They gave up Jeremy Lamb. Lamb may or may not be a stud, but Houston opted for the bird in the hand. OKC would have never done a Martin for harden deal, but Martin AND a young player with potential......DEAL! So keep in mind that any trade that comes along a team is going to ask for young talent so that means we're going to have to part ways with one of the following Monroe, Knight or Drummond. Of those 3 I most easily part ways with Brandon Knight because I believe that PG's like BK7 come a dime a dozen.
Yup! The ball get stoo far away from him and negates the step he gets on the defense because he's trying to corral the ball.
Your premise is that teams overvalue potential. Since we're talking about a situation with various payoffs, you can't simply look at a few cases where an investment doesn't pan out. You have to have data on the pan-out odds from a huge set of players. You also have to have data on how often the sure things turn to crap (e.g. injuries, Lamar Odom situations). Is it really true that the league as a whole doesn't properly evaluate the odds? Do teams that trade sure things for potential come up short in the long run or ahead? If you were assured that Knight has a 1 in 5 chance of becoming an all-star and a 1 in 10 chance of becoming a hall of famer and a 1 in 5 chance of being out of the NBA in 2 years, who would you be willing to trade for him and how would you come to that conclusion?
I understand where you are going with your arguments, and to some extent I agree with the idea of paying for a no risk player. But you seem to have conveniently forgotten that in this particular instance, the reason that OKC traded Harden was because he wouldn't take a smaller than max contract which had enormous tax implication for their team next year. If he had taken the 52/4 we would be seeing the trio in OKC again this year and probably Perkins getting amnestied next year.
Knight no longer looks like a 4 assists per game type player. He's trending over 7 and not even getting 36 mpg.
The problem with Knight is the problem we as fans have with every player. We see so much of them, up close, and that familiarity breeds contempt. There may be 15 PGs you will trade BK for, but there aren't 30.
I would contend that there are about 3. One of them is Kyrie Irving. Lets see if PF can put together the other two. Keep in mind that not even Rondo performs against his contract as well as BK
I don't agree with KGREG at all but these things happen all the time. You just have to take advantage of it. However, Houston stockpiled picks to get Howard and was left holding the bag. This is why they could be so cavalier. The pistons have a different situation. They have too much money tied up in crap talent. I'm not saying Joe is doing the right thing. Just pointing out factors. N stuff
This is the thing that's surprised me the most. I was pretty skeptical about Knights future as a PG and while I still believe the chances of him ever playing an all-star game is slim I now believe he may become a above average starting PG and that's pretty good. I assume you are thinking of Lillard and CP3 or something similar. I bet Conley and Lowry outperform their contracts with quite a few $M more than BK and Rondo certainly does and there are probably 10 more. If you are thinking in percentage (which wouldn't make sense because that would make the scrub version of Isiah in Sacramento one of the hottest trade pieces in the league), probably most of the 2nd round picks who gets atleast backup mins outperforms their contracts more than BK. I don't think BK is outperforming his contract by a mile now and that's not really something I care about. What's interesting is how the players on the team perform against their contract when (if they ever will be) the Pistons is ready to become contenders. I'd ship BK for these guys without thinking: Rondo D-Will Kyrie Paul Conley Westbrook Lillard Wall Lowry There are a bunch of other guys like Dragic, Lin, Collison, Jennings, Lawson where I'd have to consider the move first but I'd probably do it. Before the season they would have been on the heartbeat list.
And we are not getting an elite PG for any package with BK7 that doesn't include Monroe and Drummond. We could probably pull off a Jameer Nelson caliber player for BK + Stuck + Prince and I don't see what good that would do us. We are certainly not getting any players scoring in the vicinity of 20 ppg.
Not so with me. I believe it's the opposite here at PF when it comes to Knight, familiarity breeds infatuation. I think we look at the 1 out of every 4 good games Knight plays and think that's what he will eventually become. Since he's 20, people are afraid to talk about moving him for a guy who can give you that type of production EVERY GAME! With Knight I see a middle of the pack PG who hits the FA market every summer and can easily be had. Mo Williams, Dragic, Collison, Hill etc etc etc, nothing special about these guys at all; but since he's "young" everybody prefers the bird in the bush as opposed to the one in the hand.
The two I was thinking was Isaiah Thomas and Ricky Rubio. Those are the only two who have comparable value to their contract to BK. Lillard is definitely up there, but he isn't my favourite. That is not to say that I wouldn't take any of the top tier point guards in the league. Conley, Rondo, Paul etc etc are all game changers for this team. But this comes back to an earlier post where I was talking about how we quantify talent. I personally quantify against the value of a contract. If you build a team around players who are outperforming their contracts, then you do two things. Firstly, you create positive trade value within your team. This allows for the acquisition of superstar type players. Secondly, you create a good team. If you entire team has positive production against their contracts, it is pretty hard to build a bad one.
Seriously? You know what I do, I simply watch to see if a cat can ball. I don't care what a player makes if he can ball and the team wins. Right now I see a PG who can't ball AND the team is losing. Although I must admit that Knight can quietly create a good box score for himself in a loss. I will also admit that if Knight had a legit baller on the frontcourt and a legit baller on the wing, his play might drastically improve. Heck he's even looked a little better with Singler as a backcourt mate as opposed to Stuckey.
Yeah, in Bizarro World. Not sure how using young talent to shed bad contracts would help at us at this stage. Unless the goal is to overpay fringe all-stars like Jefferson or Smith to become the new Atlanta Hawks. Also, Ben Gordon could become a free agent 2013 and we are in dire need of shooters.
What is the rush to shed contracts and get rid of potentially a great player? It's not like the Pistons are headed to the promised land soon.
