Artest on the move?
Sunday, December 11, 2005

When the weekend began, it appeared Mike Woodson and Rick Adelman were both sitting on the hottest of hot seats, their coaching jobs in jeopardy with the Atlanta Hawks and Sacramento Kings underperforming so woefully.

Woodson escaped by getting a strong public endorsement from general manager Billy Knight even before the Hawks stunned the Spurs, while Adelman may have dodged the guillotine, perhaps temporarily, when the Kings traveled to Seattle and shot a season-high 58 percent in posting their highest point total of the season while defeating the Sonics 123-104 Saturday night.

So who's feeling the heat now?

How about Larry Bird, who left Saturday on a scouting trip to Spain just as Ron Artest was speaking to the Pacers' beat writer, Mike Wells of the Indianapolis Star, and telling him he wanted to be traded.

Artest said he was frustrated playing in the controlled offense favored by coach Rick Carlisle, going so far as to say, "I personally don't like playing for him."

He also pinned the team's problems on himself, saying, "I think I cause a lot of problems here. They probably could win more games without me."

Just as eye-opening was this statement: "If it was a perfect world, I would be going to New York."

The matter now falls to Bird, who will likely try to accommodate Artest's trade demand in order to keep a bad situation from turning worse. Nobody knows better than the Pacers how volatile Artest can be, and there's no telling how bad the next chapter of this soap opera will be if Carlisle and Artest are forced to co-exist once Artest is ready to return from a wrist injury.

The strongest rumor out there over the weekend had the Kings and Pacers discussing a swap of Artest for Peja Stojakovic, but Adelman said Sacramento had not had any internal discussions about trading the small forward from Serbia who will be an unrestricted free agent at the end of the season.

If the Kings feel certain they're going to lose Stojakovic after the season and get nothing in return, they'd be fools if they didn't at least consider whether it would be worth the risk to make a run at Artest, who is under contract for two more seasons and has a player option for 2008-09.

Artest told the Star he'd like to be traded to the Cavaliers or Knicks, but Indiana would almost certainly try to trade him to a Western Conference team.

The Memphis Grizzlies had interest in acquiring Artest last season when he was serving his season-long suspension for his role in The Palace brawl, but Jerry West has always refused in the past to part with Shane Battier, the player Indiana would likely ask for (along with a throw-in from the Grizzlies to make the salaries match) in an Artest trade.

The problem for Bird, should he decide to trade Artest quickly, will be getting equal value in return. Most players of Artest's skill level make considerably more than Artest's 2005-06 salary of $6.84 million, so the Pacers would have to include another player (Austin Croshere makes $7.9 this season, $7.3 next season) to get back someone earning a maximum-level salary.

Ironically, one of their best options may be a deal with the Hawks for ex-Pacer Al Harrington, who Atlanta fears losing as an unrestricted free agent when his contract expires at the end of this season.

The Hawks are trying to be proactive in shaking things up, but it sure doesn't look like that shakeup will include Woodson after Knight gave the coach a ringing endorsement that went far beyond the usual (dreaded) vote of confidence.

"Woody is not getting fired. Woody is our coach. And Woody will be our coach. My job is to continue to try to make this team better and improve everything within our organization. And that's what I spend all of my days doing -- trying to come up with ways to make things better," Knight told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Sekou Smith. "Woody is not getting fired and he will be our coach. I want that to be headlines."

Many more trade options will open up Thursday, the first date that players who signed contracts over the summer can be dealt. Expect Earl Watson of the Denver Nuggets to be one of the first players traded, and New York's Jerome James and Milwaukee's Dan Gadzuric have also been mentioned as Dec. 15 trade-eligible players who could find themselves on new teams by next weekend.