Walker vs. Van Horn

[Alex Wang <awang@mit.edu>]

Does this trade even work under the CBA rules? Walker and Van Horn
are both on maximum salary extensions but Walker is ahead by a year
so I would think their base-year compensation numbers don't match up.
I suppose a third team could be brought in to make it work if both
teams really wanted it.

As for the actual merits of the players, Van Horn and Antoine Walker
have a remarkably similar and poor career field goal percentage for
traditional power forwards of 42.2% and 42.3%. However those numbers
are deceptively low because unlike traditional power forwards they
both shoot a lot of three-pointers. Van Horn's been criticized for
his poor shot selection and defensive weakness. Both, they both
sound similar. Antoine has the passing advantage, Van Horn has the
free throw shooting advantage.

To break it down more, I'm splitting their FG% into 2pt and 3pt and
also making my efficiency calculation of points/(2*FGA+FTA). 

		2pt FG	3pt FG	EFF
Van Horn	44.1	30.7	50.3
Walker   	44.1	33.4	47.2

Van Horn gets the efficiency edge here because he gets to the line
about 20% more than Walker and also shoots 23% better there. Walker
has a significant career edge in rebounds but the recent history
is slightly in Van Horn's favor here.

Anyways, talent-wise this trade is plausible because Walker and Van
Horn are both young, "marginal" star players. I can imagine that
Walker could benefit playing in an offense that is based around a
penetrating point guard since he can get position around the baseline;
his best games seem to be when he lets Griffin and Anderson create 
easy baskets for him by penetrating and dumping it off for him to
finish strong. It does sound like Marbury and Van Horn don't mesh
well and NJ may very well decide to retool its team to complement
its new star, so I could see New Jersey wanting to do this. As
for Boston, I think this trade depends on Pitino's relationship with
Antoine. If Pitino is tired of Antoine not listening to his pleas
to work on his body and he feels like Antoine has tuned him out,
I could see him trading for a similar young talent that doesn't have 
their history. I can't say exactly how Van Horn would fit into our
offense because I haven't seen enough of him.

Anyways, my guess is that there is probably no truth to the rumor
even though it is somewhat plausible, because you just don't hear
about things like this a year before they happen.

Alex