When Artest is your third best player behind a dominant low-post scorer (Yao) and a borderline unguardable individual scorer (T-Mac), then I'd say you're front-runnin'.
The doubters will say they'll play a combined 38 games together next year due to injuries and various forms of crazy, but on paper this team is absurd.
Do you start Artest alongside Battier and T-Mac and play small at the four with Artest, making other fours either chase Battier to the corners on rotations or cover Ron-Ron away from the hoop with a live dribble? Delicious...
Or do you start Scola and have him and Artest beat the crap out of people - Battier off the bench as the perfect 6th man? Or trade Battier for a scoring/shooting wing? What great options to have, huh?
According to earlier reports, The Mavs offered Stack (expiring contract) and Bass for Artest. If this was true, that's like offering Bass for Artest since Artest's contract was already expiring.
Same deal here as Bobby Jackson is expiring, so the Rockets just traded two late first round picks (this year's Donte Greene, who I happen to really like) and their '09 pick (surely that'll be a late-rounder) for Artest.
All hindsight clichés aside, wouldn't it be cool to have had at least one of those Kidd first rounders back for situations like this?
The dreaded BYC status only applies to players when they are signed by team's that are over the cap.
Depending on how quickly Josh Childress' cap hold is removed from their cap number and how accurate these numbers are, The Hawks will be under the cap and Smith won't receive BYC status in a S&T.
I'm bad at math and reading documents - so please allow me some margin for error. But that's how I read it.
That'd open up some pretty interesting scenarios if I'm reading this right.
The Mavs defeated the Sacramento Kings 93-71 in last night's summer league game. Gerald Green had his best outing so far with 18 pts and 7 rebs. Check out a game interview with Green here, where he discusses his development as an NBA player.
In other Mavs/Kings love-making news, there was possibly a trade offered of Brandon Bass and Stackhouse for Ron Artest. The buzz is that the Kings will entertain deals that include Josh Howard. Would you make a play for Ron Arteezy?
According to the Sac Bee, the Lakers are offering up Lamar Odom for the Kings contract-troubled forward Ron Artest.
According to a league source, the Lakers already have contacted the Kings regarding Artest and are believed to be offering forward Lamar Odom. As of Tuesday evening, the Kings had not returned the call.
If our blog and the above clip doesn't satiate your need for NBA free agency talk from dudes with shiny domes, then you may want to check in with Hollinger's chat starting here in about an hour.
When it's all said and done, I bet he stays put. But it certainly adds to the intrigue. All the dominoes will fall once Brand figures out what he's doing.
The first surprise of free agency arrived in the form or a Baron Davis opt out. Dude is leaving a shade under 18 milly on the table to try and create some degree of leverage.
A couple of years ago I couldn't stand the dude. I thought he was a bad leader and a malcontent. Was there anything more accurate than this SG description:
In the days since the draft, there has been plenty of discussion about why the Mavs didn't try to move up in order to grab the likes of CDR, Darrell Arthur or Mario Chalmers.
Cuban told Sefko the money to do so was stupid. Stupid money used to have no bearing on Mavericks' personnel decision-making, but that hasn't been the case for a long time as far as I can tell.
Local Dallas product Darrell Arthur had a roller coaster ride of a draft night. Most thought he would go higher in the draft but for various reported reasons he slid down to pick #27. When it's all said and done hopefully he's on a team where he will be able to get some playing time to learn the pro game. Still plenty of time to get traded again though..
The New Orleans Hornets selected him and then traded him to the Portland Trailblazers, who dealt him to the Houston Rockets, who sent him to the Memphis Grizzlies for Syracuse forward Donte Greene, originially selected one pick behind Arthur.
There will plenty of hot NBA rumors, trades and summer activity starting with the 2008 Draft tonight. Lookout for random updates and tons of Skinalysis.
"...deemed "95 percent certain to happen" by one source, Richard Jefferson would leave the Nets for Milwaukee in exchange for second-year Chinese big man Yi Jianlian and small forward Bobby Simmons."
A couple of wheeling and dealings by other teams has me trying to figure out how I feel about the direction this team should take and I keep coming back to rebuilding on the fly.
And by that I mean parting ways with Josh Howard.
First things first - I'd say the Pistons are closer to a championship than the Mavs, yet they're looking to shake things up because they sense the staleness. It's bold, but think it's the right thing to do.
According to this Yahoo report, it's a done deal.
"..the Indiana Pacers have agreed in principle to send six-time All-Star Jermaine O'Neal to the Toronto Raptors for point guard T.J. Ford and the 17th pick in Thursday's NBA draft"
But can't they buy a pick? (blah, blah, blah - skip ahead)....Nawleans (27) can't be looking forward to all the big money deals they'll have on their hands when it's time for CPIII to get his. But that's minimal dough that low.
Chad Ford has been on this from the jump, and if this current batch of rumors has legs, than we'll either see Michael Beasley slip out of the top 2 or a major trade with someone bumrushing the Heat just salivating at the chance to get at him.
I can't imagine this dude falls out of the top 2, but remember that before the season started everyone was saying OJ Mayo would easily be the #1 pick.
I was lucky enough to catch a screening of Gunnin' For That #1 Spot earlier today and there's a line in it where one of the scouting service douchebags says something to the effect of, "a ranking is just a snapshot of a moment in time."
Not going to bother with notes on the Game 2 blowout. Fortunately I was a couple of hours behind and rocked the DVR so I could fly through that awful 2nd half.
I am interested in kicking around some draft/trade stuff however. Ford is reporting that Miami realizes it won't get D Rose and that means that Mayo could actually slide into the picture at #2.
Sorry to beat this into the ground but Rose is special. Beasley is really good. There's a difference.
I have no feel at all about Beasley over Mayo. I think they'll both be great.
But I feel the same way about Rose as I did Chris Paul when I was laughing that he went #4. Too good to pass up regardless of who is on your roster.
Fish makes the point on his home page (the Fo' Shizzle piece) that Josh's value is too low right now to consider trading him.
That was my initial reaction immediately following the playoff debacle too. But is that really the case? Just because we've seen his warts up close doesn't mean that they're as apparent to others.
I bet Jason Kidd wasn't as brilliant once he got here as the team had envisioned him to be. But they weren't with him everyday before the trade either. That's why trades happen in the first place - the grass is always greener and every coach and personnel guy believes he possess the magic fertilizer.
Josh is one year removed from an all-star appearance and coming off his best statistical year as a pro. His trade value is higher then we think right now. It was definitely higher around the all-star break last year, but we didn't want to trade him then, right?
Since we posted this yesterday about sending us your trade concoctions, it seems that virtually all of them are centered around moving JoHo. I think even his biggest supporters are ready to see him get on down the trail.
Somehow I doubt that's reality, but of course there will be tons of these rumors, bad guesses and speculation until Cuban and Nellie Jr make their next coaching hire.
I'm starting to get a ton of e-mail about blowing up the team, trading Kidd, etc...
I'm not ready to deal with all that yet. Let's see how we feel Thursday morning after the Nuggets and Suns have squared off twice and the Mavs host GS the night after Nellie's boys travel to SA.
And when you start considering shipping off all-stars (Kidd, Dirk), you very rarely get equal value in return. We ready to completely rebuild without our own draft picks? Not me.
One of the favorite past times of B&S groupie and hoops junkie Mario Sands is to e-mail me scenarios in which the Mavericks could get perpetually disgruntled wing Corey Magette. In terms of skill set, Magette would be the ideal solution to the Mavs 2 guard issues.
Back in Januray when Clippers owner Donnie Sterling and head coach Mikey Dunleavy were airing out a very public feud, Dunleavy revealed that he thought he had a deal done to ship Maggette to the Mavs for JET, only to have Sterling nix it because he didn't want to part with one of his personal favorites.
I personally couldn't fathom that you'd be able to acquire Maggette for JET, but to each his own I suppose. It's not like JET ain't good. He can absolutely fill it up. And he's a super positive dude willing to make sacrifices for the better of the team. But as we've all been made aware over the last two seasons, he's a man without a position. That's a tough thing for the dude with the longest contract on the squad and a healthy 40 mil remaining on that bad boy.
On Tuesday night, the Mavs saw a Lakers squad that many (including myself) feel are the favorites to represent the WC in The Finals so long as Andrew Bynum can come back and play at a level close to he did before his injury.
Tonight they'll face a Boston Celtics team that has been the best defensive team in The Association and for many (including myself) are the pick to represent the EC in The Finals this year. In fact, if the Celtics win tonight they'll be the first team to get the road sweep in the Lone Star state in 7 years.
I think these HPS joints are becoming more and more lucid. The day will come when they teach logic courses using these precious exchanges as reference texts.
On the surface this appears to give the Hornets veteran depth, which Mavs fans must surely love after what they witnessed last night. Western Conference GM's seem to be loading up for rugged and 'hopefully' long playoff runs. More details and Skinalysis to follow as the story develops.
It appears the Mavs may have more issues on their plate than just the Devean George
trade snafu. This time the NBA front office wants to have a word with Dallas about the alleged prearranged deal that would ideally have Stackhouse return to the team in 30 days. It doesn't come as a surprise that folks across the league might have some questions about this part of the trade.
According to Stein it's more alive than ever. Parting with Devin Harris is the key component that troubles me. If this trade is going to happen, then I don't let it get finalized without the deal expanding to include Richard Jefferson. Then I could cope with losing Devin a little easier.
The Memphis Grizzlies have traded Pau Gasol to the Los Angeles Lakers. The Grizzlies in return get the much-maligned Kwame Brown, Javaris Crittenton and two first-round picks. I'm sure this will have an interesting Jerry West angle to it... More conspiracy theories and Skinalysis to follow soon.
This particular rumor seems pretty unrealistic to me from both a Dallas and Portland perspective. Dallas would be giving up way more than they'd have to in order to snag Kidd -- more on that in a minute. And I definitely agree with TrueHoops perspective from the Portland side.
But what all this talk has really done is force me to evaluate whether or not Dallas is a real title contender and why they are or aren't. Here are the lowlights, live and direct, from my frontal hoop lobe.
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