the Dice trade.

In hindsight, neither trade had great rationale. I think the McDyess trade, based on what we gave up, and where the team was at that point, was a better deal. At that point, Camby's injury history was much worse than Dice's, And he was on paper a talent upgrade. We gave up the 7th pick, which we would've likely used on Wilcox or Jeffries (not a great loss) and even got back a 1st rounder, which was used on Frank Williams (we could have found a better use for that - Boozer, perhaps)

The problem with this trade, had Dice not gotten hurt, is that it would have prolonged our playoff run but wouldn't have put us over the top.(Much like the subsequent Marbury trade) Houston maybe wouldn't have gotten hurt trying to come back from injury early, but would have broken down eventually.

As for the Curry trade, I beleived from the start of his free agency that the Bulls would've matched an MLE. Now I'm not so sure. If Isiah had wiated this one out, instead of blowing the MLE on James, I think he could have nabbed Curry. But, even with that off the table, rebuilding on the fly still needs some semblance of fiscal sanity. Sure, Curry, Craw, and Q1 were considered part of the young core, but they are all pulling in $6-8mm, with escalations to 9-10mm in a few years. Even so, giving Curry the big contract, even with the heart issue, wouldn't be so bad if not for the unprotected picks. This is the real killer.

If the trade wasn't made, Curry would have been forced to take the 1 year tender and could have come unrestricted for the MLE this summer. Especially if Paxon was true to his word and forced Curry to sit out the year for not taking the DNA test. And really, would we be any worse if we hadn't made the Curry trade? At least Sweets grabs boards, which LB would like.

Both Illogically logical for their respected logic.