Trade Talk
The NBA trade deadline is February 23, 44 days away. Lots of talk will take place between now and then about upgrading rosters for playoff runs, dumping salaries to rebuild in the summer, or in the case of less desirable locations, dumping expiring contracts for players with long term deals.
Now the fun starts just as the Magic enter a period where their hopes of the playoffs will either become realistic or not. Unhappy campers in the NBA include: Artest (insane), Garnett (single best player in the NBA), Paul Pierce (great player), Earl Watson (good backup PG), Ben Gordon (Bulls say no), Drew Gooden (looking for team 4!), Vitaly Potapenko and the old half of the Knicks roster.
Looking at the Magic:
Expiring Contracts (7 guys, at least 5 and probably 6 won't be with team next season):
Kelvin Cato $8.64 million. 6-11 C with no motivation. Clearly not in Magic's future plans but may be hard to get another team to take him without giving up picks or other value.
Tony Battie $5.2 million. 6-11 lightweight C. Try's hard, but undersized for a starting C. Probably not in Magic's long term plans.
Pat Garrity $3.2 million. Needs to go to a team featuring slashing guards that can pass out to the open man on the perimeter, or a Walton type center who can hit the open man. His game is now completely reduced to standing on the perimeter waiting to get the ball and shoot. The Magic are not a premier passing team so he has no game here. He will get another job somewhere. There is a secret NBA rule that requires a good looking white man at the end of the bench.
Bo Outlaw $1.139 million. Little known fact. He wasn't actually signed by the basketball operations people but instead by the corporate relations people. Fans love him and love to get their pictures taken with him before games. Unfortunately he can't play the game anymore.
Stacey Augmon $1.139 million. Once a world class defender, now just a world class a-hole. Nice job by Hockey-Guy signing this cretin to 2 years.
Mario Kasun $641K. 7'1" and lots of tatoos. Supposed to have a future, but the Magic are keeping it a secret. Restricted free agent. Good second half usually gets these kind of guys the max exception contract which would cause the Magic to likely lose him. Bad second half likely means the Magic don't want him. Go figure, it probably makes him likely trade bait.
Travis Diener $398K 2nd Rnd Pick, restricted free agent after contract expires. Hasn't set the world on fire, so the Magic can resign him if they want in the summer. But hey, he's another one of those white guys that looks good on the end of the bench.
Player Option (potential summer loss)
DeShawn Stevenson $2.75 million, $3.0 million player option next year. Straight to NBA from highschool and only now coming into his own as a defensive minded starter. Good role player on a team of scorers. At 24 he could potentially get a five year offer if he turns down the option.
Big Contracts
Steve-o Magic owe him $48.5 million after this year. That's a lot of cabbage for a ball hogging PG or too-short SG. And everyone here thinks his t-shirt going on sale is not significant...
Grant. $16.9 million next year. Oh my. Came into the league as the "next Jordan" who was going keep Detroit at the top of the league standings after a brillian career at Duke. He did neither and some folks started calling him soft, but he sure sold a lot of Sprite and looked good doing it. After 14 playoff games in six years at Detroit we know the rest of the story. He must have pissed off some voodoo doctor on the way to the Hall of Fame.
Young Bait
Jameer Magic own him for a min of 2 more years. Is he really 6' tall? National Player of the Year in college. Needs to learn to pass the ball at the NBA level. If he does, he'll be great. If he won't then his value won't go much higher than it already is.
Howard -- go ahead trade him. Then burn down TDW and wave as the team heads off to KC or some other tumbleweed town.
Leftovers -- 2 easily replaceable role type players
Tur-ko-glu I'm pretty sure we had this guy once before when he was going by the name "Giricek" But who can tell.
Dooling -- Hey, Magic drafted him and got rid of him once already so whose to say it won't happen again. Kind of like the coach.
Spanish Guy -- They say he's having a great season. And my man Otis still swears they did the right thing and wouldn't change what they did even if they knew what was going to happen. He's available for the 2009-2010 season (unless he sees his shadow again.)
Now the fun starts just as the Magic enter a period where their hopes of the playoffs will either become realistic or not. Unhappy campers in the NBA include: Artest (insane), Garnett (single best player in the NBA), Paul Pierce (great player), Earl Watson (good backup PG), Ben Gordon (Bulls say no), Drew Gooden (looking for team 4!), Vitaly Potapenko and the old half of the Knicks roster.
Looking at the Magic:
Expiring Contracts (7 guys, at least 5 and probably 6 won't be with team next season):
Kelvin Cato $8.64 million. 6-11 C with no motivation. Clearly not in Magic's future plans but may be hard to get another team to take him without giving up picks or other value.
Tony Battie $5.2 million. 6-11 lightweight C. Try's hard, but undersized for a starting C. Probably not in Magic's long term plans.
Pat Garrity $3.2 million. Needs to go to a team featuring slashing guards that can pass out to the open man on the perimeter, or a Walton type center who can hit the open man. His game is now completely reduced to standing on the perimeter waiting to get the ball and shoot. The Magic are not a premier passing team so he has no game here. He will get another job somewhere. There is a secret NBA rule that requires a good looking white man at the end of the bench.
Bo Outlaw $1.139 million. Little known fact. He wasn't actually signed by the basketball operations people but instead by the corporate relations people. Fans love him and love to get their pictures taken with him before games. Unfortunately he can't play the game anymore.
Stacey Augmon $1.139 million. Once a world class defender, now just a world class a-hole. Nice job by Hockey-Guy signing this cretin to 2 years.
Mario Kasun $641K. 7'1" and lots of tatoos. Supposed to have a future, but the Magic are keeping it a secret. Restricted free agent. Good second half usually gets these kind of guys the max exception contract which would cause the Magic to likely lose him. Bad second half likely means the Magic don't want him. Go figure, it probably makes him likely trade bait.
Travis Diener $398K 2nd Rnd Pick, restricted free agent after contract expires. Hasn't set the world on fire, so the Magic can resign him if they want in the summer. But hey, he's another one of those white guys that looks good on the end of the bench.
Player Option (potential summer loss)
DeShawn Stevenson $2.75 million, $3.0 million player option next year. Straight to NBA from highschool and only now coming into his own as a defensive minded starter. Good role player on a team of scorers. At 24 he could potentially get a five year offer if he turns down the option.
Big Contracts
Steve-o Magic owe him $48.5 million after this year. That's a lot of cabbage for a ball hogging PG or too-short SG. And everyone here thinks his t-shirt going on sale is not significant...
Grant. $16.9 million next year. Oh my. Came into the league as the "next Jordan" who was going keep Detroit at the top of the league standings after a brillian career at Duke. He did neither and some folks started calling him soft, but he sure sold a lot of Sprite and looked good doing it. After 14 playoff games in six years at Detroit we know the rest of the story. He must have pissed off some voodoo doctor on the way to the Hall of Fame.
Young Bait
Jameer Magic own him for a min of 2 more years. Is he really 6' tall? National Player of the Year in college. Needs to learn to pass the ball at the NBA level. If he does, he'll be great. If he won't then his value won't go much higher than it already is.
Howard -- go ahead trade him. Then burn down TDW and wave as the team heads off to KC or some other tumbleweed town.
Leftovers -- 2 easily replaceable role type players
Tur-ko-glu I'm pretty sure we had this guy once before when he was going by the name "Giricek" But who can tell.
Dooling -- Hey, Magic drafted him and got rid of him once already so whose to say it won't happen again. Kind of like the coach.
Spanish Guy -- They say he's having a great season. And my man Otis still swears they did the right thing and wouldn't change what they did even if they knew what was going to happen. He's available for the 2009-2010 season (unless he sees his shadow again.)
posted by WeRDevos @ 2:06 PM
3 Comments:
At 8:18 PM,
WeRDevos said…
I'm just (sort of) kidding about Bo. He's almost as popular as Darrell was and he does get his picture taken a lot before games. He just never plays.
I'm too lazy to find the Otis Smith quote where he says they wouldn't do anything different. But it's out there.
Check out the link under Grant's name. It's pretty funny.
At 10:58 AM,
WeRDevos said…
Pete,
Mostly my views with a lot of common sense thrown in plus reading a lot of NBA material out there. The salary info is taken from HoopsHype.com salaries section.
And yes, I am constantly scouring the web looking for tidbits about the Magic that both back-up and challenge my view of the team. One of the challenges I have is that they are so boring that there is little writing about them.
At 11:01 AM,
WeRDevos said…
Looking at this post from a distance a thought strikes me.
I put the odds at better than even that when training camp opens in 2007 (1.5 seasons from now) it's very likely that only Howard and Nelson will be on the roster.
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