It was with Minnesota, for Mike Miller and Randy Foye coming from the Wolves and the Wizards giving up Etan Thomas, Darius Songaila and Oleksiy Pecherov and the number 5 pick in the draft.
It feels like Washington is giving up a lot for two guys who are decent, but not great.
But in the end, I guess they felt like having a starting lineup of Gilbert Arenas, Mike Miller, Caron Butler, Antawn Jamison, and Brendan Haywood with Foye coming off the bench as sufficient enough to make a run in the Eastern conference.
It does make the Wizards immediately better, and Arenas, Butler and Jamison are not getting any younger, so it does make sense to go for a move like this.
It was only two summers ago when Boston GM Danny Ainge did a similar thing with the fifth pick.
The Celtics were coming off a horrible season, and hoping to get the first or second pick to grab either Kevin Durant or Greg Oden. They didn’t get the pick, and wound up trading it and Delonte West to Seattle for Ray Allen. They then traded Al Jefferson and some other retreads for Kevin Garnett.
The rest is history as Boston would go on to win the title the very next season.
I do not see the same thing happening with Washington, because K.G. is a crazy dedicated player, who was on a mission to get a ring that year. You don’t see that same fire out of Agent Zero (Arenas’ nickname) or Jamison.
Tough Juice (Butler’s nickname, I’m not making this up) has a little bit of it, but nothing like Garnett’s. We’re talking about level of passion from a guy (Garnett) who made Big Baby Davis cry on the bench during a regular season game this past year, all for making a couple turnovers. Garnett makes DMX look sane and rational by comparison.
The Wolves now own picks at 5, 6, 18 and 28 in the first round. Look for them to offer the fifth and 18th picks for the second pick, to try and select Spain’s Ricky Rubio.
Two more trades have been made in the last 24 hours as well.
San Antonio just got themselves back into the game by acquiring Richard Jefferson from Milwaukee for the poo-poo platter of Bruce Bowen, Fabricio Oberto, and Kurt Thomas, all of which have expiring contracts.
Milwaukee is basically saying we have no shot, let’s just clear some cap space with this deal. The Bucks are one of the most irrelevant teams in the league right now. They are never on national television, and they have no real superstar on their team at all.
Maybe the cap space helps, but what free agent is excited to go to Milwaukee? I mean if you like having man boobs and living in a city known for beer and brats, then yeah you would love it, but there aren’t that many Brian Scalabrine’s and Eddy Curry’s running, oops, I mean half jogging around the NBA right now.
Check out those A-Cups on Scal
So now San Antonio is conceding they only have a year or two left with the group of Manu Ginobili, Tim Duncan, and Tony Parker to get another ring, and that’s what they hope to get out of the Jefferson deal.
I think it makes them the second best team (provided they stay healthy) behind the Lakers in the West at the moment.
In the latest trade, which has yet to be finalized as of this writing, it looks like the Golden State Warriors are shipping Jamal Crawford to Atlanta for Acie Law and Speedy Claxton.
Trading Crawford was a highly expected move all summer for the Warriors, as head Don Nelson was adamant in his dislike of Crawford. Crawford’s long contract also turned off the Warriors, and this trade should help them manage their Salary Cap more efficiently.
For Atlanta, they get a 20 points a game scorer in Crawford, and also protect themselves against the possibility of losing free agent Mike Bibby. Bibby still may re-sign with the Hawks, but the blow that comes if he leaves is for now pacified a tad bit.
Having Crawford in a lineup with Joe Johnson, Al Horford, and Marvin Williams should mean that the Hawks will stay in the playoffs and score a lot of points. It remains to be seen if this makes them any better though, because Jamal Crawford plays absolutely no defense, and is known to be a ball hog at times.
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