At that point, it seemed as if Camby was as much an injury risk as McDyess. Guy hadn't played a year where he didn't miss at least 19 games and he had just missed 50 games or so.

Posted by VDesai:

At that point, it seemed as if Camby was as much an injury risk as McDyess. Guy hadn't played a year where he didn't miss at least 19 games and he had just missed 50 games or so.

Yeah, I think there's a lot of "selective memory" going on here. I'll freely admit I supported and was excited by the trade and nearly everyone I talked to was too.

Posted by Bonn1997:

Posted by VDesai:

At that point, it seemed as if Camby was as much an injury risk as McDyess. Guy hadn't played a year where he didn't miss at least 19 games and he had just missed 50 games or so.

Yeah, I think there's a lot of "selective memory" going on here. I'll freely admit I supported and was excited by the trade and nearly everyone I talked to was too.

Camby was frequently injured, yes, but his injuries were never as bad as McDyess's knee problem. To me, the knee problem wasn't actually the biggest factor. It was that we gave up one of the top centers in the league and some great options at PF/C so that even if McDyess was healthy, we could field a team with the 6'8" Kurt Thomas starting at center. There was something about the logic of that series of events that you trade two for one, health risks aside, in order to have the privilege of fielding the smallest team in the league. It was a head scratcher especially because we knew there was an almost 0% chance of getting a decent center to replace Camby gave us. This is true to this day, there are even occasional sporadic threads to bring Camby back at this point, even though it is many years later and Camby has aged. Even as it was, a PF who gave what McDyess gave was more common than a center who gave what Camby gave. Not saying that that made a healthy Camby better than a healthy McDyess, but these are factors that weren't considered at all during that trade.

But then, since Isiah did it on 10 trades after Layden.

Posted by Bippity10:

Posted by TMS:

Posted by Solace:

Posted by Pharzeone:

Who the hell was on board with trading Camby for a guy coming off knee surgery. I broke my car radio when I heard WFAN report it. I wanted Butler or Amare. That idiot Layden was so focused on Yao I don't even think he bother to scout anyone else.

If I recall, most of the fans were in love with the trade, because they basically thought Camby was garbage and figured that Nene wasn't going to be as good as McDyess. Other than Briggs and a few others, I don't think Amare was seriously on a lot of people's radar at #7.

But, yes, awful trade, and definitely there were some wise ones who knew it. I do recall Fishmike being very wrong on this one. I don't recall Bippity's comments, but I'm sure he was on board as well.

to be fair, Bip only said "style of play" in regards to Nene & McKnee... turns out he was right, they both ended up being "IR" style players.

Once a jackasse always a jackasse.

I was not a fan of trading the draft pick but I didn't kill Layden on the trade because I lease I understood where he was going. The team was on a downward slide and he tried to make a splash with an extremely talented forward. I could not deny that without further injury we would have been a tough team to beat and our history may have been very different. In the end it did not work out in our favor. But I don't hold GM's to perfection. He took a chance and it backfired. I think the biggest mistake Layden made was not the trade. The biggest mistake he made was after Dice went down, sitting back and waiting for him to come back in perfect shape and ready to carry the team. He took a chance the first time and it backfired. That's understandable. But to continue to build a team like Dice was going to come back set us back a lot. At that point the tear down should have began. Isiah then of course continued his mistake and here we are today.

hatter.