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joec32033
Posts: 30632
Alba Posts: 37
Joined: 2/3/2004
Member: #583
USA
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Here's a good read. Don't know if they had this vision to start with, but if they did, it is one of the best forecasting jobs I have seen in a while.
Pacers show brains in Harrington deal
Insider
Ford
By Chad Ford
ESPN Insider
Archive
It's not shocking to hear the words "great trade" when the team attached to the other end of the deal is the Atlanta Hawks.
The Pistons heard it when they stole Rasheed Wallace from the Hawks at the trade deadline in 2004 -- a move that gave them the NBA title. The Suns heard it (albeit belatedly) when they got two first-round draft picks and Boris Diaw for Joe Johnson last summer.
Al Harrington
Al Harrington will be back in blue and gold this season.
But in the case of the recently consummated Al Harrington trade, I'm letting Hawks GM Billy Knight off the hook. It wasn't Knight's incompetence that made this a great deal for the Pacers. It was the brilliant maneuvering of the Pacers' front office that made this deal, in my book, the best move of the summer.
While the Bulls and Hornets made splashier signings in July with the acquisitions of Ben Wallace and Peja Stojakovic, respectively, those transactions had their share of thorns.
For the Pacers, this one came up all aces. Here's why:
1. Harrington pushes the Pacers to the next level.
There were a lot of interesting signings and trades this summer, but how many of them clearly pushed a team into a different level of playoff contention?
Wallace's addition to Chicago may have that effect. However, the Bulls still have enough question marks that it's unclear exactly how big a push they'll get. To make Wallace's contract worth the expenditure, the Bulls will have to reach the Eastern Conference finals. He might get them there (and beyond), but I'm not sold.
Stojakovic will add a few W's to the Hornets' win column, but how many? The best-case scenario is that they are a seventh or eighth seed in the West (not sure that's worth $62 million).
But Harrington puts the Pacers back in contention in the East, in part because the Pacers didn't have to give up much to get him. You can argue that they ended up giving up Stojakovic (or, by extension, Ron Artest) to acquire the trade exception that landed Harrington, but given Artest's bad behavior and Stojakovic's injury history, I'd take Harrington (and his cheaper deal) any day.
What makes Harrington work in Indiana is twofold. One is his familiarity with the team. He'll be able to step right in and fit in with his teammates and head coach Rick Carlisle's schemes. Two, his versatility gives the Pacers a number of options on the front line. They can play Jermaine O'Neal at the five, Harrington at the four and a combo of Danny Granger and Marquis Daniels at the three. Or they can play Jeff Foster in the middle, move O'Neal to the four and put Harrington at the three depending on matchups.
He also gives the Pacers something else they desperately need, a reliable second scoring option that doesn't need the spotlight. Harrington will be cast perfectly in a supporting role in Indiana alongside O'Neal.
When you factor in the Pacers' other additions this summer -- Daniels, Darrell Armstrong, Maceo Baston, Shawne Williams and James White -- the Pacers are more athletic, more versatile and deeper than they've been the past few years.
In my mind, the Pacers not only made the best move of the summer, they had the best summer, overall, of any team in the NBA.
2. They didn't overpay.
The Pacers got a relative steal, nailing down Harrington on a four-year, $35 million deal. By the market's ridiculous standards, that's a huge bargain.
Coming into the offseason Harrington was ranked as the third- or fourth-best free agent available. Wallace got $60 million over four years. Stojakovic got $62 million over five. Nene, coming off a year on the DL, got $60 million over six years. Jason Terry walked away with a six-year, $50-million deal. Even guys such as Mike James, Nazr Mohammed and Vladimir Radmanovic pulled down $30 million.
To get Harrington at roughly $25 million less than everyone thought he'd get goes down as the coup of the summer. Given owners' increasing unwillingness to pay the luxury tax, cap flexibility is king. Landing a talent such as Harrington on the cheap (as opposed to overpaying like almost every other team in the league did with free agents this summer) is a rarity these days.
As it stands, even after signing Harrington, the Pacers are still millions under the luxury tax threshold and will be for the next three years. After that, they'll get significant cap flexibility again. A three-year run -- that's what every team dreams of -- and the Pacers could have it without making a significant signing to their team.
3. They outsmarted the competition.
Every step along the way, the Pacers' front office of Larry Bird, Donnie Walsh and David Morway was a little smarter than everyone else it was negotiating against.
The Pacers started this summer by wisely declining to go overboard to re-sign Stojakovic. They knew that criticism would be harsh. "They lost Ron Artest for nothing!" was the cry throughout much of the national and local media.
But the Pacers had a plan. They just didn't clue us in until the deal finally happened.
Stojakovic was 29-years old. The Hornets were willing to pay him for five years to the tune of $62 million. That would've been a millstone around the Pacers' neck that they would've never recovered from.
So, the team went back to the Hornets and asked for a sign-and-trade to get a whopping $7.5 million exception. To my knowledge it's the largest trade exception in the history of the NBA. The cost to the Pacers? Roughly 200 grand.
The result? The Pacers, who were way over the cap, suddenly had the equivalent of $7.5 million in cap room. The Bulls and Hornets, two teams that had significant room, had already spent theirs. The Bobcats and Hawks, the other two teams that had lots of cap space, weren't going to spend theirs.
That left the Pacers as the only team in the league that could facilitate one more big signing. By then, they already knew who their target would be -- Harrington.
Atlanta didn't want to pay him and Harrington was loyal to Indiana after it had granted his trade demand two summers ago. Harrington learned that being the "go-to guy" on a bad team was overrated and wanted to win again. His relationship with everyone in Indiana was strong, in part, because the Pacers treated him so well the first time.
It was a deal that was going to happen, one way or the other. We wrung our hands over the on-again, off-again deal for the past month but the truth was always the same. As long as the Hawks were refusing to take back players in a trade and Harrington wanted more than a mid-level exception, there was only one team in the league that could make a deal happen -- the Pacers.
While the Hawks demanded an extra $3 million in cash, the Pacers stuck to their guns. When Harrington demanded a six-year, $57-million deal, the Pacers held firm at four years, $35 million.
All along they knew something that no one else in the league seemed to understand -- no one was going to come close to giving the Hawks or Harrington a better deal.
This type of smart management and negotiation may be commonplace in the business world, but in the NBA it's rare to find a front office that understands the intricacies of the system and the market the way Walsh, Bird and Morway did.
So when I see the Pacers' front office called "class clowns" in the Indianapolis Star I have to vehemently disagree. It's the exact opposite. They were the proverbial "smartest guys" in the room.
For a team everyone was writing off at the start of the summer, the Pacers are now in the same class as the Pistons, Bulls and Nets -- scratching at the door of the Heat for the Eastern Conference title.
There are still questions, certainly. But there are a lot fewer than there were six weeks ago.
If the old Jermaine O'Neal shows up ... if Jamaal Tinsley can stay healthy ... if Rick Carlisle will submerge his worst instincts and let this very athletic team run ... the Pacers have as good a shot as any team to play in the Eastern Conference Finals.
~You can't run from who you are.~
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8/22/2006 9:19 PM