Al Harrington

Washington will still need to consolidate this position during the season. The injuries to Porter, Beal and now Al Harrington are exposing a real lack of depth, particularly offensively. Backup point guard Eric Maynor has continued to struggle badly since his injury two years ago, shooting only 32% from the field, whie his backup Garrett Temple is similarly inefficient offensively but without any jump shot range and with more turnovers than assists on the season thus far. At the forward spots, Jan Vesely has finally shown some signs of life yet still provides almost nothing offensively, whilst Singleton and Trevor Booker have been mostly opportunity scorers in the NBA thus far. And the two players who can score off the bench, Harrington and Kevin Seraphin, are liabilities defensively and on the glass.

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So saturated can this market be, however, that anyone can benefit. And even non-competitive teams have done so this summer. The Wizards may have facilitated their playoff push with the overly maligned Al Harrington, who if he can have a clean run of health, surely won’t have lost his ability to score. The Mavericks might have done it twice – in addition to the redeemable Blair, they also returned Devin Harris, whose star may have long burned out but who nevertheless will be one of the better backup point guards in the league. And the Lakers might have done it more than twice – Nick Young, Jordan Farmar, and even Shawne Williams have higher talent levels than their price tags indicate.

In the past four NBA seasons, there have been 208 occasions on which a player has scored 40 or more points - regular season and playoffs combined. Fifty-seven players have combined for those 208 outbursts, including such unlikely names such as Luis Scola, C.J. Watson and C.J. Miles.

Most of the players are stars, or were stars at the time. Many still are. But some of those players have fallen from this intermittent grace so badly that they now only earn the minimum salary.

Despite their proven potency, Nick Young, Al Harrington, Anthony Morrow, Aaron Brooks and Michael Beasley are now earning as little as a player can - in the case of Beasley, not one dollar of this minimum is even guaranteed. This was agreed to less than three calendar years from his 42-point game, quite the backwards progression.

[T]he amnesty clause (that we're having to pretend will exist here, but which almost certainly will exist in some form) will further expand the range of available talents. A lot of decent players are going to become available, not because they can't play the game, but because they can't justify their contract. A lot of the candidates are obvious and inevitable, some perhaps less so. Here's a potential list:

- Denver: Chris Andersen and Al Harrington - Neither is a bad player, and both give fairly consistent if highly flawed production. But on a team in the midst of a power re-build, they combine for seven years and $43,286,700 of salary, untenable for two backups.