cowa

Just to put an end to this idea, does anybody realize that McGrady makes $23M??? Marvin signed at $9M and Acie at $2M, and you're not even half way there to making a legitimate trade! C'mon, before throwing out crap like this, at least check the salaries to see if somethign like this could even be possible, will ya?

I agree with the Free Agency point, but there are some bigs in the draft that may still be around (Brackins, Jordan & Washington, depending on who declares). Re: Washington, they have 13 guaranteed contracts for next year at $76M, which puts them well into the luxury tax area before they sign their draft picks, and they could still resign McGuire cheap. They don't have the roster space for additional players, so this trade actually hurts them in this economy. They are looking to shed contracts (Mike James, Songalia, Etan Thomas, maybe even Haywood). They would probably only move Blatche if someone was willling to take one of those other contracts without taking back salary so they can get under the luxury tax threshold. What would make more sense to them is to move their 2nd round pick (early 30's) and a player or two for one contract back. Something like Blatche, Songalia and their 2nd rounder for Childress, assuming Childress could be signed for $5-6M. But otherwise, I don't see Blatche coming here.

How about getting 0 rebounds as our power forward?

I love the trade from our side. I don't think Charlotte could agree to do the deal with the long term salary implications. This would tie up about $64M in 10 players. Just can't see them doing this.

I'll answer both you and D on this. Gooden is an expiring, plain and simple. He might not even play again this season. So it's really thier 1st round pick and either Thomas or Noah for Kaman. They need an interior offensive presence, and that's what Kaman brings to the table. Thomas has shown some real promise lately, and Noah has been playing better of late, but Kaman clearly is better than these two. The first round pick will either be late in the lottery or pick 15/16 in the draft. Obviously, they would put a top 3 protection on it as well. Kaman is locked up long term, and would be great for that team. Sure if Bosh or Amare were available, they would go for them first. But from everything I'm reading, they're not. If Bosh was available, I'm guessing he goes out west, not staying in the east. And Amare now looks like he's staying put in Phoenix. If Kaman is truly available, wouldn't you rather take him right now over the possibility of one of those guys becoming available in the summer? And if they did, Gooden's contract isn't available any more to trade, so now they'd be trying to move Hughes' contract, and that may not be as appealing to those teams. Lastly, I just threw out Chicago as an example. They could proably work out a 3 team deal to get LaFrentz, or possibly something with Detroit for Wallace. All I'm saying is that we don't have enough expiring contracts / young talent to get a deal done on financial reasons alone for someone making upwards of $10M/year. Unless we move Marvin or Horford, but that's not what this thread is about. The best we could do would be Zaza and Speedy plus our first. And I still don't know enough about Speedy's situation (does anybody?) as to whether he will retire or not.

No way the Clippers take that deal. If they are truly just trying to dump salary, Chicago could offer Gooden (expiring $7.1M) and Tyrus Thomas or Joakim Noah (although he has another year, he still is attractive at that salary), plus a 1st pick that's better than ours. Speedy's salary isn't expiring, Evans, while a good bargain, isn't expiring, and then you want to put conditions on the pick. I just don't think we'd be one of the top 2 or three deals that the Clips would be offered. Zaza would definitely have to be part of it.

Maxiell is another in that short PF line that are dominant on the glass. Blair has a lot of potential as a sixth man that any team would love to have. Libid21 - I see that you are from Oakville. I spent my first 20 years growing up in Woodbury. But that was a long time ago! Lastly, go Huskies!

I was actually for a Horford/Crittendon, largely because I know BK and Woody LOVE those big PG's. I just thought Crit would fit in better with the Hawks philosophy at that time. In hindsight, I don't think we should have gone that way at all, and should have taken another wing who might get some time (T. Young, J. Wright & Thornton all were taken directly after Law) and pick up a back-up PG through free agency. As long as Woody won't employ a pick and roll offense, these PG's coming out of college are going to have a hard time in Atlanta.

Washington would hang up the phone the minute this was proposed. They get killed in this deal. And the only reason they would trade Jamison or Butler is for cap relief, which in this deal they don't get. Never happening. You have to bring cap relief in a deal to Washington if they are going to move either of those parts, much less both!

This whole thread is based on the article from RealGM that said Portland was in discussion with an Eastern Conference team for a starting PG and SF. None of the deals have a chance under these parameters. Granger is the focal point of Indy, so he's not in consideration. Miami needs a PG, so they don't have anyone that makes sense. NJ isn't trading Harris, so they don't have a PG that makes sense. Milwaukee could do it, but they are currently in the 8th spot and that trade would take them out of playoff contention (and yes, they did just lose Redd). Deng + Hinrich make $21M, and they have a full roster. They'd move Hughes instead of Deng, but then you're trading a lot for Hinrich. Washington doesn't have a capable PG except for Arenas, and he's still hurt. So, I go back to original post, that the only teams that make any sense are Charlotte, Indy and NY, and Charlotte may not make sense now with Wallace out indefinitely. But a healthy Wallace and Felton would have been an excellent fit. Duhon and Lee next best fit. Dunleavy and Ford last.

Hearing all the talk about 2010 and the huge potential FA class there is, it seems most of the NBA teams are clearing cap room for 2010. Wouldn't it make much more sense financially for Josh Childress to play one more season in Greece, get paid a lot of money, and then come back for 2010? The isn't the supply of top quality FAs to meet the demand, so there should be a lot of freed up $'s for teams to spend on 2nd or 3rd tier FAs like Childress, and he could get a lot better long term offers that year. We would still be able to match, but doubtful we would considering the money we will alreay be spending to max out Joe. I just don't see Childress coming back next year making any financial sense at all for him, and anyone can suck up another year living like a king!

I totally agree with most of the points #10 brings up, especially what they are looking for. To me, Atlanta is an awful fit for a trade with Portland. Both teams are going after the same thing from a basketball perspective (from a financial perspective, a whole different story). The three teams that make sense for Portland to deal with are Charlotte (Wallace and Felton), Indiana (Dunleavy and Ford) and the Knicks (Duhon and Lee, although he's not a SF). Indiana doesn't actually answer their biggest problems, but the view may be different from their front office. I don't see much happening with the Hawks, though there are a bunch of potential moves that would be good, but all add salary and I don't see the ASG doing that.

I'm not sure people are realizing what the deal is with Josh Smith. He is BYC, which means two things: 1) we can only take half his salary back in a deal, but still must fall within the 125% + $100,000 parameters, and (perhaps most importantly) 2) he has the right to refuse a trade during his BYC year. The Hawks must get him to agree to move to the other team. Now, if you were Josh, would you agree to moving to Toronto on your current deal? I didn't think so. Trading Smith before he has his BYC tag taken off is going to be extremely difficult. Another thing we need to keep in mind is that Toronto can't take on any additional salary, as they are right up against the Luxury Tax threshold. So trading Smith to them is almost impossible unless the deal becomes huge and involves JON in a 3 or 4 team trade. That leaves the Hawks moving Horford in a deal. The most reasonable deal I see out there right now is Horford, Marvin and Speedy for Bosh, Moon and Humphries/Graham. We would be taking on an additional $2-3M in salary, plus the ASG would lose the insurance money from Speedy. So, would you trade Horford, Marvin and Speedy for Bosh, Moon and (most likely) Humphries, taking the ASG financial woes out of the picture?

Because Smoove is BYC, you need to make the deal bigger. The best deal that I see (and that Diesel woudl love!) is Smoove, Marvin and Speedy for Bosh, Moon and Humphries/Graham. I can't see Toronto getting a better deal that Smoove and Marvin for Bosh, and the rest are fillers.

Actually, it depends on the team. If you're in a city that can't attract free agents, would you overpay for a young guy with "potential" who's signed up for 4/ years? Yeah, I would. A couple of points though. First, Marvin will get his money. Maybe I'm giving him a little too much, but he'll get at least $8M as a starting point. Now it comes down to whether you get anything in return. S&T's aren't easy, so I would rather match and trade him a year down the road after he's no longer BYC, even if it is too much money. Second, Marvin isn't my favorite player, but he's not as bad as you always infer. I would much rather have some other guys at the wing, but I wouldn't be unhappy with Marvin. And he's the best one on one defender for the Hawks right now. If you lose him, you better get someone to fill that void, who can still be an offensive option on the wing. Lastly, I would actually like to revamp the team at the trade deadline. I don't think this current team as is can advance past the 1st round over the next 4 years. Too much relying on the 3 ball, and not enough man to man D. Witness tonight with DWade, as after the pick was set on Joe, he just went though us like a hot knife through butter. There are two trades that i would like to see us push for that would help out our salary situation. Both would probably set us back this year, but would definitely benefit us in the long run. 1) Bosh, Graham/Humphries and Moon for Smith, Marvin and Speedy. Since Smith is BYC, Speedy's contract is needed to make it work. Toronto is falling fast, and Bosh wants to play for a contender. JJ and Bosh would make us one immediately. Moon, although he doesn't have much of a ceiling, plays solid D (except his last game against Joe LOL) and is very cheap. Graham or Humphries are just filler, but Humphries just got hurt and has two more years on his contract. 2) Trade Bibby and Zaza for Hinrich and Gooden. Chicago want so free up cap space, and if they can't move Hughes, this would free up Hinrich's long term contract. Hinrich doesn't shoot the 3 ball quite as well as Bibby, but his D would free up Joe to not have to expend so much energy on D and would have more energy for the offensive side. Or, you could do a 3 way trade with Toronto and Chicago, with Chicago getting JON, Toronto getting Smith, Marvin, Speedy, Bibby and Zaza, and Atlanta getting Bosh, Moon, Hinrich and Hughes. This trade is way too big to actually take place, but something similar could work. I don't want Hughes, but you could move him at the following year's deadline, as a lot of team's will be trying to clear up cap space for the summer of LeBron. Yeah, this is more like fantasy GM stuff, but it's more realistic than keeping everybody we've got now for the long term, as in 2011 Horford will break the bank and put us into luxury tax territory. At least one of these guys can't be around for that season; it just doesn't work financially.

Mike Bibby: 4 years 33M - 12M/09, 7M for remaining 3 years Marvin Williams: 5 years 50M - 9M; 9.5M; 10M; 10.5M; 11M Zaza Pachulia: 3 years 14M - 4.3M, 4.7M, 5.0M Flip Murray: 2 years 5M Solomon Jones: 1 years 1M Mario West: Invite to camp Thomas Gardner: Invite to camp If we don't front load Bibby's contract heavily, we won't have the money under the cap when Joe becomes a FA. We should have money next year. And all these signings means we would NOT be able to sign Childress or do a SNT with him next year and still be under the Luxury Tax. To take advantage of Childress either resigning or SNT, or to deal Speedy, we need to make another move with one or more of our big players. Unfortunately.

OMG, Diesel, did you turn into Isiah Thomas? You want to be paying Nazr about $6.5+M per year thru 2010? He has an awful contract, which Charlotte probably would jump at the chance to trade him straight up for Speedy, considering all the insurance money they get back. We should just keep Speedy on the books until this summer or February 2010. We're already going to be having money problems next year, let's not tie up more in a backup center that wouldn't even be our first backup center (which would still be Zaza). If you're trading got Wallace, that's great, but if you want another big body, don't be shelling out over $6M for him!

I can't believe I'm saying this, but I feel we should keep Speedy until next February instead of going after the retirement route. His contract will be valuable when every other team is trying to get under the salary cap for the LBJ sweepstakes, and we can get a good player for his expiring contract. If we get him to retire, we open up space under the luxury tax, but we'll still be above the salary cap threshold when you consider we need to retain Childress' restricted rights. Speedy retiring saves the ASG a few bucks, but doesn't give hardly any more flexibility to the team.

I like it, but there's not a chance of it happening. They were looking to take pressure (minutes) off of Nene, as they really didn't have a back-up C. The player they would be willing to move is Kleiza due to his restricted FA status going into the summer, but his salary is less than $2M. Nene may be an all star this year, they're not gonna trade him.

I think if Chicago starts to fall out of contention, they would move Hinrich, Gooden and Noah/Simmons for Bibby, Zaza and a #1 pick. The cap space they gain can be used to go after Boozer in the off season and resign Gordon or go after another guard. I just don't see another low post presence that they will be able to go after except for Boozer. And they are very down on Noah right now, while Simmons is just getting a DNP-CD every night. The question is do we want to give up Bibby (offense) for Hinrich (defense) and make Hinrich our PG for the next 3 1/2 years.

We don't have anything that the Clips really want (SG), but a deal that could work would be a 3-way deal adding GS. Camby to the Hawks, Zaza, Speedy and maybe a pick to GS, and Maggette to the Clips. Or you could do it with Minnesota, and replace Maggette with Mike Miller. To me, Camby is a perfect fit for the Hawks. Short term contract, doesn't need to start, but would be the perfect complement to Horford/Smith if one goes down to injury at any point. He may not be the offensive threat that we'd like down on the blocks, but he is much better than Zaza overall. And most importantly, there aren't a lot of free agent centers available next offseason, and Zaza probably won't fit in to our budget next year, unless he't willing to come back for $4M or less.

Contrary to everybody else it seems, this actually looks like a good trade from both teams perspectives. First of all, the money is about the same now and later, so no real cost cutting issues here. The only possibility from a financial standpoint is that Charlotte is looking at a 2 for 3, so they fill an extra spot on the bench a little bit cheaper. From a Phoenix basketball perspective, they do get worse defensively by losing Bell, but they needed another scoring threat to take pressure off Nash. This will actually do more for Nash being able to create than anything else. Now, JRich doesn’t know how to spell defense, much less play it, so Porter is going to have to learn to live with it. But I think the main reason Phoenix made this deal is that Shaq is old, Nash is old, and Bell is old as well, and they see their window of opportunity closing, as well as a need to get younger. They knew that they couldn’t compete with the Lakers, so they make a move, similar to what they did last year with the Marion/Shaq deal. From a Charlotte basketball perspective, JRich was just benched in favor of Augustin and Felton. Just happened this week, so it really hasn’t been in effect yet. So their highest paid player by far was now going to come off the bench. Larry Brown clearly didn’t like JRich, and he needed to be traded now rather than later, as his value would continue to decrease coming off the bench. May and Mohammed have done nothing this season, so they were (and still are) loking for big men, and they consider Diaw a possible starter at PF. Bell can either come off the bench as 6th man, or start and have Felton come off the bench. The bottom line is that if JRich wasn’t going to start, they needed to move him as soon as possible. I’m not going to kill MJ for this deal, as I think this was more of a Larry Brown deal than anything else, and MJ knew what he was getting when he hired Brown in the first place. I think Gerald Wallace is the next to go (sooner rather than later) for a legit big man (they’re still looking into acquiring Kaman from what I understand), and then they’d probably just move Diaw to the 3. The bigger problem with this team is that they now only have one go-to player on the team in Wallace, and they are shopping him. Without Wallace, Augustin will become the main offensive go-to threat, and that’s not good enough to compete in today’s game.

But we can offer 10% raises as opposed ot the 8% the other teams can give. bottom line is he can't get more money elsewhere. I think the questions should be "could we get any complementary pieces from other teams trying to shed extra dollars? Or extra players?"

I think I read Sheridan or Ford say that Speedy is probably out fo the season with the hammy problem. I was shocked to read it, but it's out there. This was about a week ago I think. Bottom line on Speedy is don't ever plan on him playing for teh Hawks again. He will either be traded at the deadline as filler, traded in the offseason as filler, or traded at next year's trade deadline for teams trying to get into the lebron/wade/bosh/amare sweepstakes. because of the insurance deal, he has an easily moveable contract if he hasn't played by this year's trade deadline.

If McDyess' contract is bought out he would be free to sign with any team except the Pistons. The so-called "Gary Payton Rule" prohibits a player from re-signing with their original team for 30 days. Maybe it should be more than 30 days, but there is a rule to penalize some of this type of movement.