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.
Adam Schefter is reporting that the Philadelphia Eagles have decided to franchise Mike Vick and trade Kevin Kolb.
More importantly to us, sources are listing the Browns as one of the teams potentially interested in trading for him.
You’re not going to find a bigger proponent than me of the notion that until your NFL team has a quarterback, they’re just not important. You’re also not going to find anyone more unsure than me about whether or not Colt McCoy is the real deal at the position.
Then why am I adamantly opposed to the possibility of Holmgren & Company dealing for Kolb? Two simple reasons.
First, by almost every statistical category I’ve checked, McCoy was better than Kolb last season. From our friends at Advanced NFL Stats:
2010 COLT McCOY vs. KEVIN KOLB
Games played: 8 vs. 7
Win Probability Added: -0.18 vs -1.02
Expected Points Added: 16.5 vs 4.4
Completion %: 60.8 vs 60.8
Pass Yards per Game: 197 vs 171
INT per Game: 1.125 vs 1.0
% of Pass Attempts Over 15 yards: 20.3 vs 19.6
Adjusted Yards Per Attempt: 4.2 vs 3.8
In summary: McCoy played one more game than Kolb last season, but apart from throwing .125 more interceptions per game, was as good or better in every way.
I would highlight Completion Percentage, Percentage of Pass Attempts over 15 yards, and Adjusted Yards per Attempt in this comparison, because they illustrate that McCoy and Kolb are both West Coast style quarterbacks. In other words, both are equally well-suited toward the type of O that Pat Shurmur is going to run.
Add to the above that we were bombarded with report after report about McCoy’s leadership ability and presence in the huddle as a rookie, and I just don’t see a logical argument for the idea that Kolb is a superior quarterback.
This leads us to the second reason that I’m against the idea of a trade: compensation. If memory serves, the Eagles are supposedly asking for multiple picks, including at least one first rounder, for Kolb. The Browns need talent all over the field, with the possible exception of RB and the center to left side of the O line. Given that reality, shipping off multiple picks in order to acquire a quarterback who is not markedly better than your incumbent seems like about as good an idea as wearing capri pants to a UAW bar.
So while I’m not yet sold on McCoy, I hope the Browns brain / mustache trust recognizes that they need a talented, deep draft class more than they need another unproven quarterback.
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.
I was on the verge of writing another column for tonight, one that may have been more fun, when Minnesota Timberwolves GM David Kahn and Cleveland Cavaliers GM Chris Grant burned the phone lines down to the ground, finally, and finished a deal that had been obvious to just about everyone once it became clear that “Razor” Ramon Sessions was on the trading black.
Razor and Ryan Hollins … welcome to Cleveland.
Delonte West, we will miss you deeply. Sebastian Telfair, we hardly got to know you.
I could definitely write a long column about my appreciation for Delonte’s game, especially as I witnessed it during the 2008-9 season. I’m not going to do that, however, because I want to keep our focus on the Cavaliers on the future instead of the past.
From the Cavs’ perspective, this trade accomplishes two very important things. Number one, Sessions gives the team another creator on offense. Number two, Hollins - at 7’0” - is a center. The Cavs had either zero or one of those prior to this trade, depending on where and how Byron Scott decides to play Anderson Varejao.
Telfair’s contract expires at the end of this coming season, at $2.7M, and Delonte is owed only $500K if waived before August 3rd (as numerous other media outlets have undoubtedly already reported).
Sessions is owed $12.3M through the 2013 season. Hollins is owed $4.8M over the next two years.
In other words, for Minnesota, this was a salary dump.
(For some reason, Kahn also felt compelled to give a 2nd round pick to the Cavaliers in 2013 as well.)
As uncomfortable as I feel about the notion of Cleveland now having Milwaukee’s backcourt, circa 2007 - an irrational feeling that isn’t based on anything - I’m positive about the deal overall. Sessions did not have a very good season last year, playing in Kurt Rambis’s forced attempt at the triangle offense, but he was pretty damn good the year before he became a free agent.
Sessions isn’t a very good shooter - 51.3% TS, .3 3PA per 36 min at 18% - and is only about average in turnovers when compared with other point guards. His advanced stats, on the other hand, have been above average, especially in the aforementioned pre-free agent year, with a PER of 17.6, a WP48 of .201, and a 2 year Adjusted +/- of +1.86.
I can’t remember seeing Hollins play enough to make any kind of accurate assessment of his game. Last season, he played 16.8 minutes per game and was not even close to good by any statistical measures (11.0 PER, -.147 WP48, and a -7.91 APM).
Well, at least Hollins is a body.
Sessions is 24-years-old. Hollins is 26.
Despite the depressing nature of Hollins’s career production so far, I still believe this deal makes the Cavaliers a better team. As much as I want to believe the good Delonte is still out there and will come back one day, his situation in Cleveland was probably too strained for it to make sense to keep him in town. Good Delonte is a better player than Razor Ramon, but good Delonte may not exist anymore, and none of us will ever know what kind of stresses his mental health had on the team behind closed doors.
If we accept then that Delonte had to either be traded or released, the Cavs basically got Sessions, Hollins, and another asset - a 2nd Round Pick in 2013 - for Telfair.
It’s hard to argue with that trade, even if it may not change life in Cleveland dramatically.
So far Chris Grant and Dan Gilbert have to be applauded for not irrationally trying to jump start the post-LeBron era for the sake of making a splash, to the long term detriment of the organization. We’ll see what happens next.
If Philly is indeed dumb enough to shop the #2 pick in the draft, but the only way to get it is to absorb Elton Brand’s contract…what do you do, hotshot?
Dad, Mike, and I exchanged several emails about this topic earlier today. In our defense, it’s not entirely a hypothetical, as evidenced by this post on ESPN’s Rumor Central:
Pistons president of basketball operations Joe Dumars spoke to the Detroit media Tuesday about a bunch of topics including making the team tough again. Terry Foster of The Detroit News has a trade in mind that could achieve Dumars’ wish, but it would require him to make a daring move.
Foster writes: “The 76ers are willing to unload the No. 2 pick in the draft along with 6-foot-9 power forward bust Elton Brand. … Brand could be what the doctor ordered for the Pistons. But Brand will make $15.6 million next season, $17.1 the following year and $18.2 million in 2013. That’s a lot of cash, but it would be a bold and daring move. And here’s how: Dumars should offer the 76ers the No. 7 pick in the draft, Richard Hamilton and Jason Maxiell for the No. 2 pick and Brand.”
Obviously, there’s no mention of the Cavs in either of those two paragraphs. But the implication seems to be that Philly’s top priority is getting out from under the massive financial boulder that is the next 3 years of Brand’s contract—even if that means giving up a potential franchise player in Turner (or DeMarcus Cousins, or Derrick Favors).
If the Cavs were to attempt to chase a similar deal, the key components would most likely be Antawn Jamison + Delonte for Brand and the #2 pick. Since both the Cavs and Sixers are considered over the cap for next season already, trade regulations would allow this exact deal to take place with no further players or cash changing hands. (For any budding capologists out there, the reason is that the total combined 2010-11 salary for Jamison ($13.4MM) and Delonte ($4.5MM, but only 500K guaranteed) is less than 125% + 100K of Brand’s 2010-11 salary of $15.6MM. As long as that’s the case with two teams over the cap, everything is golden.)
In theory, Jamison’s contract would actually be better for the Sixers in the long term than Rip Hamilton’s. Jamison has $28MM total remaining on his current contract, but the deal expires at the end of the 2011-12 season. Hamilton, on the other hand, has $37.5MM total remaining, and the deal doesn’t expire until the end of the 2012-2013 season.
Further, if Philly’s main concern is the cap rather than talent, Delonte can be instantly cut for a savings of $4M and no salary obligation for future seasons. Maxiell, on the other hand, is owed $5M per year for the next three seasons.
In sum, the Cavs’ version of this deal would save the Sixers about $24M total ($9.5M on Hamilton + $14.5MM Maxiell) in comparison to the rumored Pistons’ version of the deal. For a cash-strapped franchise looking to build around their young talent, that figure is nothing to take lightly.
Now, am I entirely convinced that this is a viable option for the Cavs? Not really. The big advantage that the Pistons have at this hypothetical bargaining table is the #7 pick. Though it’s still highly questionable in my mind, the Sixers’ choosing to move down 5 spots for the opportunity to unload Brand isn’t a totally indefensible decision. However, that deal gets decidedly dicier if instead of moving to #7, they move out of the first round of the draft completely by trading with the Cavs (assuming Ferry couldn’t rope in a 3rd team to give up a reasonably high draft pick this year).
But assuming Ferry manages to construct such a deal, is the financial body blow (pause) of absorbing Elton Brand worth it? After considering it, I’m convinced that the answer is ‘yes.’
At first glance, this would seem to go against my post the other night about how the Cavs need to stop thinking so much about buying their way to a title. However, my main issue with that strategy’s implementation is that they’ve spent the past few years trying to buy the title with old guys. At least overpaying for Turner would get the team a young franchise building block, and potentially a young star. (I also like the fact that regardless of whether or not LeBron stays, Turner would have the opportunity to become the most popular player in franchise history just because he went to Ohio State.) In a way, it would be a do-over for the front office’s inability or unwillingness to trade up last year to get Steph Curry, which, right now, looks like a major gaffe if the potential was indeed there.
Remember, the Sixers were one of the two teams with whom the Cavs had extensive trade talks but no trades last year (GSW being the other). As we saw with the Shaq trade, deals discussed in the previous season do have the opportunity to get resurrected in the off-season.
Is it a long shot? Absolutely. But is it impossible? No.
But on further review, maybe the real question is how many of you think I’m crazy for getting excited enough about the possibility that I write this post in the first place. In that case, consider the Comments section your firing range.
