If we end up trying to move him to make room for Millsap, we'll get very little in return. As I said previously, the offers will all be lowball ones, knowing we don't have room for Pryz.
You're missing my point. Last off-season, I was told that Rudy for Harris was WAY overpaying. Przybilla is a solid player (being the BEST backup is not a qualification...his overall value as a player is what matters), Outlaw is a solid player (same comment as Przybilla) and Bayless is a nice prospect (one I like a lot, but is very far from assured to be a good/great NBA player). Sessions is already above average for a starting point guard and was only 22 last season, so has plenty of upside. You can't simply "add up" the total value of the players in a three-for-one (a hundred average players does not equal one prime Shaq). Concentrating talent in one player is much more impactful, so the three players have to have a bit more total value for it to even be credible. Sessions is easily the best player of the four as far as I'm concerned and history has shown that in swaps of quality for quantity, the team getting the quality almost always wins the deal long-term.
I don't agree at all with that logic. Let's say three teams want Joel. Assume all of the teams know the Blazers "don't have room" for Joel. Why would they not offer whatever made sense to improve their team? They're going to NOT add a piece that they need because the Blazers have a lot of depth in the front court? Maybe one team would lowball them, and if there were no other bidders then Portland might have to ("have" to) settle for less-than-fair value. But if team #1 offers a lowball offer, why wouldn't the second team offer a bit more, since it would still be a good deal for them? And then either team #1 or #3 could offer more. Teams naturally pay attention to the value a player has to his present team when they make offers, but I would bet a dollar to a donut that most trades are made because of the value to the NEW team that the player represents. Ed O.
So Millsap is a "glorified garbage player", but Joel isn't? Really? I'm not in favor of trading Joel unless we could get a significant amount of value for him, but I think that Millsap is a better player than Joel by a fair margin and given their respective ages I expect that difference to only widen with time. Ed O.
I guess we value players differently..I'd say Sessions is prolly the 3rd best player in the deal, and easily 4th once we see how Bayless looks this year. You want to talk about finding players before they become stars..step right up Jerryd Bayless, you're the next contest on....
Yes, clearly we value the players hugely differently. Bayless is a prospect who hasn't had any success at all in the NBA. His rookie season was atrocious and he had a PER of around 8. Granted, he was young and didn't get a big role...but Sessions was only a year older as a rookie, also didn't get a big role and had a very strong PER. Bayless could be a star, yes. Sessions has a much higher chance considering he's much closer to that level and is still young.
Minstrel, that's just wrong. In his rookie season, Sessions was a D-league call up in January who, at first, played very sparingly (like Bayless) and was largely unproductive. HOWEVER, in the last month or so, Milwaukee gave up and Sessions started playing a huge role on the team. He averaged 35+ MPG and impressed Milwaukee. Bayless has never had that opportunity to prove himself. Even when Blake went down, Bayless only played around 20 or so MPG.
Granted that Sessions got games with many more minutes, but he still played sporadically. It's true that Bayless hasn't had a full opportunity to prove himself, but that's why I call him a "pure prospect." He might as well still be the guy the Blazers drafted last year (in terms of analysis...I'm sure he's more advanced in development)...we have no extra read on his NBA future, really, then we did at the time of his drafting. He's still all "tools" and not (NBA) performance. Sessions is not in the same class. He's not a "prospect," he's actually a good player and young enough to have substantial upside. That was my point.
Joel is probably not as good a backup center as LMA is. You forget that Joel played with LMA as his 4 where as LMA played with Outlaw/Frye as his 4. The drop off from Oden to LMA is not nearly as steep as from LMA to Frye/Outlaw. Joel may bring toughness, leadership, grit and rebounding but one thing he brings precisely 0 of is offense. He can't hit a shot and his only real points come of put backs and the rare pick and roll dunk feed under the hoop. LMA may not be the rebounder that Joel is but with Millsap playing the 4 he doesn't have to be and LMA is FAR better of an offensive player at the 5 then Joel ever dreamed about being. You are basically getting a small downgrade at backup center for rebounds and defense and a massive upgrade on offense. You also are getting a massive upgrade at scoring, defense and rebounding over Frye and even Oulaw sans the scoring upgrade. It would be such a massive improvement in our big man rotation to have LMA/Oden/Millsap/Pendergraph/Cunningham as opposed to Oden/Joel/LMA/Frye/Outlaw it's hardly comparable. If Oden did go down LMA at the 5 and Millsap at PF still gives us one of the best starting lineups in the league and we would really only have trouble with Shaq, Howard and possibly Bynum if he was healthy and effective both big ifs. Really it would be lunacy to keep Joel playing 8 minutes a game if he was lucky. or 18 minutes a game if we were VERY unlucky (injury/continued fould trouble with Oden both of which I think will be far less this year due to being in shape). It's not worth it to keep Joel as insurance at the 5 instead of bringing in Battier as certainty at the SF.
He wasn't played sporadically in the end, he consistently started and played huge minutes. I remember him playing 44 minutes once, 37 minutes the next night, etc.. When he was given Bayless minutes, he played like....well....Bayless, and that dropped his season averages (He was a beast at the end of his rookie season). When he was given huge minutes and no leash, he played great. Bayless has not had the luxury that Sessions had, because the Blazers were a playoff bound team, and McMillan would be stupid to change the lineup that had worked all season. I truly believe, that if Bayless was given the same opportunity that Sessions had, he would be MUCH more productive. We even caught a slight glimpse when Blake went out.
Let's say I have a pile of auto parts sitting in my garage. A talented mechanic *might* be able to assemble those parts into a Porsche. Then somebodt comes along and offers me a fully functional Mercedes in exchange for those parts. Should I say "no", just because I have developed some sort of emotional attachement to that pile of parts? In a trade for someone like Sessions, Bayless is NOT a deal killer. Not even close.
He played 17 games from January on, and 27 MPG. I agree that almost all of them came in a burst, but it doesn't seem all that dissimilar to the "burst" of playing time that Bayless got when Blake was hurt, when he got around 20 MPG. The difference is, Sessions was really good during that burst of opportunity and Bayless merely "showed flashes." I also believe Bayless would have had a much better season had he been given more opportunity. But it's still all projection. With Sessions, it isn't.
You can't compare both opportunities. Bayless was still playing behind Sergio because of McMillan's rotation. He averaged ~22 MPG. Sessions started all the games he played and averaged ~35 MPG. There was no one in front or behind him. I really wish I could find Session's 07-08 game logs, Sessions played like crap for 9 or so games, got injured, came back, started, and played great.
Why can't we compare them? Was the psychological impact of "coming off the bench" disastrous to his play? Had he been "the starter," he would have been lights-out? The opportunities can certainly be compared. They weren't identical, obviously, but Bayless did get a sustained opportunity of significant minutes per game and was merely off and on. Sessions, when given a sustained opportunity, flourished a lot. I don't think the 13 minute per game difference was the difference between "good in flashes" and "consistently very good."
I don't think your memory is quite accurate. http://www.basketball-reference.com/fc/pgl.cgi?player=sessira01&year=2008 Ed O.
If all three of the current SFs are still on the club and healthy, I expect Martell to be 3rd in the minutes rotation. I really don't understand what posters recall that would lead them to believe he'd provide them any less frustration then Travis. Dude has shown very little. to the thread question, If Utah doesn't match (like Ed said) we laugh like schoolgirls about adding a stud to the lineup at one of the few remaining positions of need. While another move (likely involving Joel) is needed to maximize the club's potential, that move doesn't need to happen immediately. Portland can go into the season with size and depth galore able to physically pound teams into submission. No question that as is + Millsap the club is better then last years... I'd think 60 wins would definitely be possible if they fared well with injuries. STOMP
http://www.nba.com/playerfile/jerryd_bayless/game_by_game_stats.html Look at Bayless's game log for when Blake went out. He was still being played sporadically, 32 minutes one night, 14 minutes the next. When he actually played, he was a good player and drew a ton of fouls.
My bad, he got called up from the D-League, got injured right away, and then came back. That actually helps my argument against Minstrel as his play was somewhat sporadic even when playing heavy minutes.
How so? Almost from the first game that he got more than 10 minutes, he was at least solid as a distributor. His game on 3/28 against Orlando was his first game of more than 10 minutes and it was fairly poor. Every game after that, he never dipped below 5 assists. I don't think that game log shows "sporadic performance." It shows a player pretty quickly acclimatizing to NBA competition as he gets real minutes.
