Uncontested Shots – NBA News, Notes, and Observations From a Self-Described B-Ball Geek

When did the NBA turn into a fantasy league? I can’t exactly pinpoint when it happened but I’m loving it. This is shaping up to possibly be the greatest off-season since 1996 when Shaquille O’Neal, Allan Houston, Chris Childs, Kenny Anderson, Chris Gatling, Ervin Johnson, P.J. Brown, and Jim McIlvaine all signed big money deals with new teams and the draft brought us Allen Iverson, Stephon Marbury, Marcus Camby, Kobe Bryant, Steve Nash, Antoine Walker, Peja Stojakovic, Jermaine O’Neal, and Zydrunas Ilgauskas.

It seems like every five minutes another deal is either in serious talks or nearing completion. I haven’t felt this way since the trade deadline of 2008 when the Lakers, Mavs, and Suns were involved in a serious arms race to one-up each other with big name acquisitions.

First things first…

A trade between the Orlando Magic and New Jersey Nets appears to be a done deal, according to Yahoo!’s Adrian Wojnarowski. The Nets will send Vince Carter and Ryan Anderson to the Magic for Courtney Lee, Tonny Battie, and Rafer Alston.

If this trade has in fact been agreed to then that probably means the end of the Hedo Turkoglu era in Orlando. The Magic probably can’t afford to keep Turkoglu since they’ll be paying over $63 million next year just to Dwight Howard, Carter, Rashard Lewis, Jameer Nelson, and Mickael Pietrus.

According to Eric Pincus of HoopsWorld (via Twitter), this means that Hedo Turkoglu is probably headed to the Portland Trailblazers.

The Magic now have Howard, Carter, Lewis, Nelson, and Pietrus all under contract for at least the next two seasons.

I’ve always been a firm believer that the team that gets the best player is the team that wins a trade. It’s hard not to like this trade for Orlando. Sure they lost Courtney Lee but they could afford to since Pietrus played most of the meaningful minutes for them in the playoffs.

For New Jersey it’s a great trade because it gives them another solid young player on a rookie contract and frees them from Carter’s deal. With Lee, Devin Harris, and Brook Lopez, the Nets have three solid starters with which to help attract at least one—possibly two—top-10 free agents next summer.

The Big Witness in Cleveland

If you’re a Cavs fan you have to love the Shaquille O’Neal trade for a few reasons—the biggest one being that they gave up practically nothing to get him. Sasha Pavlovic was as expendable as that extra button in that tiny plastic bag when you buy an new dress shirt and Ben Wallace seemed to have one foot in retirement less than a year after he signed with the Bulls back in 2005.

It’s not often that teams don’t ask for at least one promising young player in a trade like this but the Suns didn’t seem to mind. It isn’t like the Cavs have much young talent that anyone wants but you can’t tell me that Danny Ferry would have hung up on Steve Kerr if he insisted Ferry include J.J. Hickson in the deal. Makes you wonder why there were reports of Hickson having a bad back earlier this week. True story or just a smoke screen by Ferry to scare teams away?

The Cavs also got to hang onto Daniel Gibson in the deal.

The other great thing for the Cavs is that it sends a message to James that they will continuously strive to surround him with championship-caliber players. Sure Shaq isn’t in his prime anymore. But even at his advanced age he’s still a top-three center in this league. That’s not Shaq’s fault. It’s just the reality.

I don’t think this is it for Cleveland. I wouldn’t be surprised if they went after Rasheed Wallace with their full mid-level exemption. If they strike out on Wallace I can see them putting in a call to Jeff Schwartz, the agent for Jason Kidd.

The other great thing about the trade for Cleveland is that O’Neal is only under contract for one more season so if the experiment fails the Cavs haven’t done anything to hurt their long-term plan of using the summer of 2010 to put together the best team they can for the prime of LeBron’s career.

It kills me when people continuously criticize the Cavs for not trading Wally Szczerbiak for O’Neal during last season’s deadline. In Sir Charles In Charge | An NBA Blog › Add New Post — WordPressmy opinion, that was a no-brainer. Why would the Cavs pay $50 million next season just for Wallace, Ilgauskas, and Shaq. The Cavs knew the deal would still be there at season’s end and Ferry’s decision to wait has paid off. Now he’s off the hook for Szczerbiak and Wallace and could still move Big Z’s expiring deal at the deadline for a missing piece.

I’d be surprised if the team that trades for him ends up keeping him anyway. He’ll just get bought out and return to Cleveland anyway. Don’t forget that Kobe Bryant is the only player in the league that’s been on his current team as long as Z has.

I’m also curious if the Cavs are still going to try and retain Anderson Varejao or if this increases the likelihood that they’ll let him go.

If You’re Scoring at Home

Take a look at the trades that have been made so far this off-season. Only three of them were inter-conference trades—the New Jersey/Orlando deal, the Fabricio Oberto-for-Amir Johnson trade, and the Jason Kapono-for-Reggie Evans deal. The rest of the deals were all trades made between conferences.

You’d have to say that the East has a decisive advantage considering they acquired Shaquille O’Neal, Jamal Crawford, Kurt Thomas, Bruce Bowen, Fabricio Oberto, Mike Miller, and Randy Foye for Richard Jefferson, Sasha Pavlovic, Ben Wallace, Darius Songaila, Oleksiy Pecherov, Etan Thomas, Speedy Claxton, and Acie Law IV.

The West will have it’s chance to catch up within the first hour of today’s draft. Thanks to the Wizards trading the number five pick to the Timberwolves, the Western Conference has the first seven picks in today’s draft. The Eastern Conference then has the following six picks.

Picks For Sale

The Lakers sold their first-round pick, number 29 overall, to the New York Knicks for $3 million. I have a feeling that the Spurs theft of Richard Jefferson from Milwaukee means that Jerry Buss will do what it takes to keep both Lamar Odom and Trevor Ariza. The Lakers still have their own second-round pick as well as the Bobcats second round pick. They don’t have a first-round pick in next year’s draft (Pau Gasol trade) but they do have the Grizzlies’ second-round pick. Those picks could end up being back-to-back.

The Lakers have now traded away their first-round picks in four straight drafts: 2007 (Javaris Crittenton), 2008 (Gasol trade), 2009 (sold to the Knicks), and 2010 (Gasol trade).

Don’t be surprised if the Knicks find a way to package their number eight pick with their newly acquired 29 pick to move up in the first round—maybe for Sacramento’s number four pick.

Perhaps the Kings are waiting to see if Ricky Rubio will still be on the board before they decide whether or not to trade the pick. The Kings seem to have their eyes on either Rubio, Tyreke Evans, or Johnny Flynn and Evans and Flynn could still be on the board at eight.

If Rubio is still there then the Kings can get the Knicks to pony up even more. I doubt the Knicks will fork over their first-round pick in next year’s draft becaues they’ll probably suck next year. But the Kings should try to get the Knicks first-round pick in 2011 thrown in.

What if the Knicks miss out on their free agent targets next summer? That 2011 pick could end up in the lottery.

Frank Isola wrote in the NY Daily News that the Knicks are close to trading Quentin Richardson to the Grizzlies for Darko Milicic. Both players are only under contract for one more season.

The Knicks will definitely try to move the last two years of either Eddy Curry’s or Jared Jeffries’ contract so they can keep David Lee and still have a lot of money to spend next summer.

I love how the Knicks are throwing out stories about what great shape Curry is in, such as this one in the NY Times:

“Walsh also offered a positive appraisal of Eddy Curry, who is working to lose weight and regain his conditioning after an injury-marred season. Walsh visited Curry in late May. “He’s working very hard, he’s losing weight, he’s starting to get his body to look like an athlete’s body again,” Walsh said. “I have to give him credit for working as hard as he can work to try to do it.””

Does anybody really believe that Curry doesn’t play basketball strictly because he’s tall and can make a lot of money doing it?

You’re Turn, Danny

The ball is now in Danny Ainge’s court. The Celtics were already in danger of losing some valuable free agents. Now he might have no choice but to hang onto Glen Davis, Eddie House, Leon Powe, and Stephon Marbury. It also means the Celtics might have to use their mid-level exemption or trade either Ray Allen or Rajon Rondo.

I know that I shot down any chance of the Celtics trading Rondo. At this point, they might not have the choice. Rondo is eligible for an extension but now his agent Bill Duffy is upset at the comments that Ainge has made about Rondo to the media.

If Rondo is the monster that Ainge wants us to believe he his then what are the chances that Rondo goes into training camp in October a happy camper? I wouldn’t be surprised if Duffy asked Ainge to trade his client to a team that’s willing to extend him.