thefloydian

No. It might be bad, but you have to try really hard to sign a worse deal than JJ's. Is this a joke?

Huh?

I hadn't really paid any attention to Lewis over the past couple seasons, so I just looked up his stats for last year. Wow. How did he fall of that hard? I didn't expect greatness, but he shot 24% from 3 and had 8 ppg in 26 mins for Washington. That is beyond horrible.

I'm sure this has already been said somewhere, but this only makes sense if Howard is coming to town in a trade involving one of the other guards. Otherwise, we have a crowded backcourt and this signing will only serve to land us a crappier draft pick next year.

You do realize the Mavs have Dirk, right? The Pistons thing was an anomaly, but they played amazing defense and had a lot of underrated players (especially Rasheed). I don't even know what to say about the Spurs. Calling them "rag tag" is ridiculous.

I don't see how it's relevant who he was traded for. He averaged 15 boards per game and played good defense. You keep telling me who he was traded for, but I don't believe anyone who wasn't trying to win an argument would say that Bosh's year this year was better than that. I realize when I'm banging my head into a wall though, so I will stop here. Like I said, I don't have a problem with the super teams. There have always been super teams. But I agree with you, the only way to give the smaller markets a chance is to eliminate them via an alteration to the salary cap that allows individual players to be paid more while leaving the overall cap value the same. I don't think there is anyway to keep the super team option available while also giving smaller market teams a chance.

The only way any of this makes any sense is if they completely blow the team up and try to snag that Shabazz kid in the draft.

If you think that the Heat would take Bosh over Rodman then we should probably just stop arguing about this because we just disagree. All I will say is that Bosh will never be a hall of famer or even have hall of fame consideration. To the second point, I don't see why the Howard thing is bad for the NBA at all. I don't know where this idea came from that you should ride it out with a team that was, by your own admission, run by a moron. That would just be stupid on his part. Now, I do agree that they should change the salary cap rules to give elite players a larger slice of the pie, and that this would stop some of the big-market super team situations, but this isn't anything new. Championship teams have always had multiple great players. The real problem isn't that these guys are joining forces, it's that they're only willing to join forces in big markets.

Do you think the Heat would rather have Bosh or Chicago-era Dennis Rodman? And how do you respond to the other part of that post? How long was Dwight Howard supposed to stay on the same team with the corpse of Jason Richardson and Hedo Turkoglu?

Yes, we can land some good players. But good players don't get you out of the second round. We might as well have kept Joe if the plan was to sign someone like Harden.

Didn't Howard get drafted in '04? He's been there for a while and they haven't done anything other than sign overpaid small forwards. And Rodman wasn't anymore of a roleplayer than Bosh or Ray Allen.

The Hawks will never build a contender through free agency unless it involves Howard and Paul (which it won't, obviously).

Let's not pretend like Jordan "did it himself." He played with some great players. Scottie Pippen is a hall of famer. So is Dennis Rodman. Go look at the teams with Jerry West and Wilt. The Boston Celtics int he 80's had like 4 hall of famers. Magic's teams in the 80's also had a ton of great players. This isn't really a new thing.

I don't have a problem with how things work now so much, but I do think if you upped the max contract payable to one player while keeping the salary cap largely the same it would kill two birds with one stone. It would stop people like Jason Richardson and other middling players from making the obscene amounts of money they do and instead shift that money to the elite players that actually deserve it, and it would be easier for smaller market teams to keep their stars.

Oh, jesus.

This wouldn't bother me at all, but I'm one of the few people who want to be in the lottery it seems. I don't see Ferry doing it, though.

Yeah but that's obviously not happening. Howard isn't signing anything. That's the point. All of this talk is pointless. The only way he's getting traded is to the Nets or some team willing to rent him for a year.

Yeah, that's why I don't think he's getting traded until the trade deadline at earliest. I don't see anyone being willing to trade anything valuable for him with no guarantees. Weirder things have happened, though.

Yeah, I don't see Howard getting traded before the season unless the Rockets are still willing to trade for him without any guarantees.

If Ferry was going to do that he should have just kept JJ.

I wouldn't even call Wallace a poor man's Josh Smith at this point.

Having Dwight Howard on your team makes up for any lack of size you might otherwise. have. That's kind of why he's so good. Smith is better than Horford.

So do you think they should trade Horford for a 1-year Howard rental?

At this point I don't think there is a front runner. If there is, it's the Nets, but it doesn't really look like he ends up there either. The only other realistic scenario was LA, but if the reports are true and Bynum won't sign then Howard is going to play out the season with the Magic.

I don't understand a lot of the people on this board. Of course it was a salary dump. And it was a smart one. Whether or not Howard signs with the Hawks, Joe Johnson's contract had to go. The Hawks were going nowhere with that team and it was only going to get worse. Trading one of the only remaining good players for 1 year of Dwight Howard would be idiotic.I don't know what kind of weird fantasy you guys have, but the only semi-realistic expectation was that Howard would sign the following year.