www.boston.com/sports/basketball/articles/2008/02/24/plain_dealer_in_cleveland?mode=PFPlain dealer in Cleveland
Ferry makes big news as he reshapes roster
By Peter May, Globe Staff | February 24, 2008
You heard the word "bold" thrown around frequently Thursday and Friday, after news emerged of the mammoth three-way trade among the Cavaliers, Bulls, and Sonics.
The word wasn't used to describe the Bulls, who traded their three oldest players while essentially putting a 41-cent stamp on the 2007-08 season. It wasn't used for the Sonics, who already had put a 41-cent stamp on the season, but who will have a ton of options for their new home in Oklahoma City.
Nope, it was for the Cavs. General manager Danny Ferry, who had tried to get blood out of a stone these last two years in hopes of persuading LeBron James to stick around past 2010, finally went for the jugular. What he brought back indicates to one and all that the Cavaliers are going for it.
It helps if you have an owner who will foot the bill. Dan Gilbert, who otherwise has turned the basketball-watching experience in Cleveland into sensory suicide, stepped up and wrote the check. Maybe it's because he, too, knows James has to stay . . . or else. Or maybe he saw what happened last year when his team was humiliated in the NBA Finals.
Gilbert will be assuming about $9 million more in contracts over the next two years, and that's using Delonte West's qualifying offer (around $2.6 million) for next season. And you can double that figure because the team is over the luxury tax threshold.
But the Cavaliers are getting bang for their buck. We don't know, of course, how much of a bang, but James has to, for the time being anyway, be quite satisfied with Ferry's haul. No, Jason Kidd isn't walking through that door. Nor is Mike Bibby. But when all the gents pass their physicals, James will have West, Wally Szczerbiak, Joe Smith, and Big Ben Wallace as his new teammates. We'll see them in Boston Wednesday.
The Bulls, meanwhile, were elated to have gotten out from under Wallace's contract, but had to take back an almost equally bad one in oft-injured and oft-awry shooting guard Larry Hughes. He can be viewed as very expensive Ben Gordon insurance. The Bulls also got Drew Gooden, who can put up numbers but has a tendency to . . . drift.
The Sonics continue to point to 2009 and beyond. GM Sam Presti will have a slew of No. 1 picks over the next few years and those can be valuable chips, either in trades or in actual selections.
There are a number of what-ifs to the deal, but that is true of any trade. For instance, what if Wallace continues to slog around like the slug he was in Chicago? Or will he find his inner Piston now that he's playing off the ball in Cleveland and only has to make sure LeBron gets the rock? There was plenty of motivation for him in Chicago; remember, the Bulls were supposed to be really good this year. But Wallace showed only rare glimpses of the enthusiasm and passion that marked his game in Detroit.
We know about Wally and Delonte. Szczerbiak is a much better shooter than Hughes and he should get similar open looks. He will knock them down. He has been hoping for a move to a contender and, even better for him, it's back in the East, which is where he wanted to be all along.
West already may be the best point guard on the Cleveland roster - which says something, given that we all know he isn't really a point guard at all. He's a guard-guard. But he is a better playmaker than anyone on the team. And the recent injury to Daniel Gibson (4-6 weeks, ankle sprain) makes West's presence even more important.
Joe Smith is a pro, period. Cleveland will be his eighth team - and he's also had two stints with the Sixers and Timberwolves. He's shown this year he still has something left in the tank.
So, it's full speed ahead for the Cavs, and Ferry deserves all the props. He knew his team, as constituted Feb. 20, was not good enough to make it out of the East. He didn't bring in a star a la Pau Gasol, Kidd, or Shaq. But he already had one of those, maybe the brightest one in the NBA firmament, and he is in a conference where one star can get you to the Finals.
If and when the Cavs get whole again (and, don't forget, Anderson Varejao and Sasha Pavlovic are also out now), they sure appear to be one tough out in the East. As Ferry noted, he thought his team was good, but not quite good enough. He did his job. Now it's on the players to do theirs.
They're real nowhere men
The recent trades involving two guys who will not play another second in the NBA - Aaron McKie and Keith Van Horn - may force the NBA to do something about including body bags in deals. Then again, the league didn't say a word on Aug. 31, 2000, when the Portland Trail Blazers traded Jermaine O'Neal to Indiana.
For that deal to work - the Blazers took back Dale Davis - Portland had to come up with another $1 million or so. It did so by signing Joe Kleine, who had retired and moved to Arkansas, but who had at least played the previous season for Portland.
"My agent called me with the news and then [Indiana general manager] Donnie Walsh called me," Kleine recalled. Did he have to show up in Indiana to take a physical? "No," he said. Did he have to show up in Indiana to "work out"? Again, "No."
But, Kleine said, his situation was a bit different from Van Horn's. "I had just finished playing," he said. "We had played into June [losing the Western Conference finals in seven games to the Lakers]. And if I hadn't moved everyone to Arkansas, I probably would have tried to play another year."
Van Horn's situation is a joke. He doesn't have any intention of playing, which flies in the face of what the league said is one of the needs in a deal like this. Ditto for McKie. He was coaching, for goodness sakes. He's just now doing it in Memphis instead of in Philadelphia.
When it was suggested to Kleine that such subterfuge should be called "The Joe Kleine Exception," he said, "I think it should be the Lazarus Exception, because you're being raised from the dead."
Kleine, by the way, has decided to see if he likes coaching and is an assistant on Steve Shields's staff at the University of Arkansas-Little Rock, alma mater of the Lakers' Derek Fisher.
Korver got things jazzed up
While much of the talk has centered, justifiably, on All-Stars getting traded (Shaquille O'Neal, Pau Gasol, Jason Kidd), one of the most critical deals involves a guy who isn't even starting for his new team. But, make no mistake, the addition of sharpshooter Kyle Korver to the Utah Jazz has been huge.
The Jazz were a so-so 16-16 when they acquired Korver from the 76ers (on the day they lost to the Celtics in Salt Lake City). But after Friday night's loss to the Clippers, Utah is 19-4 since Korver came on board and has reclaimed its place atop the Northwest Division. When a reporter from the Philadelphia area approached Utah's Carlos Boozer at All-Star Weekend, inquiring about Korver, Boozer smiled and said, "We stole one from y'all, didn't we?" He then went on, "His attitude was like a resurgence for us. We needed something like that. He's a perfect fit for us."
Korver's specialty also addressed one of Utah's supposed weaknesses: playing against zone defenses. "He does a real good job of stretching the floor," Boozer said. "He's a great shooter."
Of course, it isn't just Korver who's responsible for Utah's run. The big guys are healthy and Deron Williams is an All-Star-caliber point guard. Even Andrei Kirilenko appears to have gotten his somewhat mystifying act together - and, lest we forget, he is FIBA's 2007 Player of the Year.
Korver simply adds to a pretty efficient offensive machine, as Utah went into last night's games ranked No. 2 in shooting, No. 2 in assists, and No. 5 in points.
We'll see the Jazz in Boston March 14, right before the Celtics make their big trip to Texas and New Orleans.
Etc.
Rondo missed a board meeting
One of Rajon Rondo's undeniable strengths, especially at his position, is rebounding. The Celtics point guard led Kentucky in rebounding in his final season in Lexington, pulling down 19 in one game (against Iowa), a school record for a guard. So it was with some degree of astonishment that the box score in Thursday's paper revealed that Rondo had played 30 minutes against Golden State and didn't collect a rebound. (This came one night after a monstrous offensive rebound/jam against Denver.) It marked just the second time this season that Rondo had been shut out, the other occasion a Nov. 7 annihilation of Denver in Boston in which he played 33 minutes.
Going to see Wizard of awes?
One of the real attractions in this summer's free agent crop is going to be the Wizards' Antawn Jamison. While many figure Jamison is a lock to re-sign with Washington, he said over All-Star Weekend that he is looking forward to free agency to see who might come knocking. "I'm definitely going to test the market," he said. "It's a situation I've never been in before, so I'm going to have a little fun, make Washington sweat a little bit. This is an exciting time for me and my family. I'm excited to see what free agency is all about, get the opportunity to meet with some teams, and get their input on how they envision me fitting in. Things like that." Jamison reiterated the phrase "it's a business" more than once, adding, "Anything is possible. When the opportunity comes up, I'm definitely going to see what's out there and try to take advantage of it."
Seeds of doubt in Denver
All of the moves in the Western Conference have Denver coach George Karl wondering just what it's going to take to make the final eight. His team stood pat Thursday (excepting the Richter Scale-shattering exchange of Taurean Green for Von Wafer) while almost everyone else either made a big move or already had made one. "It's a very unique year," Karl said. "It's something I've never seen in my time. Last year we were one game over .500 at this time and thought we were in OK shape. Now, we're 12 games over .500 and we're worried. We have 30 games
. Some great ones. Some big-time games. Some situations on the road where we have to make sure we are ready to play, ready to win. And if we do our job, we can put a big number on the board. I personally think if we get close to 50 [wins], we can make the playoffs. A couple years ago 50 would give us fourth place."
All of the Kings' men gone
Mike Bibby got quite the welcome from the semi-civilized folks of Sacramento (to paraphrase Phil Jackson) when he returned last week wearing the uniform of the Atlanta Hawks. There was a video tribute on the Jumbotron. There was a full-page thank you ad in the Sacramento Bee taken out by the Kings. But the Bibby trade (for roster spots and expired Hawks contracts) brings to a close the remarkable run of the Kings team in the first decade of the millennium. He was the last survivor, having watched Vlade Divac, Chris Webber, Peja Stojakovic, Doug Christie, Bobby Jackson, Hedo Turkoglu, and even coach Rick Adelman all leave before him. They may well have been the best team in the NBA in 2001-02, but a miracle Robert Horry shot, some really questionable officiating, and some untimely free throw shooting did them in during the conference finals against the Lakers. They never got that far again.
Grizzlies cash in their own way
One of the strangest deals that went down Thursday involved balance-line phobic Memphis, which swapped second-round picks with the Rockets while acquiring the rights to two guys who probably won't ever grace an NBA arena. Ah, but there was something else involved for the Grizzlies, the kind of thing Sidney Greenstreet in "Casablanca" referred to as "carrying charges." The operative words in this deal: "cash considerations." That used to be obligatory in any Paul Gaston deal and it is apparently thus for any Michael Heisley deal as well. Nonetheless, Memphis GM Chris Wallace looked on in wonder like everyone else when big names began to move and he ended up with Marcus Vinicius and the draft rights to Malick Badiane. "We were like those insects that hop on the elephant's back for a ride," Wallace cracked.
If he can't take off with Rockets...
Another overlooked deal that basically has no downside for the acquirers is Houston's plying of native son Gerald Green away from the Timberwolves for Kirk Snyder. Tracy McGrady signed off on the deal, and the thinking is that if Green is ever going to bust out, his hometown is the place to do so. Otherwise, the reputation of him having been raised by wolves will continue to follow him. Green never got a chance to play regular minutes for a bad Minnesota team, which tells you something. But he'll be around veterans for the first time in his career and be on a good team for the first time as well. What's the risk? The Rockets gave up a second-rounder, which could be a worthwhile price if the kid starts to get it. When asked if he might regret making the trade three years from now, Minny boss Kevin McHale said, "In three years, come see me."
