Finances of the Terrence Williams/Sergei Lishouk trade
December 16th, 2010
The only picture of Joe Smith ever taken in which he is not smiling broadly. Yesterday, a three way trade went down between the L.A. Lakers, Houston Rockets and New Jersey Nets that saw four picks, three players and one set of redundant draft rights get rehomed just in time for Christmas. – Houston dealt: Lottery protected first-round draft pick to New Jersey; draft rights to Sergei Lishouk to L.A.– Houston received: Terrence Williams from New Jersey. – L.A. Lakers dealt: Sasha Vujacic and their 2011 first-round draft pick to New Jersey. – L.A. Lakers received: Joe Smith, New Jersey’s 2011 second-round pick and Chicago’s 2012 second-round pick from New Jersey; the rights to Sergei Lishouk from Houston. – New Jersey dealt: Terrence Williams to Houston; Joe Smith and the two second rounders to L.A.– New Jersey received: Sasha Vujacic and the two first rounders. All teams arguably profit from the move, which is how trades should be. The Lakers saved money, and somehow snagged two second-round picks in the bargain when they probably would still have been quite happy to do the deal without them. Houston gained a player probably better than the one they would have drafted with that pick, and New Jersey freed themselves of a problematic backup while piling on two first-round picks, which they can now either use as trade bait or use to acquire yet more backups. Everyone was a winner, except for Vujacic. Many people have questioned, however, how the move was legal under the terms of the soon-to-be-obliterated Collective Bargaining Agreement. Trade calculations are a confusing process at the best of time, and even more so when talking about three team deals involving mismatched salaries. But because of the inclusion of Smith, the finances just about work. And I do mean just […]
2008 NBA Finals Talk
June 10th, 2008
By unpopular demand, I won’t talk about baseball. Instead, I’ll talk about basketball. I shall retread the observations of the hundreds of other writers who are covering the subject, while adding no unique spin. It’s how we roll around here. 1) There’s no reason why Lamar Odom shouldn’t be able to defend Kevin Garnett better than he does. None whatsoever. He has the length to bother his jump shots as well as anyone can bother them, the athleticism to prevent any easy drives to the basket, and the reasonable man-to-man post defence to cope with the rare times that Garnett plays back to the basket. But he doesn’t do it that well. And not only does he struggle at it, but he doesn’t do it much at all, as Pau Gasol seems to end up with the assignment a lot of the time. This doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Also, this is somewhere where Andrew Bynum would come in handy. 2) Something that also doesn’t make a lot of sense is Vlad Rad starting and playing as much as he is. I understand the Lakers’ need for shooting and spacing. I do. But Radmanovic is bad in all other aspects of the game. (His rebounding numbers in this series have been quite good, but try and think of a single Radmanovic rebound. You can’t – they were all gimmies that his replacement could have gotten, too.) And when you’re matched up against a team that starts Ray Allen, Paul Pierce and Garnett at the 2-3-4 spots, you’re left with the unattractive prospect of having Radmanovic guarding one of those three, particularly when Kobe Bryant spends so much time on Rajon Rondo. And Radmanovic just can’t do that. Leave him in as a token starter if you must, but […]
