Rumors surfaced this week that Chicago’s front office has registered serious trade interest in Anthony Parker, contingent on the health of his back. The outlines of a deal aren’t in place, so there’s no indication of compensation on the Cavs’ side yet. But since all I think about with the Cavs nowadays are trades, I figured I would spend some time trying to figure out what would be realistic for Chris Grant to get back in an A.P. swap.
Ironically, the Cavs are still dealing with the same trade dynamic they’ve been dealing with for the past few seasons. They just happen to be on the opposite side of it. Contenders are now looking to the Cavs to supply key role players that can help push their nucleus to the next level.
Of course, the hitch is that the contending teams want to give up relatively little to acquire that key role player.They’re also generally pretty asset-light. Their rosters are normally stocked with stars, veterans, and a few developmental young players on contracts complicated by Base Year Compensation rules. In short, even if they were willing to be generous, contending teams often don’t even have many of the assets a rebuilding team wants. Chicago is no different.
Let’s clear this up immediately: there are basically no actual Bulls players that the Cavs would both really want and likely be able to acquire.Taj Gibson (the anti-Glitch, as far as I can tell) is a significant contributor averaging about 23 minutes per game; Chicago’s not giving him up. Omer Asik could possibly be available, but he’s a base year player and thus difficult to incorporate into a deal. Plus, the Cavs already have one developmental 7’ center in CSKA Moscow’s Sasha Kaun. They’d be better served in trying to fill the other myriad holes in the roster.
That leaves James Johnson as the only available young gun on the Bulls’ bench who could fit. He’s no longer on a base year deal. He plays a position of need (SF). But unfortunately, he’s been back and forth to the D-League this year, and his numbers in the majors have not been impressive.
In light of all that, the only appealing offer for Chris Grant revolves around the draft. Chicago still owns their 2011 and 2012 first-round picks. They also hold a future first rounder from Charlotte, but I assume they’d be more prepared to deal one of their own first-round picks than the Charlotte pick because of likely draft order. Meanwhile, Chicago’s second-rounder in both 2011 and 2012 is owed to Milwaukee.
Theoretically then, the best scenario for the Cavs is to demand one of Chicago’s next two first-round picks as the centerpiece of the trade.
After mulling it over, I think Chicago’s front office can justify that pay-out. Right now the Bulls conservatively project to have one of the top five records in basketball, meaning their 2011 first-rounder will be #26 at best. The incoming draft class is weak by most accounts I’ve seen, and the danger of a lock-out grows by the day. With Parker as another serious three point threat to pair with Kyle Korver, the Bulls become a championship-level team with minimal sacrifice.
On top of the “basketball reasons” for the Bulls to pull the trigger, Parker’s status as walking salary relief adds to his trade value. His $2.9M salary comes off the books at the end of this season. This gives the Cavs some bargaining power, as keeping Parker would have clear benefits and should force the Bulls into sweetening the deal with a pick they may not otherwise want to include.
So what’s the likely trade? I can see two possibilities. One would be A.P. for Chicago’s 2011 #1, James Johnson, and Brian Scalabrine. In that case, the Cavs get Johnson as a low-risk project ($1.7M this year, with team options for the next two at about $1.8M each). They would likely buy out Scalabrine’s one-year veteran minimum contract, thereby saving some cash and allowing Scal to return to the end of the Bulls’ bench before the playoffs as an even more translucent version of early 2000s Mark Madsen.
The other possibility would be for the Cavs to replace Johnson in the deal above with Keith Bogans ($1.6M). This is the cleaner deal for the Bulls, since Bogans and Parker play the same position and roughly the same quantity of minutes. Having both players on the roster would be redundant. Bogans (career 107 Defensive Rating) is a slightly better defender than Parker (career 109 Defensive Rating), but not nearly the dead-eye from distance (35% 3P career to Parker’s 41.2% 3P career). The Bulls can live with any minor defensive drop-off to gain the serious bump in firepower.
For the Cavs, there’s little difference between the two versions of the deal. Both are a wash from a financial standpoint. Bogans’s contract for next year is a non-guaranteed $1.73M—basically identical to the $1.8M team option on James Johnson’s contract. Scalabrine would be bought out in either scenario. Bogans would probably do more for the Cavs’ quest to avoid the worst record in NBA history, whereas Johnson has more potential for the future.
But in all likelihood, neither player matters. At their cores, both versions of the deal amount to a 40% off sale on a first-round pick. (The established going rate for straight-up selling a first-rounder is $3M.) Hardly inspiring when defined that way, but still a net positive for the Cavs.
None of this matters if Parker’s back gives out again in the next two weeks, or if a third team gets involved. But if a deal does materialize strictly between the Cavs and Bulls, the over-arching point is that it’s not going to alter the Cavs’ immediate future in a significant way. However, the asset stockpile will grow, and that’s about all we can ask for at this point.
I watched last Thursday’s “Inside the NBA” over the weekend. During the course of the broadcast, I was reminded of something that I’m sure we noted at the beginning of this season (though I’m not going to spend the time trying to dig back into our archives and prove it).
Essentially, TNT’s studio team was lauding Boston’s play and discussing what a tough out they’ll be in the playoffs this spring. One of the essential components of their argument: just think of what they’ll be able to do when they have a healthy Shaquille O’Neal back on the court.
Whomever made this point was greeted with a loud round of agreement. Shaq was indeed going to be a handful in the post-season.
Compare this to the reaction of NBA analysts last year when The Big Aristotle was in a Cavs uniform. All we heard about during that time was how old Shaq had gotten, how he’d lost several steps, how he didn’t have any lift, couldn’t be depended on to deliver in a major way during the playoffs, etc.
However, with his 38th birthday looming in 34 days, Shaq has somehow been thrown into some kind of analyst rejuvenation machine. Somehow, by putting on a different uniform, he has once again become a force to be reckoned with.
I’ll admit that I haven’t been paying as much attention to the league as a whole this season as I have in previous years. My sense from what I had seen up to today was that Shaq was largely doing the same things in the same quantities with Boston as what he did for the Cavs last year. But in the interest of fairness, I decided to check the numbers tonight to be sure.
Here’s what I found:
2009-10 Shaq Vs. 2010-11 Shaq
Games Played: 53 Vs 35
Minutes Per Game: 23.4 Vs 20.9
FGA per 36 min: 13.4 Vs 9.6
FG%: 56.6 Vs 66.7
FTA per 36 min: 6.6 Vs 6.4
FT%: 49.6 Vs 55.8
Offensive Rebound %: 9.4 Vs 8.8
Defensive Rebound %: 24.0 Vs 20.2
Total Rebound %: 17.0 Vs 14.8
Assist %: 11.3 Vs 5.8
Turnover %: 15.7 Vs 17.1
Offensive Rating (Points scored per 100 possessions): 104 Vs 113
Defensive Rating (Points allowed per 100 possessions): 102 Vs 98
Fouls: 4.9 Vs 5.8
In summary, Boston Shaq shoots a much higher percentage from the floor and a slightly less terrible percentage from the stripe; is no better at getting to the line; rebounds worse (particularly defensively); assists about half as much; turns the ball over more frequently; and fouls more often than Cleveland Shaq, with a negligible difference in minutes per game (-2.5 this season).
So while his offensive rating has improved noticeably, and his defensive rating somewhat, the category by category breakdown suggests that this is not a dramatically different player than he was a year ago. Even the current upticks in his offensive and defensive ratings are likely to settle before the end of the season. Case in point: in his last 4 games, Shaq has totaled 10 points…combined.
This isn’t a column meant to bag on Shaq, who I still root for on an individual level. The point is that, once again, the same phenomenon can look a whole lot different to the sports media depending on whether it’s happening in the TD Banknorth Garden instead of The Q. Some things never change.
Tim, myself, and @joshrosen had an illuminating, albeit brief, conversation on Twitter Sunday night regarding the Browns’ apparent switch to a 4-3 Defense.
Ever since the possibility of this transformation came up, I’ve been asking myself a simple but important question.
Why?
Why do the Browns want to become a 4-3 Defense?
Is the 4-3 Defense more effective than the 3-4 Defense they have been running?
Does Pat Shurmur only understand how to coach a 4-3 Defense?
Does Tom Heckert only know how to supply players for a 4-3 Defense?
What, really, is the point?
This is a crucial question because obviously the two kinds of defenses need different types of personals. In the simplest terms, the 4-3 needs one more starting end than the 3-4. The 3-4 needs one more starting linebacker than the 4-3.
This means that a personnel overhaul is coming. Free agents will be signed. Draft picks will be used. Trades could be made.
And for what?
If the 4-3 was really more effective than the 3-4, you would think that the two teams competing in the Super Bowl this Sunday would be deploying it.
They are not.
The Browns had a bunch of weaknesses already. Now they have one more - defensive players who are not suited for the 4-3.
If Pat Shurmur only knows how to coach a 4-3, I’m not sure what to say. As a former Offensive Coordinator, ostensibly, he should understand both types of defenses. And since there isn’t going to be an Offensive Coordinator on this coaching staff at all, I don’t see how Shurmur will have any time to spend on the defense as is.
So what was it? Heckert can figure out 3-4 personnel, can’t he? He did so last year. Was Dick Jauron such a can’t miss hire that the Browns had to have him - and Jauron, we know, has a history coaching the 4-3?
This seems unlikely since they did, after all, interview other candidates.
When Tim, Josh, and I were exchanging messages about this, Tim made what I thought was a great point: “Any time a coach preferentially imposes a system w/o considering strengths of his personnel it is mistake.”
While I would hesitate to use the “always” that is buried implicitly inside of Tim’s tweet, I largely agree. If a coach is going to demand his team play a certain style or within a specific system that runs counter to the personnel he was given he better make a compelling argument for why.
Here, in Cleveland, we’re watching this movie already. Byron Scott came in and kicked out Mike Brown’s offensive and defensive systems, simply for the sake of his own familiarity. Sure, Scott has had success running the vaunted Princeton Offense before, but he did so with superstar point guards Chris Paul and Jason Kidd at the helm. A carbon copy of either one of those two point guards is not on this team.
So, I ask, what was the point of installing a new system? Because Scott liked the Princeton Offense more?
This is a classic mistake by upper management. We all have our preferences, but our preferences must serve a purpose or they won’t be effective at anything beyond making ourselves feel more comfortable.
Which, when your job is winning games, shouldn’t really be at the top of the priority list.
Ultimately, changing systems means re-education and changing personnel - and it probably means some amount of regression. In the case of the Cavs, this has actually worked out well, since it is better for the organization in the long run that the team is tanking this badly this quickly.
When it comes to the Browns, however, another year of regression is unacceptable. Otherwise, why bother firing Eric Mangini if you’re just planning on getting worse anyway?
You don’t. You fire Mangini to get better. And there is reason to wonder if switching to the 4-3 will make getting better in 2011 at least slightly more difficult for the Cleveland Browns.
Like a lot of other Cleveland sports junkies, I grow a little more frustrated every day by the Cavs. However, I’m no longer talking about the record or the lack of defense. I’m not talking about the players. I’m not even talking about the infallible Byron Scott (for once).
I’m talking about the front office.
Clearly, the team isn’t going to turn things around. At this point they’ll be lucky to avoid the worst record in modern NBA history. But I worry, because I have seen nothing in weeks that indicates the front office has accepted this unavoidable reality.
Mike and I have already argued on this blog for months that the best possible move is for the Cavs to declare the present a total loss and do anything they can to prepare for the future. By now, we’re certainly not alone, and it’s no longer a revolutionary opinion (if it ever was).
Yet every day I check for Cavs’ trade rumors, and every day I come up empty.
So for all the talk about the need to collect assets and build through the draft, I have no real evidence that the front office is making overtures to try to do that. And if they’re not, I cannot for the life of me imagine why. Because at this point, that’s their only function besides scouting the NCAA and Euroleagues—making this team worse now (and better later) by pawning off any semi-valuable players to contenders at the highest possible price.
Other people have written about how Dan Gilbert’s near-psychotic need to win faster than LeBron has already hindered the rebuilding process. The argument is that after being humiliated by James, Gilbert convinced himself that the Cavs should try to compete for the playoffs this year as a way of saving face.
Of course, I don’t have behind-the-scenes knowledge of what’s going on in the owner’s box, but I suspect that there’s a good deal of truth to this theory. All you have to do is realize that whatever the Cavs could’ve gotten for Andy over the summer would’ve been better than what they can get for him for the rest of this season, which is basically nothing.
The real problem is that I now fear that Gilbert will try to save face by holding onto would-be “stars” like Jamison and Mo in hopes of avoiding the worst record ever—without realizing that those big(ger) names are directly contributing to the reasons the team is losing as much as it is. (To prove Byron Scott is either a hypocrite, out of options, or out of touch, consider that Jamison is averaging 31.3mpg this season despite Scott’s insistence that only players who will lock down on defense will see playing time. Watching Jamison try to D up reminds me of that moment in every ghost movie where someone or something passes directly through the body of a specter and leaves all witnesses amazed and terrified.)
I admit that just because I’m not seeing rumors on the web doesn’t mean that talks aren’t happening behind closed doors. The Cavs’ case is also hurt by injuries to some of their more tradeable assets: Andy out for the season, Mo having only appeared in 34 games because of nagging ailments.
But between now and the trading deadline (which is only a month away), I sincerely hope to see strong evidence that Chris Grant and company are working the phones like mad to try to get what they can for what they have. If they’re not—or if Gilbert’s ego is holding them back in any way—this rebuilding process is going to be as delayed and bumpy as major real-world construction projects so often are. Having been up close and personal with one of those for a number of years, I hope for the city’s and the fan base’s sake that none of us have to suffer through that.
In yesterday’s post, Tim wrote some things that I didn’t wholeheartedly agree with (it happens from time to time). I’m overgeneralizing a bit, but his argument was essentially that, of the three major professional sports, the NFL is the most friendly to small market teams, citing competitive balance as his measuring stick.
There are, of course, different ways to gauge competitive balance. The easiest way - which doesn’t necessarily make it the best way - is to look at the number of different teams that have won championships over an extended period of time.
In the past thirty years then (since 1980), here is the breakdown:
NBA: 8 champions NFL: 15 champions MLB: 19 champions
As you can see, Major League Baseball - despite Tim’s assertion that its system is “out of whack” - has produced the most different champions of any of the three professional sports.
Admittedly, MLB, NBA, and NFL have gone through multiple collective bargaining agreements over this time period. MLB’s revenue sharing system has been in place since the year 2000. In those 11 years, there have been 9 different World Series Champions.
Not bad.
In relation to this, I thought it was worth looking at some poll numbers CNBC’s sports business reporter Darren Rovell tweeted earlier today. Here are the favorite sports amongst US fans, according to SportsBusiness Journal and Daily:
NFL: 31% MLB: 17% College Football: 12% Auto Racing: 7% NBA: 6%
These numbers suggest that competitive balance - as measured by percentage chance your favorite team has of winning the championship - probably has some significance when it comes to the favorite sports of Americans.
There are obviously other factors to consider, as well. Tim commented on the notion that MLB and its season, which consists of 162 3 hour games, doesn’t fit with the speed of life in the 21st century. I would agree. That may be why, according to Rovell via Harris Interactive, MLB has had the greatest drop in popularity over the past 25 years (a 6% decline).
On the contrary, America’s most popular sport, the NFL, has only 16 games in its regular season, all of which are played on the same two days of the week, each weekend, for 17 weeks (minus the odd Thursday night games). This implies that the NFL necessitates a time commitment that is right in line with what the country is willing to give. Needless to say, the NBA and its 82 game season full of 2 and a half hour games isn’t much better than baseball … except for the fact, maybe, that a large portion of the NBA season occurs during the winter when there is less to do outside in most parts of the country.
Race, I would argue, is another factor in all of this, albeit one that is less spoken about. There is certainly a school of thought that says black, tattooed basketball players - the most visible of all the pro athletes - project an image that not all white sports fans are comfortable with.
And we can’t forget the games themselves. Football has a lot of dead space, maybe as much as baseball. Possibly more. Definitely more than basketball. But when the action starts it is typically fast, violent, and unpredictable. The bar culture - and NFL Sunday Ticket - which allows people to go to one place and watch all of the games … and all of the players on their fantasy teams … simultaneously is another boon to pro football.
Side note: college football would be smart to emulate this program by allowing fantasy football, which to my knowledge, they do not.
Ultimately, I think we have to acknowledge that winning championships - and the notion of competitive balance - may not be the be all end all for the majority of sports fans in America. An easy to watch sport, without an excruciating time commitment - event programming, if you will - may be the biggest advantage of all, especially since the NFL can have an equally simplistic fantasy component that allows some of that competitive spirit to be transferred directly to the fan.
After all, might it be more compelling to see if YOU will beat your friends in fantasy football than to see if some guys you don’t know but root for anyway beat some other guys you don’t know but choose to root against?
