Heat/Kings trade

[Alex Wang <awang@mit.edu>]

I've gathered from various interviews with Pitino that he is up
against financial constraints that may inhibit him from putting
together his dream team. For instance, unlike some of the bigger
market teams, I don't think he'll be allowed to spend significantly
over the cap which restricts his ability to attract another free
agent and also re-sign Walker, Mercer, and Billups.

With this taken into account this trade may make more sense. 
According to one account, Sacramento was supposed to take the contracts
of Dee Brown and Dana Barros off our hands, along with Mercer and Billups,
and give us Owens who will be a free agent after this year. Over the
next two years (97-98, 98-99, 99-00) we would be scheduled to pay these 
players about $40 million. (My estimate is that we'll average about $8M
for Brown and Barros, $8M+ over 3 yrs for Billups, $6M+ over 3 yrs for 
Mercer). Plus Barros is on the books for another year beyond that, probably
his most expensive. 

Instead we pay Owens whatever for 1 year, Mashburn about $5M/yr
over two years, and Austin - who knows, Pitino was probably hoping for
something like $40M over 6 years (which he realized he wouldn't get). 
Probably we'd end up saving $10M over three years which could sign a
decent backcourt player. And over the next three years, my guess is
that Austin and Mashburn would be more effective than Mercer and Billups.

Let's take another look at the players. Austin is the big question mark.
If he doesn't sign with us, or if he regresses the deal's no good. But
he would give us interior defense, inside scoring, and rebounding, which
are all sorely needed. He's 28 years old. But the only advantage of
trading for him is that Miami will be out of the running to re-sign him,
and maybe that exposure to Boston would make him more likely to re-sign.
There's no financial advantage.

Mashburn is potentially a scoring machine. In 94-95 he scored 24 ppg,
admittedly for a bad team. He had a significant knee injury that ended
his 95-96 season very early as well as the first half of 96-97.
Other than that he's been healthy; this one incident doesn't necessarily
make him "injury-prone". He's averaging 15 ppg as the third option in the 
Miami offense. He's only 25 years old. He has three-point range and the
ability to have huge scoring games (50 pts vs Chicago).

Alex