Quick says look for a trade on draft night for a center

Shit, I think that could be said about almost every free agent. Very rarely does a sure thing come along, and only a select few teams actually have a shot at signing them. For the Blazers it's always going to be about taking risks. We sure took a lot of risks in the mid-to-late 90s and it paid off.

 

Yeah, it's just getting lucky on those risks, but it's always going to take a degree of luck. It's just deciding which gamble do you want to make. With Cs, first, you can gamble on passing on a trade, in the hopes of getting a FA to come here. All things aren't equal, so you likely overpay slightly, but that's possibly ok. You can gamble on all of the available Cs. We can go older stop gap who has fallen out of favor his last few stops it seems, in Dalembert. Though he'd been linked before to Miami, so who knows. We can go for young, athletic upside, but questionable intelligence in McGee. Similar makeup in a sense with DeAndre Jordan. Can risk on injuries with Bynum. Can risk on age, and expiring deal of Gortat, who had his best year alongside Nash. Can risk on nobody. Can risk on someone in the draft being ready to help immediately.
ALWAYS going to be some risk with anyone. And maybe more so for a small market team looking to take the next step. Might pay off, might not. But there are no perfect choices.

 

It seems then that knowing that we aren't going to just get the perfect fit at center then the Blazers need to sit down and rank or prioritize the pros and cons of available players or options. Using that info on the available players they need to decide that with the good of each player comes the bad but which player helps us the most overall and how he fits into our plans. Almost like in the espn trade machine where it shows plus/minus wins with the trade. The direction they go will also show just how strongly they feel about "long term plans"

 

Centers are the biggest gamble around. That's why get paid so much and why they tend to stick around so long after they've lost a step. I would take Jordan over McGee. It would be worth paying a little extra to LAC to get him I think. McGee reminds me too much of Travis Outlaw. Tons and tons of raw talent, but zero smarts. He isn't the kind of player that gets you to the next level.

Dalembert wouldn't be bad, but he's the very definition of a stopgap. Signing someone like Dalembert would only make sense if we had a legit center waiting in the wings. I'm not convinced that Leonard is that guy. He has a lot of talent, but he hasn't shown even the slightest defensive ability. That's concerning, because we don't need another scoring big man. We have LMA. We need a defensive anchor. Someone like Camby when he was younger, or Theo Ratliff. If we would have been able to get Hibbert, that would have solidified our frontcourt for years to come. Unfortunate things worked out the way they did.

I wonder if Milwaukee would bite on a deal that clears some of their shittier contracts and sends us Larry Sanders for Batum, Leonard, and Barton. Then we could use our cap space to go out and sign a shooting guard or a small forward to replace Batum.

 

I would trade batum and Leonard for sanders and any shit contract. Adding sanders paired with Aldridge would be the perfect compliment.

 

Well, and they'd clear Gooden and Mbah a Moute, who account for about 11 million in cap space for two more years, but are both under 10 in PER.

http://espn.go.com/nba/tradeMachine?tradeId=cndr7o5

 

But sanders contract is pretty good right? I mean lets say we add sanders and golden; which is around a 18 mil salary. Removing batum is 12 mil; which applies sanders at 6 mil per.

We would need a capable sf in this scenario be either by free agent signing or trade. I would even use freeland and space to try and land igs.

Edit: I didn't catch your trade machine. That's actually a good deal

 

They might move sanders in the right deal if they don't want to pay him the max that he will get next year in fa.

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Batum, Meyers and absorbing 2 horrible contracts is a LOT. Not sure there is a half decent SF on the market to round out our starting 5. Maybe Igoudala? Thats about all.

 

There is a good thread on another trade board where there is a good idea, accepted by both sides for a "stopgap" C if our other choices fall through. That C is Brendan Haywood (assuming he passes physical), decent D and rebounder. He's on a cheap 2 yr contract for just over 2 mil per, Char would take back Freeland and we send a 2nd rdr (maybe two 2nds), or possibly send 3 mil with Joel.

What's cool about this we get a decent C and REDUCE our capspace a bit. Again not a bad stopgap idea at all if other C ventures do not pan out.

 

How bad is the stress reaction in his foot that ended his season?

Hopefully Haywood would be a last last last resort option.

 

don't know about the injury and yes it's a last resort stopgap IMO, but it at least could get us a backup C with experience and we get rid of Freeland and reduce capspace by a small amount