Bogus trade rumors, Orlando-Denver trade

[Alex Wang <awang@mit.edu>]

Peter May repeats an "Internet rumor" in his column today, which
was taken from NBAtalk.com. He doesn't mention that the NBAtalk
people freely admit that they just made it up. Isn't it a bit
irresponsible not to add that fact? 

I think it goes to show how ridiculous most rumors are. Some GM
like Billy King says to his gullible sources, "Antoine Walker is
on the block" and before you know it everyone in the media is
proposing speculative trades. Other members of the media then
report these speculative trades as rumors that deserve reporting.
Who knows, maybe in a month we'll have Peter May report, "A Celtics
mailing list reported that a rumor that Pervis Ellison and a
first round pick were being sent to San Antonio for Tim Duncan."

These writers evidently consider anything Pitino says to be 
completely irrelevant. They'd rather believe a third-hand source
than Pitino flat-out saying, "I won't trade Antoine Walker."

I also really doubt that the Celtics re-acquire Mercer as Warwick
suggests. Nothing has changed that would make the Celtics want 
him back - his "me-first" shooting tendencies and his salary
demands. I just don't see how a Pierce-Mercer combination is really
better for this team than a Griffin-Pierce combination. You get
more a bit more scoring (because Mercer scores a lot more than 
Griffin but somewhat at Pierce's expense) but you lose rebounding,
you lose passing, and you lose defense. It's not to say that Mercer
has less value than Griffin around the league because scoring is
still really important, but for this team, Griffin is more valuable.

I've always felt that Mercer's value was highest on a team where
he is the undisputed primary option which is why he probably didn't
work out as well with Denver as they had hoped. I wonder what'll
happen now that he's probably that scorer with Orlando. Of course
it'll only last until the end of the season if Orlando is successful
in their quest to snag a premier free agent. I doubt that Orlando
trades Mercer this season though. Their intention is probably to
sign some free agents and then give Mercer his big payday using
the Bird exception. Or they could try to convince Mercer to take
small money for a year to clear even more cap space with an under
the table agreement to get the big payoff a year later. Who knows
how they'll get the chemistry to work if they can really acquire
a ton of young talent though. Rivers seems like he's doing a great
job as coach so far, but getting role players to over-achieve is
a different task.

Alex