Jameer Nelson

Jameer Nelson
PG - 6’0, 190lbs - 36 years old - 14 years of experience

Apparently in need of whatever it was he provides, the Pistons traded for Jameer Nelson at the deadline, re-uniting Stan van Gundy with his former Orlando Magic leader. This was Nelson’s second trade of the season, having also been included in the Omer Asik/Nikola Mirotic deal; this, then, meant that a 35-year-old Jameer Nelson objectively had trade value this season. What a world.

Nelson joined the Pistons only for the cost of Willie Reed, a player for whom the Pistons had no need (Eric Moreland was already doing the same things) and who was only included in the Blake Griffin trade as salary and roster filler. He gave them some point guard play for a bit, something deemed worth having in the continued absence of Reggie Jackson and the limitations of all the options. And most importantly of all, he had Van Gundy’s trust.

He did not give them very good point guard play, though. Perhaps empowered by Van Gundy to be the go-to ball handling perimeter scorer and driver that used to be, Nelson tried to be that….and he wasn’t. He took a lot of shots, and missed a lot of shots. None of his production in his short seven-game stint with the Pistons was good enough to earn Nelson a new contract with the team. And with his main hype man now also gone as well, the largely unhappy union of man and team will continue no more.

Player Plan: Expiring prorated minimum salary. Part as friends.

Jameer Nelson
PG, 6’0, 190lbs, 35 years old, 13 years of experience

A better season than the one prior in roughly double the number of minutes, having gotten his shot back, and being asked to start half the year in light of Mudiay’s decline. In light of Murray’s ascendance and his tremendous two-man game with Jokic, Nelson may never start again, but he did a decent job of being the veteran fill-in he was brought in to be, as long as it wasn’t the fourth quarter. Nelson is probably a third stringer hereafter with his much declined speed and poor defence, but he did what he was brought in to do.

Player Plan: Has a $4,736,050 contract for 2017/18. Might as well see it off.

The idea of a one-club man is a romanticised ideal in sports, yet one increasingly impossible to achieve in this heightened free agency era. Even Paul Pierce eventually got traded. However, it does occasionally happen, and Luol Deng is one of the few true veterans in this league to have spent his whole career with one team. Indeed, the only players to have been with their current teams longer than Deng has been with Chicago are Kobe Bryant, Dirk Nowitzki, Nick Collison, the Miami duo of Udonis Haslem and Dwyane Wade, and the Spurs trio of Parker, Ginobili and Duncan, while Jameer Nelson and Anderson Varejao are the only other 2004 draftees to have never left the team that first signed them. This kind of longevity, then, is rare - usually, one party is sufficiently disgruntled with the other by now to have moved on.

There remain many taxpaying teams this year. As covered earlier this year, 14 teams were scheduled to be taxpayers earlier this year, and it's still a high number. The Lakers had no hope or no intention of getting under it, and retain the league's largest payroll, unable or unwilling to make any deals to shred a small amount off of it. (Not even my Morrison for Hunter special. Boooo.) The Knicks cleared future payroll but did nothing to change this year's, and Dallas, Boston and Cleveland took more 2009/10 salary on. Denver couldn't dump salary without jeopardising their current team, and rightly decided it wasn't worth it. San Antonio tried to dump salary, but couldn't shift anything other than Theo Ratliff's minimum contract (receiving a top 55 protected 2016 pick in the process; i.e. nothing at all). And while Orlando didn't seem to try, they'll have the added benefit of a reduction on Jameer Nelson's salary, as his $500,000 All Star bonus, previously listed as likely, will now no longer be applicable.