Like a Camby in the wind

Fuck the NBA.

Seriously, fuck it. Fuck it hard. Right in the face.

The Denver Nuggets traded former DPOY Marcus Camby to the L.A. Clippers yesterday, for absolutely nothing. The Nuggets got no more than the right to swap second round picks with L.A. in 2010, a year in which the Clippers will have the lower pick anyway, meaning that Denver won't be exercising the option. That's it. That was their return. That was what they got.

That was what they got for Marcus, freaking, Camby.

I am really annoyed by this.

Marcus Camby is a former DPOY award winner. He may have another one left in him yet, too. Camby is a high calibre player - last year, he averaged 13.1 rebounds and 3.6 blocks a game. 3.6 rebounds per game is a lot of rebounds. And 3.6 is a hell of a lot of blocks. He can pass, and also shoot 20 footers, if you give him a week and 40 feet of elbow room.

Camby is a rare commodity in this league; he is a centre that isn't crap. He is at the peak of his career, and strangely also at his peak physical conditionm having set his new personal best for games played in a season, with a commendable 79 games last season. Without wanting to go overboard and do something silly, such as calling him a dynamic two way player, it's safe to say that Tampon is one of the best at his position, the position that is so hard to fill that General Managers will consistently try any old shit to try and strike gold. In a league where most executives would willingly sacrifice their closest family memebers to get an elite centre, the Clippers now have two. And they're not even overpaid.

They got one of them for freakin' nothing.

How does Marcus Camby fit alongside Wolfgang Kaman? I don't know, but it doesn't matter. He's going to better their team simply by not being Aaron Williams. The Clippers just bagged a huge infusion of quality to their team, and all they had to do was not overpay Luol Deng. If they can now trade for Vince Carter using little more than Cuttino Mobley and Tim Thomas to die, then suddenly they're dancing. A front seven of Carter, Camby, Kaman, Baron Davis, Al Thornton, Quinton Ross and Eric Gordon could break 50 wins, even without Elton Brand or a bench.

And yet, somehow, Denver couldn't even get a first round pick for him? Is that even possible? Is instant salary relief really THAT important? Why has this come up now? Why could they not use the Warriors' and Sixers' cap room, before they spent it, as leverage for a better deal? Not even Memphis's? They couldn't take back even a BIT of salary if it meant getting soem assets, like young players or draft picks? Not a bit? Really? You mean to tell me that a team heading in no particular direction and capped out like buggery can afford to give away its best players for absolutely no return whatsoever? How can any team out there justify spending $23 million on a fourth choice power forward while already nursing one of the league's highest payrolls, paying $60 unnecessary million to a guy who played 3 minutes the season before, as well as giving Chucky Atkins $13 million to do big fat Fanny Adams, can now somehow justify giving away its first round draft picks and frittering away quality players like confetti? This from a team that made the ultimate let's-give-this-shit-a-shot trade only 18 months ago?

Sod that.

Somewhere, somehow, someone is systematically wrong. Either Nuggets owner Stan Kroenke woke up with the arseache and ordered General Manager Mark Warkentein to do a dramatic about-face and cut payroll immediately at all costs, or Warkentein is a pillock. Or both.

Whichever it is, they have a problem. They're still cap strapped, they're still a lottery team, they still have no exciting internal future, they're still a badly assembled veteran team that isn't getting anywhere, and they're still being mismanaged. I'd feel bad for them, but they've annoyed me, so I owe them nothing.

The fans, however, have my sympathy. When teams make bad personal moves to save money, purely as collateral damage from their own previous stupid move, then the fans become the victims to the folly that is the NBA and its old boys network. Believe me, as a Bulls fan, I know that pain. I miss Tyson Chandler every day.

However, in a rare but special first here at eddiebasdenslegacy.com, I'm going to try and think positively. The sole solace for the Nuggets in this deal is the $10 million traded player exception that this deal created. Then again, it will probably go unused. However, if the Nuggets let Allen Iverson expire this summer, they will finally be out, barring widespread changes, from the tax territory in which they currently reside. If that happens, they will still have the TPE to use until July 15th, 2009. And at that point, they'll be able to add salary again. Whether they do this or not is another matter, but the ability to do so remains. And that's a small solace that Nuggets can take away and keep.

Who knows, they might even use it to bring Camby back.



By the way, while we're sort of on the subject of the Clippers and Elton Brand, let us tangent for a minute as you explain something to me. As I understand it, the time line of events in their negotiations go like this;

1 - Brand opts out.

2 - The Clippers and Brand verbally agree to a new deal rather quickly.

3 - The Warriors top this offer, just to see if they get lucky. The Sixers follow suit.

4 - Brand and his agent David Falk take news of this new offer to the Clippers, looking to use it as leverage with the Clippers to make them increase their offer slightly.

5 - The Clippers say no.


Now, why would the Clippers do this? By all accounts, they had a verbal agreement for a very reason 5 year, $65 million offer. Why would they be so inflexibile in renegotiating that slightly? $13 million is a good price for Elton Brand - if you're overpaying him at the end of the deal, you're underpaying him at the start, so it works out fine. Why wouldn't you add a few million if it kept him here? Why wouldn't you discuss a sixth year? Why would you extend qualifying offers to Marcus Williams and Nick Fazekas, keep the unguaranteed Josh Powell around unnecessarily, and even more unnecessarily sign first round draft pick Eric Gordon before compelting your cap space adventure, needlessly costing yourself almost $1.5 million in cap room, a figure which could add over $10 million to the value of a 5 year contract? A $10 million that would have meant the re-signing of your best player, and a hell of a good starting five to build upon?

The answer: I simply don't know. Maybe they didn't know the rules or something. Maybe they didn't know signing Gordon would cost them cap space. Maybe they think Fazekas actually matters in some why. I couldn't say. But I think the Clippers, in doing this, nearly managed to one-up The Juan Carlos Navarro Experience of this past season. And for that, I salute, pity, humilate and disown them. At least they got Camby as a backup plan.

I will never get over how such multi-million dollar business franchises can be mismanaged by the whims and misinformation of those in charge. All the damn time, too. Fucking dumbfounding.



(Readers note: Never listen to Elton John and blog. It leads to the creation of stupid post titles and slightly aggressive opening gambits.)

Dreaming about Mark Madsen

Do you ever stop and think about that time that Mark Madsen shot seven three pointers in an overtime game, when Minnesota and Memphis had the most blatant tank-off that history has ever seen? No, nor did I. That is, not until this morning, when I woke up thinking about it.

(For those unaware of what the hell I'm talking about, here's a box score.)

It's not an entirely normal thing to wake up thinking about, even for the most hardcore Madsen fans amongst us. (For we are all Mark Madsen fans. Obviously.) But some part of this must have ruffled my feathers, stoned my crows and enraged my loins, because this was all that i could think about for about 3 minutes after waking up.

It is now a permanent blot on the NBA landscape. The situation Minnesotas found themselves in - not good enough to make the playoffs, not bad enough to suck mightily without trying to - left them deliberately trying to lose games. It needn't have done, but General Manager extraordinaire Kevin McHale had already pissed away Minnesota's first rounder that season, as it was owed to the L.A. Clippers along with Sam Cassell in exchange for the mesmeric insignificance of Lionel Chalmers, along with Marko Jaric and his bevvy of minge. The pick, however, had top ten protection, and so in order to be able to keep it, Minnesota had to lose with a bit more regularly and finesse than they were doing up until that point.

They did this with aplomb, telling Kevin Garnett to stop playing (or so we thought), playing their better players for merely token minutes, and letting their worse players do whatever the hell they want, in what then-head coach Dwane Casey called "letting them have some fun" (read: "playing really badly so that we lose".)

The fact that they met an equally tanking Memphis team, who were tanking for a different reason, was an unfortunate coincidence. Memphis had comfortably made the playoffs, but was trying to lose for a different reason - they were residing in the fifth spot, with the Clippers in sixth. Whoever finished 5th would face the 60-22 Dallas Mavericks in the first round of the playoffs, without homecourt advantage, but whoever finished 6th would face Denver with homecourt advantage. After *accidentally* losing four of their last five games, the Clippers secured the worst (and, thus, the best) seed, in spite of Memphis's valiant efforts on the final day.

(The Clippers then beat Denver comfortably. The Grizzlies were swept by Dallas even more comfortably. Memphis were right not to want it.)

The whole exchange highlighted two key flaws in the NBA's system - the new playoff system and the protection of draft picks. The playoff system has been somewhat resolved, as the possibility of a team finishing lower down the seedings than a team with an inferior record has been decreased with the new decision to grant division winners no less than a top four seed, as opposed to a guaranteed top three seed. But the other situation remains intact, with lottery teams able to lose at will to either retain traded picks, or better their lottery chances. And it remains a travesty based around a communist idea of parity.

(The draft lottery isn't a million miles away from what Stalin was trying to do. Remember that.)



At this point, this post would benefit greatly from a well thought out and heavily critiqued suggestion for a better way of going about these things, so that such a deplorable situation won't ever happen again. (The concept of teams deliberately trying to lose is still prevalent - Miami, for example, has told Dwyane Wade to stop playing, and Memphis recently gifted away Pau Gasol just to take them out of purgatory.) However, as mentioned at the top, this post had a mere three minutes of thought, and so I haven't got one.

Any scenario in which teams are deliberately losing, though, is a gaping flaw in the otherwise well-constructed NBA machine. Therefore, it gives me something to bitch about. And so, I did. Quietly. To myself. For about three minutes.



Coincidentally (and it really was), a report came out on this very day (note: this note was not published on the day that it was written, which was the 18th) on the subject of Minnesota's recent tanking.

Responding to claims that his team tanked it down the stretch in recent years to improve draft position, Timberwolves owner Glen Taylor fired a barb at Kevin Garnett on Tuesday, as reported by Yahoo.com.

Taylor pointed out that Garnett, who was traded to the Celtics this offseason, took himself out of the lineup late last season and missed the last five games with a sore right quadriceps.

“It was more like, I’d say, K.G. tanked it,” Taylor told the Pioneer Press. “I think the other guys still wanted to play, but (the loss of Garnett) sure changed the team and didn’t make us as (good).”

While the quote may have been taken out of context, or Taylor had not necessarily said what he meant, it does sure as shit look like he is trying to pass the blame onto this entire situation onto Garnett's shoulders. This hardly seems entirely fair, given the Madsen situation that inspired this post. But it DID lead to me googling Glen Taylor's name, and thus seeing for the first time a picture of his grin.


I thought I should share that with you.

30 teams in 36 or so days: L.A. Clippers

This is the first of 30 installments that will serve the dual purpose of being both offseason recaps and poorly thought predictions for next season, for all 30 NBA teams. These will be done in an order: that order is the order that I choose to do them in. There won't be an alphabetical approach, nor one based on standings. They'll be truly random. Randomness is the future.

___________________________________________


L.A. Clippers


Players acquired via free agency or trade:

Brevin Knight (2 years, $3.3 million)
Ruben Patterson (one year minimum)
Josh Powell (3 years, $2.6 million)
Guillermo Diaz (three year minimum)



Players acquired via draft:

First round: Al Thornton (14th overall)
Second round: Jared Jordan (45th overall, unsigned)


Players retained:

Quinton Ross (exercised team option)


Players departed:

James Singleton (declined team option, signed in Spain), Jason Hart (signed with Utah), Yaroslav Korolev (initially agreed to re-sign with the team right back at the start of free agency, but hasn't done it yet, and now reports are flying about him signing in Europe instead), Daniel Ewing (waived, signed in Russia), Will Conroy (waived, signed in Italy)



Bobbins:

In amongst all the weird and strange things that have gone on throughout the league during this offseason, it seems to have escaped the attention of most people that the Los Angeles Clippers had one of the most economical and shrewd offseasons out there. After not getting ridiculously lucky and moving up in the lottery, the Clippers ended up drafting a consensus good pick, and also managed to draft a player in the second round who seemingly has trade value before he has even taken the court.

Not stopping there, the Clippers waited for a while as other teams overspent for players, before making their own free agency splashes. Somehow, in Knight and Patterson, they managed to acquire via free agency two players who could very realistically be in the top 8 of the league's best team, and who are fringe starters/quality backups anywhere in the league, all for only a combined price tag of 3 years and roughly $4 million.

That's pretty amazing, really, given that this current NBA climate is one predicated on wildly overpaying for people who aren't worth it, just so that you can get them. But more on that later. (Hint: Orlando.)

And yet it's all for nothing. No matter what they do in terms of bringing people in, the Clippers aren't going to win anything this season, nor in the foreseeable future.

They may have been a mid-to-low seed playoff team, even in the strong Western Conference, had all of the above taken place in conjunction with a run of good luck with injuries. But that's not what has happened: superstar Elton Brand is almost certainly out for the season with a ruptured achilles tendon, and overrated guard Shaun Livingston is also out indefinitely with all manner of bad times going on in his left leg. And by "indefinitely", they really do mean indefinitely. Not the sort of "indefinitely" that seems to be labelled to people who are day to day with back spasms, in which scenario "indefinitely" is basically a byword for "we wouldn't like to say when he'll be back for fear of retribution, but it won't be long". This is the sort of indefinitely that is truly indefinite, where it's far from definite that a return is even possible. He really did carnage up that thing.

Without those two, the Clippers aren't going anywhere. OK, so that's more of an endorsement of Brand than it is Livingston, but the point remains - the Clippers could have been a good team. But now, they aren't.

Indeed, it's only because of the injuries that the Clippers were able to acquire Knight and Patterson in the first place. With Livingston down, the only remaining options at point guard left were the unsuitable Conroy, Ewing and Hart (all since allowed to leave or, in the case of Ewing, actively encouraged), and the aged Sam Cassell, who is entering what is probably his final season before he retires to tend to his colony (Cassell alien jokes are easy, aren't they?). Even if it's not on a very good team - a concept with which he is entirely familiar - this presented an opportunity for Brevin Knight to play good minutes, something that seems to be very dear to him. (Note: Knight signed after Brand's injury had occurred, and it's extent widely publicised. So apparently the playoffs weren't that important to him.) Similarly, Patterson signed after Brand's injury - unable to get a contract that he deemed sufficient from any other team this offseason, Patterson took the next best thing in big minutes and a probable starting spot, filling in for Brand (who's going to stop him starting? Tim Thomas? Paul Davis?)

For once, the Clippers were too competent for their own good.

None of the Clippers's other moves figure to impact the lives of anything or anyone in the world today. They replaced a small guard with shoot-first tendencies (Ewing) with a small guard with shoot-first tendencies (Diaz), and swapped a 26 year old tweener forward with some fairly decent all around skills (Singleton) with a 24 year old tweener forward with some fairly decent all around skills (Powell). And once again, the Clippers will find that they don't have minutes for either of them when at full strength, despite having signed the pair for a combined 6 years. The Powell signing, when combined with the drafting of Thornton and the Patterson signing, pushes their guy-who-can-play-either-forward-spot-but-who-is-probably-better-at-small-forward quotient back up to a healthy four people - we await news on whether Korolev will make this five. Given that they're now out of roster spots, it is doubtful. There isn't even a spot for Jared Jordan, unless he beats out Guillermo Diaz.

And they still have Aaron Williams at backup centre. Hmmm. I think somebody overlooked this bit.


Next season:

Depends. If they keep things as they are with the current roster, this team probably limps to a 30-33 win season - even in spite of not having a power forward that is actually a power forward - and gives it another hearty go next year. Yet if they choose to go the other way and blow the doors off of this thing, then they could be the worst team in the league. It's one of those. It's one more significant injury and a Cassell buyout away from being a certain tank job.

If Elton Brand opts out next offseason - which he might - the Clippers will have max cap room. Corey Maggette also has an opt out, and is perhaps the more likely of the two to do so. Should this happen, that leaves them with the majority of the remaining players under contract being doddering old farts (Knight, Thomas, Cuttino Mobley), and with not much of a youth moment.

Given that they're not going anywhere this year due to injury, and given that they're staring down the barrel of a very unpleasant situation next offseason that is out of their current control.....

.....it's a fair assumption to say that the roster that they will begin this season with, is pretty unlikely to be the one that they end it with.

Now watch as they stand pat and show me up. How spiteful.