Re: stupid trade idea

[Jeremy <jwarren@eecs.tufts.edu>]

Lyell wrote:

>No way on this one.  Campbel is a $7M a year stiff that West has been
>trying to dump for the last 3 years with no takers.  Jerry West would
>love to take paul  Pierce for nothing.

Look at things from Campbell's viewpoint.  He's Shaq's backup.  No matter
how hard he plays, he'll still only get 10 to 15 minutes per game.  His
only real crime is being worse than Shaq.  Yes he has a motivation
problem.  But what are we paying Pitino $7,000,000 per year for?  Isn't he
supposed to be a coach who can motivate players?

But you're right John, I should think of more realistic trade ideas...like
Travis Knight and Andrew DeClerq for Tom Guggliotta.  This may be an okay
trade for us but I don't like it.  DeClerq and Knight have lots of upside,
while Googs is a finished product with very little upside.

Someone else mentioned that Derek Fisher is now the Laker's only legit
point guard and therefore they won't part with him.  That's a good point.
(Seriously)  I guess I was thinking that they might prefer to keep Tyronn
Lue since he's a cheap five year rookie, while Fisher will be a free agent
next summer.  But if they value Fisher more, Lue could be thrown in
instead.

But the bottom line is that without some kind of trade we will NEVER be
able to create enough cap room to offer someone a big contract.  This year
we have roughly $2M.  Next year when the cap goes up from $30M to $34M, it
would appear that we would have $6M to offer someone.  But that appearance
is an illusion.  Even if we don't resign Antoine until next summer (in
order to sign a free agent first), Antoine's cap figure will be 200 to
300% of his old salary until he is resigned.  Assuming that he'll make $2M
this year (which sounds a little low), you have to add another $2M to $4M
to our total payroll before calculating our cap space.  (This rule was
put into the new CBA to prevent teams from stealing other teams' free
agents. It's helps us keep Antoine and Mercer.)  The same goes for
Bowen and McCarty.  Dontae will be released if he's still around.  Bowen
and McCarty aren't a problem because they can be resigned for whatever
they make now.  But with Walker, he takes up just about all of our cap
space before and after we resign him.

And lastly, you have to keep in mind that swing men are a dime a dozen.
There's a Paul Pierce in every draft.  Michael Finley, an all around very
good player who would start over Mercer and Pierce at this point in time,
went twenty first in the 1995 draft.  Filling the 3 spot is easy.  Filling
the 1 and the 5 is the hard part.  If we could trade for a good center
without giving up anyone good, that would be great.  I don't think Utah
would do Ostertag for Knight and Minor, but if they would and we could
keep Pierce, I'd love that.  Personally I think Ostertag is a bigger
question mark than Campbell though.

Lastly (this time I mean it), Campbell averaged 4.5 high fives per game
last year while only playing twelve minutes each game.  Projecting that
out for a full game, he would average 3462 high fives per game.  As you
can see Elden Campbell is the best "high fiver" in the history of the NBA
and well worth $7M per year.

Jeremy