary for. That would be what I saw it as though - risking a small downgrade in talent to save big bucks. Moving Dunleavy Jr. for Wallace is about as lateral a move as you'll get. Wallace is going to want the kind of money Jr. makes, and their numbers are going to be about the same...I just don't think Wallace is quite as good from the 3-point line and he's a much better defender. The problem is that Jr. can play the 2 and I don't know if Wallace can. I could be wrong because I don't follow the Bobcats too much, but isn't he more a 3/4 than a 2/3? I guess this might be advantageous to allow Rush more minutes and have a better second option at the 4, so if he is a 3/4 I'll come off my lateral move comment and give the advantage to Wallace. If that's the case, though, trading Williams for Emeka becomes that much less advantageous. I'm not even going to go into how much better Emeka would be for us than Williams because it's silly how much we would improve. The reason this deal could never happen is that the only reason the Bobcats would trade Wallace or Emeka would be because they both want huge extensions with lots of money. We've just fixed the problem we got when we gave JO that kind of money, and the reason a lot of us like this deal is that it gets rid of another ridiculous contract. We've still got Murphy, though, and if Emeka didn't turn into Dwight Howard overnight we'd have three horrible contracts that nobody wanted. Beyond that, Wallace or Emeka would have to sign a new contract before this trade would work...Dunleavy and Ford together make too much.
