Portland fans, we've had a tough time the past couple of years due to injuries. I could take the time to list them, but I think we are all so familiar with each player's injury report we could recite them in our sleep. We do have a tendency to pity ourselves as sports fans so let's just stop wallowing for a moment and take a look at our situation a little more objectively.
The two biggest pieces to our franchise, Brandon Roy and Greg Oden, appear basically done. Barring some kind of miracle, Roy will never again have menisci. Goodbye athleticism, we won't ever see you again. His reluctance to pass the crown of "franchise player" to Aldridge makes this even more complicated. Greg Oden technically still has a chance to return and be a dominant force. But does anyone believe this will happen? I say it is more likely that Boston College wins the national championship in football next year than any kind of Oden dominance.
Okay, so that leaves us with a core of Aldridge, Nic Batum and Wes Matthews. That isn't a bad core at all. But those are the players that you want to be your 2nd, 3rd and 4th best players. The organization would have to surround that group with incredible role players to make it into a contender. The good news? The Blazers do have two or three trade pieces to try and make that happen.
Miller is in the second year of a three year contract, but the last year is a team option. Camby has one year and ten million dollars after this year. Pryzbilla is in the final year of his contract and could be traded to a team looking for cap relief.
There are several glaring issues with these trade pieces though. First, Miller's market is limited, at best. Take a look at the top contenders, none of them need a point guard. There was a lot of talk about the Blazers making another run at Devin Harris earlier in the year. But the problem there is that New Jersey wanted to deal Harris in order to clear more cap space to sign Carmelo to an extension in the event they acquired him from the Nuggets. Carmelo is clearly not going to New Jersey, so the Nets have no reason to trade Harris now. Miller's tank remains full and his durability is impressive, but his trade value is limited at best.
Marcus Camby is an enticing piece, much more so than Andre Miller. An elite defender and rebounder, a reasonable contract and could fill a hole in the middle for several teams. But one has to think that GM's are a little skeptical of his health (notorious for missing games during the regular season) after his recent arthroscopic knee surgery two weeks ago. How many teams want to take a chance on a 36 year old with a lot of miles on those freshly operated knees? And if we trade Camby, we can seriously forget about the rest of this year (not that we have any chance of anything other than a first round sweep by the Spurs or Lakers). But of the three pieces, Camby is the most likely to get traded in my opinion.
Pryzbilla is the final piece of the trade puzzle. Joel's surgery evidently robbed him of his already meager athleticism. His inability to play effectively for more than twenty minutes a game don't exactly bring in phone calls from other GM's. Cap relief would be the largest motivator for a team to trade for Joel, but with a lockout basically guaranteed next year, do teams care that much about clearing cap space right now? That would kill the free agent market for next year and as long as there is a lockout, teams do not have to pay their players. Cap space becomes a secondary priority in this case.
So of these three players, Camby is the most likely to be traded. If the Blazers are lucky, maybe they can package another one of these contracts for an equitable return, but I do not see that happening. And if the Blazers do somehow manage to acquire some good young pieces, how do we know they will be any good for us? The basis of this question is the impending lockout and the collective bargaining agreement discussions taking place between the league and the player's union currently.
Let's say the players and the owners come to an agreement where one of the agreements is a hardcap for the league. This puts the Blazers in an incredibly precarious position. With a max contract in Brandon Roy, a near max deal for Aldridge, a full mid-level exception for Matthews and Batum needing an extension, a great deal of the Blazers' caps space is tied up. So if the Blazers do trade for any young players, is there any guarantee that we will have the cap space to sign them to an extension given how much money we have invested right now in our roster?
The Blazers' future depends heavily on the results of the CBA. Right now our future is bleak, but if the owners win out and the league institutes a hard cap, life will become worse for the Blazers. I personally think the best course of action is to let these three big contracts expire and save the cap space for after the new league adopts the new CBA. There is too much instability in the league right now to take a risk. Stay patient, play it safe for now and hope that with the new CBA, we can build around our new core of three. Doesn't seem too long ago that core included Roy and Oden, does it?
Hey broskie, a few thoughts. First, a three-man core of Nic, Wes, and LMA isn't going to be a contender regardless of the incredible role players with whom they're surrounded. a 50-win team with a good supporting cast and health, and that's the best-case scenario. Virtually every championship-winning team in the last 20 years has featured an elite perimeter shot-creator, with the only exception being the '99 Spurs. So all we need to do is go out and find two Hall of Fame caliber big men if we can't find that perimeter guy, right everybody???
ReplyDeleteI think Miller is somewhat more likely to be moved than you indicate. Out of the contenders who could be making a move, Orlando is definitely a candidate IMO -- Miller is a vast improvement over Duhon as a backup PG to Nelson, and it's not like Nelson has been a paragon of health. If he went down in the playoffs they would be screwed. Orlando can spread the floor even with Miller in the lineup and he'd certainly make sure that Howard wouldn't go 10 minutes at a time without taking a shot like happens now. The problem is that I'm not sure what we could get back from them. R. Anderson would be the coup but that's not happening. Maybe Reddick and an unprotected future 1st...better than no return on Miller.
Re: Camby, I agree that he's the most likely player to get moved. I'm not quite sure his injuries rise to the level of "notorious for missing games during the regular season" though. His games played since 06-07: 70, 79, 62, 74.
Re: Joel. I think the Blazers would love to move him, but I agree with you that there's not much of a market for him because of the looming lockout. I also think that expiring contracts are generally overrated in the mind of the average fan. Remember the deals that weren't with RLEC? You occasionally see the Gasol-to-LA salary dump, but that's far more the exception than the norm.
You left Oden off of the list of players needing significant money as we head into the lockout. We won't be able to sign him for less than 8 million per. I'd expect something like a 3 yr-24 million contract -- if we won't give it to him, somebody else will, guaranteed. He's a generational talent when he's on the floor, and if people will keep signing Kwame and Darko to midlevel contracts, GO will certainly get at least that much. And the FO has already indicated their intention to resign him.
I'm much less concerned than you about the prospect of a hard cap keeping teams from being able to resign their players. Even if a hard cap gets instituted, which I see as unlikely just because it's such a tremendous departure from the current model, I'd bet significant money that it'll either be phased in or that teams will be able to grandfather in their young players to exceed this iteration of the hard cap (probably subject to certain limitations). The owners are the ones swinging the hammer in this negotiation, and they don't want to lose young assets for nothing.