TMS wrote:there is only 1 option that justifies the trade:

Lebron/Wade & Bosh/Amare

C - Bosh or Amare
PF - Gallo
SF - Lebron
SG - Wilson
PG - TD or minimum salary FA

That's a we're all in post.

if we gave up Jordan Hill, swap rights & our 2012 pick so we can sign Joe Johnson & re-sign Lee, was this trade really justified?

NYY1NYK2 wrote:nah if we dont get lebron or wade, i say sign bosh, give evryone else a 1 yr deal, and go after melo in 11

that's an option but doesn't justify the trade... we could have had that option w/o giving away any assets... in fact, we would have had a much BETTER chance to land someone like Bosh in a S&T deal if we had held on to our future picks & Jordan Hill because TOR will undoubtedly be looking to get back assets in return, they're not gonna give us Bosh for just David Lee... as for Melo, we had the cap room to sign him even if we did absolutely nothing after Isiah's reign ended.

Or perhaps filming Lee's cement shoe defense... would a steady diet of (insert opposing player) trashing him work? Meh...he has to be immune by now.

TMS wrote:if we gave up Jordan Hill, swap rights & our 2012 pick so we can sign Joe Johnson & re-sign Lee, was this trade really justified?

Yes, because we have the CHANCE to get one (maybe two) of these guys, and resign Lee. That's really all you can do, is set yourself up correctly, put the organization in the position to do some FA damage. Whether it happens or not is another story.

And all this doom about signing second tier players just to avoid looking foolish is silly IMO. Walsh might get one (like Amare) and then wait for the following years FA class. No need to build a team all in one shot. If it happens that way, then great. Of all GMs, I think we can trust Donnie not to overspend on players that don't deserve it.

I mean, Donnie has no problem with patience - he'll just go back to sleep for a year and set the snooze for July 2011.

TMS wrote:lol on the sleep comment... but dude, we had the option to sign 2nd tier guys & wait for 2011 before this trade was made, so how do u make sense of it if that's the route we take? come on, u know as well as i do if we don't get 2 of the top tier FA's this summer then it's a failure... there's no other way around it.

I'll say it again, it's justified in the sense that you have the opportunity to make multiple moves this summer that we did NOT have before we made the trade. I mean, how endlessly did we discuss how important it was to trade Jeffries? Remind yourself WHY it was important? That's your answer.

Put another way, you can't look for justification in retrospect. Why sit here now and use one possible outcome as the prime justification for the trade? You're saying, IF we don't get a FA, then it wasn't worth it. Well, yeah, duh but we don't know that yet. That's why you make the trade: to give yourself the chance of something else happening. More cap space can only help.