kam77 wrote:
Good players by your definition, team-killers by another. Vince Carter etc... hate to break it, these guys are not winning anything. These are players their old teams were looking to get rid of ... weren't good enough to be centerpieces of their existing teams. Rejects.

If Vince Carter blows out his knee tomorrow and retires, he is in the Hall of Fame.

oohah

bitty41 wrote:Knick fans have set these incredibly high standards of what constitutes a good player in this league? Outside of a few players you would be hard-pressed to name a player that Knick fans agree universally is good.

That's true, but when you blow two years with the idea of waiting for a difference maker in free agency, then you'd better get a difference maker, and not someone who is just going to get us to .500

There are only a couple of players that can do that, or combinations of players.

Bosh for instance, imho would not be able to get us over the hump. He couldn't do it for the Raps, so it would seem crazy to assume that he could do it for us.

oohah wrote:

kam77 wrote:
Good players by your definition, team-killers by another. Vince Carter etc... hate to break it, these guys are not winning anything. These are players their old teams were looking to get rid of ... weren't good enough to be centerpieces of their existing teams. Rejects.

If Vince Carter blows out his knee tomorrow and retires, he is in the Hall of Fame.

oohah

Not if anyone in Toronto--where he spent his prime--gets to vote on it!

And what was Vince playing with? Alvin Williams, Keon Clark, Oak, Jerome Williams, Antonio Davis. Hardly offensive weapons.

They also had a GM in there that had no clue what he was doing. Arajo over Iguodola and a number of other good prospects. There is a self life to coahces, players and GMS.

We have had two ****ty GM's and a third that can't draft. Good players go for expiring all the time, half the league is losing money, those deals will become more and more common.

Bonn1997 wrote:Oohah: The Pau trade is a good example of expiring contracts NOT being valuable enough to land very good players--the Lakers had to give up several 1st round picks and prospects. If an expiring alone was good enough, then why did they throw in the picks and prospects?

Prospects like the great Javaris Crittenton? The only real prospect was Lil' Gasol and that was a surprise. The first round picks are picks like 28-29-30. The principal part of the deal was the expiring contracts. Is that really in dispute?

oohah

kam77 wrote:
Are we really using the heist of the century as a common example of players who get moved for expirings?

I already gave you another pretty good one in Vince Carter.

oohah

kam77 wrote:Vince Carter is not the kind of player you build a team around. He is the kind of player you get when you already have your team in place. Nor do you build around a Shawn Marion or any of those other examples. We need a cornerstone piece. You don't get those kind of players with expirings. Even Vince Carter was not a straight salary dump. Courtney Lee is a player.

I was talking about when Vince Carter was in toronto. And back then he was considered to be a franchise player, whether or not that is accurate.

If you are talking about absolute verified franchise players, those guys rarely get traded period. So we have a very small pool of examples to draw from. But there are a lot of examples of good players being traded for expiring contracts as the primary benefit for the team trading the star away.

oohah

oohah wrote:
If you are talking about absolute verified franchise players, those guys rarely get traded period. So we have a very small pool of examples to draw from. But there are a lot of examples of good players being traded for expiring contracts as the primary benefit for the team trading the star away.

oohah

That is my point. To get franchise players via trade is hard. What you propose is getting middle-of-the-pack flashy "Name-Brand" players. I have no desire for that. I mean, how did VCs time in NJ go? Not so good.

kam77 wrote:That is my point. To get franchise players via trade is hard. What you propose is getting middle-of-the-pack flashy "Name-Brand" players. I have no desire for that. I mean, how did VCs time in NJ go? Not so good.

The Nets were not great when Vince was in NJ but that does not and did not make him a middle of the pack player. Even now to categorize him as middle of the pack is silly. Like I said if Carter retires tomorrow he is in the Hall of Fame.

Dwayne Wade was on some terrible teams recently, is he middle of the pack? No.

Similarly Baron Davis is not middle of the pack.

I tell you what, why don't you fill me in on how many times franchise players get traded period? I can think of Garnett, even though he was past his prime but let's use him and that is about it recently.

Since Franchise players rarely move, let alone get traded, let's confine it to talking about very good players and stars, and yes, it does happen. Very good players and star players get traded for expiring contracts. No, not all the time, but it does happen. And just because you don't like the Gasol trade doesn't mean you can throw it out.

oohah