Kleeman's Last Word

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.

posted by Robert Kleeman @ 11:26 PM