Draft Felton or Deron Williams at 8. Draft Nate Robinson at 30. Trade our late second rounder along with 3 million in cash and a future second rounder for a high second round pick to draft Julius Hodge.

Sign Stromile Swift or Kwame Brown with MLE

Trade Marbury for Artest and Bender/Croshere


Felton/Nate Robinson/Hodge
Artest/Crawford/Hodge
TT/Ariza/JYD
KT/Sweetney/Malik Rose
Stro Swift

IR: Houston, Mo Taylor, Croshere

buy out penny


That team gets our in the open court and plays great defense. We get our shotblocker in Swift and Artest, Felton, and Hodge all can shut people down. At the allstar break I could almost guarentee that Hodge works himself into the starting lineup ala Josh Howard. Move Artest to the 3 and we can look to move TT for a big man. Crawford would be our spark and scoring punch off the bench while Ariza provides the energy and defense.

I get excited when I think of putting a lineup of: Felton, Ariza, Artest, KT, Stro Swift on the floor when we need stops.

In my opinion this team wins close to 50 games and makes a good run in the plyaoffs as long as we get a good, defensive minded, tough coach.

overall looks good, calling it a 50 win team assumes some pretty quick development of rookies but no doubt in a few years they could be performing the way you expect. a few concerns, though:

- get TT off the roster. please.

- still pretty weak at center. i'm a big proponent of taking the best player available, but later in the first round we should definitely make an effort to grab whichever big looks the best. or hope butler develops. your roster would have KT and rose log heavy minutes at C, something that needs to change to get this team to the next level.

- marbury for artest? intriguing, not sure if indiana would bite. maybe cross our fingers that they do well these playoffs and think if they can turn two nonfactors in that run in artest and bender (i'd rather grab him) into an all-star caliber PG, they just may go for it. or not.

This roster still is fairly weak at center but Stro Swift is a huge upgrade. He can play center due to his long arms and he is a shotblocker, something we have not had since Camby. Improving this roster is a process. Unless we get the #1 pick we are not going to be solid at center for another few years. Stro Swift is a step in the right direction and we can look to improve that area in the next year or so. Right now, we are so bad where we need to take the best available player approach and this draft looks to be very guard heavy.

As for Bender, he would just be a throw in. It would be Artest and either Bender or Croshere. One of the two need to be included for cap purposes. Artest is one of the best two way players in the league. He could be an 18 and 8 guy who shuts the opponents best perimeter player down.

The reason I think this team could win between 45 and 50 games NEXT SEASON is because of their defense. We would be one of the best defensive teams in the leauge (pending we get a solid, defensive minded coach) and we would therefore win most of the close games. Look at what the Bulls did this year -- it was because they had young guys who can play defense and bought into the system.

[Edited by - ray15 on 05/15/2005 15:03:02]

2006 lottery