Artest Trade Proposal Flops: Did Cuban-led Mavs Miss Again?
Ron Artest might still head to another team before the 2009-2010 season begins but it looks certain now that the Dallas Mavericks will not be that squad.
The Dallas Morning News reported today, citing an anonymous league source, that the Mavs rejected a Josh Howard-Ron Artest swap. The team offered Brandon Bass and Jerry Stackhouse, but the Sacramento Kings were uninterested in a deal unless it involved Dallas' one-time All-Star.
If Artest lands in Los Angeles, where it appears he wants to play, and the Lakers become an even better team, it will be difficult to place this botched trade on the weighted Mark Cuban judging scale.
Exchanging the young Howard for the disgruntled Artest would have been a tricky prospect. Howard called a Dallas talk show hours before his team's most important contest of the season, a must-win game three against the New Orleans Hornets, to discuss his doobie rolling diversion.
Artest was a key assailant in one of the ugliest brawls in sports history.
I cringe when I write the words. "Malice at the Palace."
One guy might get you high. The other will sock his fist in your gut if you look at him the wrong way. Both players seek an elusive championship ring and both have the talent and intelligence to win one.
What mars both players' records is they haven't. Maybe they never will.
A change of scenery might help both players get their acts together. Basketball skill never compensates for a lack of composure.
One look at Artest and you can see the ferocious defender, dangerous scorer and sturdy athlete who averaged 20 points per game last season and has maintained All-Star numbers throughout his controversial career.
He looks more like an NFL linebacker than an NBA small forward, and at a bulky 248 pounds, a conservative weight estimate in my view, he could probably make the sporting switch. When he commits to himself and his team, he runs on both ends with equal vigor.
At 6-7, he has the height to create matchup nightmares for opposing defenders without losing his agility to raid the rim. With explosive range that stretches behind the arc, he is a complete court terror. He is also an off the court terror and that may have crossed Cuban and Donnie Nelson's mind.
Howard screws up but you will never mistake him for Artest. The Wake Forest product had a tough year. His best friend on the team, 25-year-old point guard Devin Harris, was traded for 35-year-old point guard Jason Kidd. Howard and Kidd never meshed as most NBA observers expected they would.
He played his best basketball of last year when the Mavs' franchise star Dirk Nowitzki was sidelined with a foot injury. He dealt with family tragedy and an All-Star snub that clearly deflated and enraged his ego.
His coach, the same one that accompanied him, Nowitzki and Harris to the team's only NBA Finals appearance, lost favor and patience with Howard. Avery Johnson exhibited little interest in waiting for his second option to collect his head.
Howard, like the rest of his teammates, used Johnson's impatience and lofty expectations as a reason to tune him out.
Nowitzki deserves as much blame for the Mavericks' three-peat playoff futility as Howard, and Jason Terry and Stackhouse should also join the blame party. But, Howard gets more blame because people expect more from him.
After teaming with Nowitzki in 2006 to eliminate the defending champion San Antonio Spurs and then the high-octane Phoenix Suns, Howard was beginning to look like one of the best 29th draft picks in NBA history.
He still has a chance to become that but not in Dallas. Not under Cuban's watch. Not on a roster that will be remembered for its colossal failures more than its franchise-first triumphs.
It will be hard for history to put the Mavs' 67-win season in a different sentence than the compelling, yet embarrassing first round ouster to the eighth-seeded Golden State Warriors. I don't think new hire Rick Carlisle can breathe life into a disenchanted roster with such depressing playoff memories.
This is one team that cannot keep its core intact, and yet, it seems that is what Cuban wants to do.
Mavericks management spent the team's entire mid level exception to re-acquire reserve center DeSagana Diop, one piece thrown into the questionable Kidd trade. It's hard to blame the Mavs for hanging onto the recent past, when it includes a Finals appearance and much-deserved respect.
Given the choice of the rocky Nowitzki era or the caustic, vomit-inducing 90s, which would you choose, Mavs fans? Unless you are masochistic and enjoy incessant losing, I will assume you picked the former.
Howard is no softie, as Johnson had to repeatedly ask him to quit roughing up other players in his first year with the team. The last two years have also shown that he is not the fierce locker room presence that will toughen up an almost champion and remove the 'almost.'
Howard knows a few ugly tricks from the Bruce Bowen defensive handbook but he also wants his fans to see him as an incredible success story and a nice guy. Angry psychopaths don't smoke weed, right?
Who can hate the guy as a human being after viewing his journey from leg brace victim to complete basketball player during a 2006 Finals halftime segment? Scouts once anticipated Howard would fall near the end of the 2003 draft's first round because he had no specialty.
He was too balanced to prove an attractive sell to many teams but the Mavericks bit and should never regret doing so. He helped the Mavs, for two seasons at least, give the crosstown Cowboys some competition for front page bragging rights.
How many stories can a newspaper write about a third string quarterback, anyway?
The Kings gambled on Artest and shipped off sharpshooter Peja Stojakovic to Indiana. The Malouf brothers, overseeing the trade but not soliciting it, knew he would give the Kings a chance to make another playoff run. Now Houston Rockets coach Rick Adelman convinced Artest to shut up enough that his team earned a playoff berth.
The Kings' 2006 first round series against the Spurs may be the only reason Bonzi Wells still has a job. Anywhere.
While the Rockets worry about Yao Ming further injuring his fragile feet, any team that takes on Artest should worry about him injuring the locker room.
Locker room contamination is the worst of the basketball cancers. One reason no team has pulled the trigger on an Artest deal: his contamination faculty often trumps his desire to become a non-disruptive, invaluable teammate.
In Dallas, Artest could cure Nowitzki's nice guy complex. He cannot change the German superstar's personality but he could teach him a few things about visible anger. When used the right way, it can be a basketball gift.
When used the wrong way, it can lead Commissioner David Stern to enforce an unreasonable dress code and a silly rule that fans who just paid $4 for water cannot keep the bottle cap, even though their seats do not have cup holders.
The Bass and Stackhouse deal makes financial sense for both clubs--Stackhouse makes about $7 million, Bass makes about $800,000 and Artest makes more than $7 million--but it leaves Sacramento temporarily on the short end.
Stackhouse averaged a career low 10 points per game last season and has devolved into an increasingly hesitant shooter. That does not bode well for a guy who earns his paycheck to do just that.
Bass was the team's toughest player last season. In a key reserve role, he provided grit, pursued loose balls and rebounds and found easy scoring opportunities at the rim with his terrific movement without the ball.
Those two players, however, do not equal the always under repair talent skyscraper that is Artest.
A straight-up Howard for Artest swap would be an equal risk for both sides.
Where does this trade refusal rank in a Cuban era that includes letting Steve Nash walk away to earn MVP trophies with the Suns and paying Michael Finley to win a championship with the Spurs?
When the deal involves a wrecked marijuana smoker needing a career about face and an alleged wife and dog abuser who needs to shed his reputation as a thuggish egomaniac? Hard to tell.
Why Baseball Fails to Respect All-Star Tradition
It's a tired argument now: Bud Selig is screwing up the All-Star Game by allowing it to decide home field advantage in the World Series. This tired argument should not be put to bed.
Eight sluggers—Lance Berkman, Josh Hamilton, Vladimir Guerrero, Grady Sizemore, Dan Uggla, Chase Utley, Evan Longoria, Ryan Braun, and Justin Morneau—will compete in the 22nd Home Run Derby tonight at Yankee Stadium.
A pair of squads packed with baseball's best and most popular will then hit the field tomorrow for the league's 79th All-Star Game.
Selig decided almost five years ago that this supposedly meaningless "Midsummer Classic" should mean something. He did it after the National League and American League finished the 2002 contest in a 7-7 tie. When both squads ran out of pitchers, the two managers, Joe Torre and Bob Brenly, decided to end the evening.
Call me a traditionalist or a starstruck idiot, but I prefer that my All-Star games consist of nothing but showboating and more showboating.
I'll take a competitive game if I can get one, but the priority, as it should be, is watching ultra-talented players show me, the unathletic viewer, everything my body will never allow me to do.
Consider it the chief reason I will always tune in to the NBA's All-Star Game, even if people think it has become a vainglorious, trite photo opportunity.
An All-Star contest is a chance to comically celebrate that athletes are overpaid and over appreciated. What Selig did in 2003 was attempt to hide that Alex Rodriguez will make more money in his career than maybe 100 dedicated elementary school teachers might make in 10 lifetimes.
He saw that ratings were shrinking and took that to mean that people wanted him to give the summer classic a facelift.
As ratings continue nosediving—last year's game drew 12 million viewers, the lowest in league history—it appears Selig misread the situation.
Home field advantage is sacred and should not be decided in a game that was created as an escape from regular competition. It also should not be decided based on whether the year is even or odd.
The team with the best record entering the World Series should win home field advantage. Why else do you strive for a first place finish?
Shouldn't such an apparent necessity—road records for baseball teams this year are comparable to the atrocious ones NBA teams compiled in the playoffs—be awarded by merit and not who won a glorified showboating contest?
That's what the summer classic is and always has been. When Babe Ruth and Mickey Mantle played and when Sandy Koufax pitched and when Hank Aaron played—it was a showboating contest.
Selig disgraced the art of escapism when he launched the ad campaign, "This Time it Counts." This game never had to count, and as many analysts write gloomy editorials about why this once TV smash is now playing second fiddle to C.S.I. reruns, Selig should realize his error.
David Stern has the propensity to ruin almost anything, but given the right talent (think Jordan, Michael), he oversaw professional basketball's greatest, most watched era. The NBA's public relations effectiveness has dipped in the last decade but the zest and relaxed air of its All-Star Game has not.
Stern sees to it that fans vote in the starters and that those players grab plenty of camera time. He lets the 30 coaches fill out the rest of the rosters, and since head coaches know a thing or two about players, they usually get it right.
This year's MLB game features the usual suspects in Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez. Then, there's pitcher Cliff Lee of the Cleveland Indians, four months ago competing for a roster spot, now starting for the American League.
It is unlikely that LeBron James and Yao Ming will ever risk being reserves, even if they are injured, as long as they play. They are popular enough to be virtually automatic starters. Brandon Roy and David West will always have spots when they are merited.
Some players deserving of All-Star selection get snubbed, but that's life, so get over it.
When Manu Ginobili erupted for multiple 40 point games after the All-Star break, how many coaches likely regretted not voting him as a reserve? The answer: anyone with eyes and a brain.
Enough Cincinnati Reds fans stuffed ballot boxes in 1957 that only one of the eight starters played for another team.
Instead of encouraging fans of other teams to stuff ballot boxes, then commissioner Ford Frick stripped fans of their right to vote and mandated that players, coaches, and managers select the rosters.
Selig wisely recognizes the necessity of allowing a fan vote. Fans allow a sport to survive, not coaches or managers. All the talent in the world matters not if no one pays to see it. Handing average spectators the power to choose who will start is vindicating.
For those supporting annually mediocre teams...(clears throat)...er, the Houston Astros, such a process allows Lance Berkman and Roy Oswalt to attract some of the attention they might get if they played on a championship contender each season.
Sure, managers would ensure that Berkman and Oswalt made the roster if they were weaving spectacular seasons, but that would leave me, the fan, in the cold.
That is the worst condemnation a sport can receive. Leaving fans in the cold is like considering Taco Bell suitable diet food.
Those who complain that Yao Ming starts every year in the NBA game because people in China clog the Internet and vote should get off their fannies and vote.
If that many people in China care enough to vote, it means at least a sizeable portion of them care enough to watch. Never forget that players need fans as much as fans need them.
That's why this sports fan would rather see players save the hustle for the playoffs.
All-star contests allow us to appreciate a league's talent without staunch team loyalties binding the engagement. NL vs. AL and East vs. West pales in comparison to Yankees-Red Sox or Spurs-Lakers. I will stop watching the moment these games serve any other purpose.
American League Manager Terry Francona can talk about "preserving history" and "respecting the game" all he wants. Fine.
Baseball's summer classic can do both without dangling a coveted prize at the end of its rope.
This will be the last All-Star contest played in the current Yankee Stadium. Many people called it "The House That Babe Built" or, those who bemoaned its short right field, dubbed it "The House They Built for Babe."
The storied venue has hosted 37 World Series and the most contentious boxing match in history. Adolf Hitler implored a German fighter to defeat a black one. Fans faced a heavy dilemma then.
The complex underwent a two year remodeling beginning in 1973. That redesigned bowl of history will be retired after this season.
That should be enough for Selig but it isn't.
His summer classic meant a lot more before 2003. Then he decided it didn't mean enough and that's when he screwed it up.
This time it counts—against Major League Baseball.
Dallas Mavericks: Thin Free Agent Class Tests Texas Triangle
Writer’s note: this is the third of a three part series on critical offseasons for the San Antonio Spurs, Houston Rockets and Dallas Mavericks.The underwhelming, overpriced free agent class continues to dwindle and no teams are feeling the pain more than the trio of Texas elitists.
The San Antonio Spurs lost their top target Corey Maggette to the Golden State Warriors, in what can only be described as a boneheaded basketball decision by the coveted swing man.
He ditched mid-level offers from the last two NBA champions to join a lottery team with no point guard. He left one team that didn't make the playoffs to join another. And this guy said he was willing to take a pay cut to win?
The Warriors were already a deeply flawed, one-dimensional team with Baron Davis. Now that Davis has all but exited to head for a stripped Los Angeles Clippers team, the Warriors will be a deeply flawed, one-dimensional team without a point guard.
Maggette's decision likely had nothing to do with basketball, and if it did, the guy is an idiot. Maggette will score points in Don Nelson's system but without a starting facilitator to run the offense, they will be tougher points.
The Warriors have yet to sign free agent center Andres Biedrins and should worry about whether Monta Ellis is in a New York state of mind.
Why did Maggette ditch the chance to help a proven champion win again to play with the dysfunctional Warriors? $50 million over five years and the opportunity to live in the beautiful Bay Area with one of the country's most agreeable climates might have something to do with it.
His decision in a playing sense sits somewhere on the level of O.J. Simpson agreeing to write a book about how he would have killed his wife, "had he done it."
On a personal level, Maggette did what most people would do. He took a mound of cash to live within driving distance of the Golden Gate Bridge.
Hey, if someone paid me $50 million to live near that scenery, I would grab it in a heartbeat. And, who says you can't miss the playoffs for the second year in a row with style?
Elton Brand surprised many, including this stumped writer, by agreeing to an $80 million deal with the Philadelphia 76ers. He makes the Sixers an elite Eastern Conference team on paper, sure, but few expected him to abandon playing with Baron Davis, whom Brand called to join the Clippers.
What is Davis thinking now about that verbal agreement?
With Mickael Pietrus gone to Orlando and Carlos Delfino already mulling a return to Europe or the Detroit Pistons, that limits the options for the three Texas teams that need to win now.
The Spurs, Rockets and Mavericks did not fill any major roster holes on draft night, and these teams' stars' salaries eat up valuable cap space.
The Tracy McGrady and Yao Ming pairing has produced zero playoff series wins for the Rockets, and nagging injuries suggest an already narrow championship window is now closing at warp speed.
The Spurs, still the best of the trio, managed to win a Game Seven on the road for the first time in franchise history but stumbled badly in the conference finals against the Lakers.
Each of these squads can spend between $5 and $6 million, using their mid-level exception, and have few trade-able assets not already part of the franchise's immediate plans. That estimated number didn't change much when the league released the salary cap space available for each of the 30 teams on Tuesday night.
Donnie Nelson, Daryl Morey and R.C. Buford will swelter this summer. To win a title next season, each general manager will need to turn that sweat into an impactful free agent signing.
Trouble in Texas? It looks that way.
DALLAS MAVERICKSIf you are looking for an enduring image of the discombobulated Dallas Mavericks, perhaps the above picture is your best bet.
Just how screwed the Mavericks are depends on whether Jason Kidd can still play, and more importantly, whether a core that has participated in three of the worst playoff flame-outs in NBA history can ever recover from such futility.
The Mavs' troublesome fall from Western Conference champion to first round punching bag began with a blown 13-point lead. With less than eight minutes remaining in game three of the 2006 NBA Finals, the Mavs looked ready to seize the commanding 3-0 lead from which no team has ever recovered. Heat fans were booing at the prospect, and Dwyane Wade had not lived up to his star billing.
Maybe the Mavericks started planning that championship parade too early and jinxed the franchise's lone Finals appearance. Whatever the reason, the Mavs let Wade wake up, and what happened after the Mavs choked away that game, should haunt Dallas fans for years.
It was easy then to blame losing four straight games on Bennett Salvatore's inconsistent whistle in the pivotal contest. That was not a foul, was it? The refs didn't have to acknowledge that premature timeout by Josh Howard, did they?
Maybe the Mavs needed to lose badly twice more in the playoffs to prove to themselves and the fans that a foul call disparity had little to do with their troubles.
What the team has:
+A first ballot half of fame point guard who can still play, given the right system
+A should be hall of fame power forward, the best shooting big man since Larry Bird
+A roster that can compete for, but not win a championship
+A starting center that can notch 15 and 15 or 5 and 1, depending on whether he has his head in the game
+A continuation of the most competitive era in franchise history, certainly better than those losing seasons in the 90s, when the best prospect was losing to Minnesota in the last place race
+A low draft pick in Shan Foster that team management believes can make the roster and immediately contribute
Team needs:
+A reliable scorer with an attack the basket first mentality
+Less streaky jump shooters
+A better center tandem than DeSagana Diop and Erick Dampier
and
+Less streaky jump shooters
Chief concerns:
+The core of Dirk Nowitzki, Josh Howard, Jason Terry, Jerry Stackhouse and Dampier will forever be associated with three playoff flops
+When things turn sour for the Mavs in a game, those core players quit going to the basket and start heaving moronic jump shots - how else do you explain them losing to the Warriors?
+No identity, whatsoever
+The team has reportedly spent its entire mid level exception, more than $5 million, bringing back Diop
+The Mavs had eight players under contract at season's end, with gaping roster holes, and the signings of Diop and Gerald Green do little to change the team's current fortunes
+The team owes $20 million to its hall of fame point guard next season and gave up potentially valuable draft picks and excessive cash to land him
+The team's most reliable scorer, despite incorporating some low post moves into his game, will always be more comfortable as a streak shooting seven footer.
The Mavs must answer the toughest question of any NBA team. Do you blow up the
only core that has taken you to the NBA Finals or do you risk trading one of those players for an All-Star that might not fit?
The former Supersonics will stink next year. Of that, most people are certain. Knowing that, Oklahoma City fans should carry low expectations.
Mavs fans have no idea what to expect from this squad. The team won 67 regular season games and knocked off a defending champion in the last four years. In that span, it also lost perhaps the two best coaches the franchise will ever have, let a franchise player walk and then paid him to win a championship with a state rival, and watched as a former point guard cashed a bigger check in Arizona and grabbed two MVP trophies.
Mark Cuban possesses the spunk and personality to be a great owner, but his track record says otherwise. The last three years, the highest paid player on Cuban's roster, Michael Finley, was playing for another team, the San Antonio Spurs. No argument can justify letting Steve Nash depart and a five game flame-out against the Hornets makes the Jason Kidd trade look increasingly stupid.
The Mavs traded away Devin Harris, a young, promising point guard, who already led them to the NBA Finals, to score a 35-year-old point guard who had fallen out of favor with a former Finalist.
They were not going to win a championship with Harris in the next two seasons nor were they going to win one with Kidd. A desperate PR move to put fans in the seats at the American Airlines Center? You decide.
The Mavs tried last season to replicate the Spurs approach to the regular season. They accepted losing to lottery-bound and underachieving Eastern and Western Conference teams in November in hopes of saving their best basketball for April and May.
The Mavs failed miserably, as they had no championship trophy on which to fall back, while the Spurs recovered from a rocky January enough to earn another conference finals berth.
At the heart of the team's struggles may be its lacking identity. I remember watching a halftime interview between Jason Terry and Michelle Tafoya in Los Angeles. The Mavs led the Lakers by 10 points and Terry attributed the team's success to playing "Maverick basketball."
What the hell is Maverick basketball? Does anybody know?
I didn't buy the Mavs as a championship team when they were plowing through a 67-win season because I thought they were too flexible.
They won so many games in so many ways that it seemed the team's over-adaptability would bite them in the playoffs. When the confused, talented and top-seeded Mavs faced the specialist, run-and-gun Warriors, Avery Johnson's squad had no idea how to handle itself.
The team tried outshooting the streaky Warriors and lost in six games as a result. Hate Johnson and celebrate his firing all you want Mavs fans, but he gave them a one-year identity good enough to send them past the pesky Spurs.
For one season, the Mavs committed to being a better defensive squad and used stops to create quicker offense. A year later, in the fight of their lives, against a team that made the playoffs on the last day, they looked like lost, abandoned puppies.
That's when the players began tuning out Johnson and everything crumbled.
Rick Carlisle has promised that this core can win a championship and he wouldn't be coaching if he didn't believe Kidd can get them to the Finals. It was clear Cuban wanted a coach who believed that, to replace the disgruntled Johnson who didn't.
Does the signing of Green, a high-flying dunker who has yet to get it on the NBA level, and Diop, whose five minutes of defense against Duncan in a game seven overtime may be his greatest contribution, get you excited?
The Mavs backed themselves into this corner when rumors of the Kidd trade surfaced. The Mavs could not have risked bringing Harris back after making it public that they didn't think he could lead them to further success.
The Mavs are competitive with any team in the NBA but not championship material. One sweltering offseason will decide if that's enough.
Houston Rockets: Thin Free Agent Class Tests Texas Triangle
Writer’s note: this is the second of a three part series on critical off-seasons for the San Antonio Spurs, Houston Rockets and Dallas Mavericks.
The latest class of NBA bachelors looking for an expensive marriage with a new team underwhelms at best. Two of the biggest names, Baron Davis and Gilbert Arenas, appear to be off the market.
Elton Brand faces a tough decision: re-sign with the Los Angeles Clippers for about $75 million and play alongside Baron Davis, or head to Davis' former team, the Golden State Warriors, and cash an eye-popping $90 million check.
Since the possibility of Brand heading to Philadelphia seems dead, his landing spot figures to make a softer impact in a rugged Western Conference. Whether the All-Star power forward decides to stay in LA or pack for the Bay Area, he will anchor a roster full of questions.
The Warriors now need a starting point guard and the Clippers need a bench with more than Tim Thomas and a few prospects on it.
The teams that won this year's youngster-filled NBA Draft traded unproven freshmen to get old guys who can play. That would be Kevin McHale's Minnesota Timberwolves, who landed the most undervalued guard/forward hybrid in the NBA. Who knew that McHale would devise a way to pair Mike Miller with Kevin Love and Al Jefferson?
The Portland Trail Blazers stole the evening again and stomped all over it. The Blazers landed the draft's second or third best point guard in Jerryd Bayless, depending on who you ask, and managed to snatch explosive reserve Ike Diogu in a trade.
Most mock rookie of the year lists slot Greg Oden at the top and Spanish star Rudy Fernandez in third place. Nate McMillan gets to mesh all of that talent with All-Star Brandon Roy and LaMarcus Aldridge. Who doesn't envy the Blazers' position as a possible future powerhouse?
I can name three teams, and they hail from the same hot and humid state.
The Blazers will make a run at the seventh and eighth playoff spots next season, but they are not ready to contend. Adding Miller makes the Timberwolves a playoff prospect—but Randy Whittman's young bunch has a long route to a championship.
That arduous path includes multiple bumper-to-bumper, three-hour traffic jams, torn-up stretches of highway, faulty directions and a half tank of gas with no filling station for 1000 miles.
A productive big man next to beastly Big Al, with Miller and Corey Brewer: so, what's the problem?
Let's just say Minnesota fans will not see a championship Love the next few seasons.
Many teams will spend this summer trying to add some veteran toughness to their soft and inexperienced rookie squads. How much can you expect a guy with one year of college to do in the NBA? What happens when 90 percent of the players on the team fit that undesirable mold?
The Supersonics happen, and while Oklahoma City fans inherit a 41-year-old team, surely they would prefer not to revisit last year's chilling, gruesome 20-62 campaign in Seattle.
The three Western Conference elitists in the Texas triangle have the opposite problem. The Spurs, Rockets and Mavericks need to win now. This Texas trio did not fill any major roster holes on draft night, and these teams' stars' salaries eat up valuable cap space.
The Blazers can afford to think five years down the road, as can the Timberwolves. The Mavs should wonder if 35-year-old Jason Kidd will still play in five years. He won't.
The Tracy McGrady and Yao Ming pairing has produced zero playoff series wins for the Rockets, and nagging injuries suggest an already narrow championship window is now closing at warp speed.
The Spurs, still the best of the trio, managed to win a game seven on the road for the first time in franchise history but stumbled badly in the conference finals against the Lakers.
Each of these squads can spend between $5 and $6 million, using their mid level exception, and have few trade-able assets not already part of the franchise's immediate plans.
Donnie Nelson, Daryl Morey and R.C. Buford will swelter this summer. To win a title next season, each general manager will need to turn that sweat into an impactful free-agent signing.
Articles in the
San Antonio Express-News and on
hoopsworld.com, citing unnamed sources and reports, suggest Corey Maggette is giving the South Texas heavy consideration as his new destination. If the Clippers re-sign Brand, the team cannot not afford to also keep Maggette.
This all assumes that Brand nixes the Warriors' generous offer. Who wouldn't start packing a suitcase for $90 million over a few years?
The Orlando Sentinel reported the Magic are pursuing free agent point guard Chris Duhon. If Orlando snatches the unhappy Duhon from Chicago to improve its questionable front court, it would have to exit the Maggette sweepstakes.
That leaves the Boston Celtics and Spurs as the front running suitors. Maggette would fill nearly every hole on a leaking, offensively lacking veteran Spurs roster.
If the 22 points per game scorer can thrust aside his sizeable ego and wants to win a championship now, San Antonio would be a perfect situation.
The other two Texas teams stare at lesser prospects in a dwindling free agent group.
Trouble in Texas? You decide.
HOUSTON ROCKETSThe Rockets missed out on Miller Time.
The player who would have fit so perfectly in the Rockets system and filled almost every offensive hole will play in Minnesota next year.
The Rockets will have to settle for the crappy beer.
Maybe Mike Miller was not bleeping on Morey's radar, but he should have been.
The Rockets desperately need reliable perimeter shooting, a third 20 point scorer and a player other than Yao who can make free throws.
Miller will provide all of those valuable talents to a Timberwolves team that will challenge for the West's eighth seed next year.
Some Rockets fans might say Yao Ming's injury diluted the outcome of a second first round series against the Utah Jazz, but does anyone without the last name gullible believe that just plugging him back in fixes everything?
Even when the Rockets shocked and awed NBA spectators with the second longest win streak in NBA history, a sizeable chunk of that 22-game spurt without Yao, the Rockets were flawed.
What the team has:
• The fierce, formidable ScoLandry (Luis Scola and Carl Landry) power forward tandem, a combo that sets them at that position for years
• The best center in the NBA
• A near 11-year veteran who can take over any game he wants when he is healthy
• A 41-year-old center, oldest player in the league, who continues sucking the fountain of youth dry
• A great coach--whom Sacramento's Maloof brothers stupidly let walk--with the patience, system and adaptability to boost the team's scoring production without sacrificing the gnarly, suffocating defense Jeff Van Gundy instilled
• A tough-minded defender in Shane Battier who fills the role that has been so valuable on the last three championship teams
Team needs:
• Perimeter shooting
• Three point shooting
• A third scorer to aid Tracy McGrady and Yao Ming
• Backup center
• Healthy Yao and McGrady
• Healthy McGrady playing like the superstar his paycheck says he is, complete with unalterable desire to win
• Resign Landry
Likely returns:
• Yao Ming
• Tracy McGrady
• Rafer Alston
• Shane Battier
• Luis Scola
• Carl Landry (provided both sides can end this medical test dispute)
• Aaron Brooks
• Chuck Hayes
• Steve Novak
• Steve Francis
Questionable returns:
• Luther Head
• Dikembe Mutombo
• Bobby Jackson (likely a goner)
• Mike Harris
• Loren Woods
In the last game of that streak against the Lakers, Rafer Alston played the game of his life, scoring 40 points and committing no turnovers. Two of his career-high eight three pointers were drilled from the figurative parking lot, at the end of the shot clock and with a defender in close range.
Can you rely on an unreliable shooter to make these shots and win a championship?
Alston all but proved with his solid play and newfound leadership last season that he can be a starting point guard on a championship contender. The Rockets do not need to shop Alston--yet.
If he continues playing with the same fire that shot him over four other starting prospects during training camp, shoots near 40 percent from distance and improves his finishes at the rim, he needn't worry about his job security.
The best point guards in the league--Chris Paul, Tony Parker, Deron Williams, Steve Nash and Jason Kidd--aren't going anywhere. Detroit Pistons general manager Joe Dumars has yet to move Chauncey Billups, Mo Williams is locked in Milwaukee, Baron Davis jumped ship to head for LA, Jose Calderon reportedly signed a new contract with the Toronto Raptors, T.J. Ford will play in Indiana and the Sixers do not want Andre Miller to skip town.
Only one team has Chris Paul, so having Rafer Alston is not a death sentence.
The Rockets may have a point guard but that doesn't mean they get the point. Who is the team's third best player?
With some work on his post defense and finishing, Scola might claim that title. Do not expect this squad to win squat in the playoffs if that honor belongs to Battier or Alston.
James Posey defended like a Doberman and drained timely three pointers in the recently concluded NBA Finals to help the Celtics secure banner number 17. He was Boston's fifth or sixth best player at best.
Rajon Rondo, the second year point guard who notched a stat line in the series clincher worthy of a license plate--21 points, seven rebounds, eight assists and six steals--was the Celtics' fourth best player, sometimes.
The Rockets do not need to replace Battier or Alston to escape the first round. Morey needs to find another scorer who will alleviate pressure from the two limited scorers.
Fawn over Battier's underutilized jump hook all you want but this columnist says that is not his game. Battier is not a scorer and as long as Houston fans expect him to fill a 10-20 point void, he will be seen as a failure.
What the Rockets need most--Yao and McGrady in full health playing at a high level--no free-agent signing can guarantee.
The Rockets picked up the mobile, oversized scoring wingman they had targeted in the draft in Donte Greene. The would-be sophomore seems eager to show what he has learned since the tragic death of his mother. Oozing with profound basketball gifts, Greene might become a draft night steal.
Joey Dorsey is undersized as a center and maybe as a power forward, but he is worth a look to back up Yao. In a statistically underwhelming but strong college career, Dorsey scored most of his points by cleaning the glass. At 6'9" with an average wingspan, he may struggle to grab offensive rebounds from stronger, bulkier big men.
The biggest off-season hitch now seems to be re-signing Carl Landry. With an aggravated knee injury limiting his gritty play in the regular season's final frame, the Rockets want to subject the forward to more medical tests, to ensure there are no chronic issues, before tendering a contract offer.
Landry's agent Buddy Baker has called the request ridiculous and insists that his client has no lingering medical issues. Morey says he asked for additional test results after the Rockets season ended in another first round ouster.
Morey cannot let this apparent spat end with Landry walking. The Rockets may need a trade to shore up an incomplete roster come February and Landry is the best bait on the team.
If he plays up to expectations, he will not be going anywhere. The Rockets should want to keep the ScoLandry combo intact for the next five years, but should they need to trade for an impact player, Landry seems to be the only guy not named Yao or McGrady with either the contract or talent to attract a fair deal.
Since Morey has promised the Rockets will continue to build on the Yao-McGrady foundation, the team needs to fill the above holes surrounding the All-Star duo.
McGrady acts as the imperfect star, a volcanic talent that erupts increasingly less. If the team wants to stick with "T-Mac" so be it.
Nothing the Rockets do this off-season will save the team if one of the two stars falls again. Can this roster compete for a playoff seed without Yao or McGrady?
They answered 'yes' last season.
Can this roster win a playoff series without Yao or McGrady?
Utah Jazz win another first round bout in six games, dominating the clincher 113-91. I'll take that as a ‘no.’
