sports journalists

[Alex Wang <awang@mit.edu>]

It seems like a lot of these sports journalists such as Peter May,
Sam Smith, and the Orlando Sentinel guy engage in trade speculation
under the disguise of reporting. I notice that they all seem to 
speculate with a bias towards the home team, except for Peter May!
Steve Bulpett's article was impressive; Pitino was very frank about
his consideration of Hardaway, which surprised me.

Personally I think the Sam Smith scenario (Bulls get Mercer,McGrady,
Toronto gets #1, Mercer gets #5) has zero probability of happening.
After guaranteeing the playoffs, Pitino's going to have to trade
Mercer for someone more proven than the guys who are going to be
available at #5. 

Joe raises a point about why Orlando would want Mercer and K.Anderson
when they have N.Anderson and Armstrong. It's been reported that if
they go in a rebuilding direction, they will probably hire Doc Rivers,
and trade Penny Hardaway, Nick Anderson, and Horace Grant. Mercer would
definitely fit in with them somewhere, just because he's significantly
younger than their current team. He'd be a building block along with
their recent rookies. Given Armstrong's recent play at the point, I
would agree that Kenny Anderson wouldn't be valuable to them. Armstrong 
is getting older though (31 this month) and perhaps they would swing 
another trade; having a surplus of quality point guards is usually not
a bad thing.

Alex