Rumor Mill: 3-Way Deal

Interesting scenario. I would not mind either Artest or Maggette. Although Dunleavy has been pretty good lately, Artest and Maggette are just better player. Also, they have 1 year + 1 year player option. So, in terms of talent and contract aspects, it's no brainer.

If we have a choice, I would like to get Artest, simply because we may get greater return on Artest. There is no question that Artest should not be a main scoring option, and his shooting % has been absolutely horrible this year (38%). And, in terms of scoring, Maggette may be a better option. But, he can bring a toughness and defense, which we really lacks, and more than likely, we can get one good year out of him. And, if everything goes wrong, we only have to live with 1 year + 1 year player option, so the risk is relatively low as well. Anyway, I would be thrilled if we can end up either one of them by trading Dunleavy...

 

I agree Kwan.

No brainer.

 

I think that the priorty should be on opening space for Beans, Ike and Monta by moving Murph, Foyle, or Dun in a move that helps free up $$. This move would do that, so I'd have to go with it. It's odd to find myself actually somewhat conflicted about trading Dunleavy -- for months I would have taken a bag of Doritos straight up for the guy -- but lately he's been playing pretty darn steady off the bench. He may have found his role -- whatever he's been drinking it's helping win ball-games no doubt.

But I would still make the move because even so he is still a bench role-player and thus expendable when talking Monta, Beans and Ike.

I think I'd rather move Murph for Artest except that ideally you want to trade size for size. Moving Murph and not getting a guy at least 6'10" (or who plays close to his height...cough...Dunleavy...cough) would leave us thin in the post. I know Artest is a bruiser inside and can guard forwards, but he can't guard Duncan, Dirk, or Brand and frankly it's sad to say that Murphy is our best option right now (?!?) when going man-2-man. Ike isn't ready to start and Barnes can't hold the PF spot for long. He's too small.

So moving Dun makes the most sense for Artest rather than moving Murph. The problem is it makes sense for us lunatic GS fans but it probably makes no sense to the other teams lol.

 

Yeah, its funny the history the Warriors have had with letting players go and they grow into All Stars. And yet with Dunleavy and Pietrus just now starting to play well we want to get rid of them and let them grow into possibly becoming All Stars somewhere else AGAIN! I like how Dunleavy is playing off the bench and I agree he might have finally found his role with this team. Pietrus is playing excellent also minus a few bonehead plays of his. I wish we could keep these guys and watch them grow even furthur. If we make the playoffs, I would like to keep these guys and hopefully develop a championship caliber squad...

 

If you're worried about them being all-stars, don't worry. Neither of those guys will ever be all-stars (Not in the west at least). Dunleavy has a chance to be a solid 6th man for years to come, but that's his ceiling. Pietrus is an energizer off the bench as well. He's far from being consistent enough to even be considered an every day starter.

 

Well it's not like MDJ has finally gotten his chance to shine. I mean this is his fifth -- count em, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 -- year in the league. I'm not even taking his being the 3rd pick in the draft into question. I'm just saying he's had 4 years to audition what he's all about. It's not like a rookie with unknown potential who was always playing behind someone, like T-Mac playing behind Vince Carter, and suddenly emerging in Orlando when given minutes. MDJ was given the starter's role early on and given many games, months, seasons, to silence the critics/prove himself.

This year, he's been solid off the bench but that's it. I jkust can't see him going anywhere and being anything else than a decent NBA player, but never an all-star.

Now, as for Pietrus, it's a more difficult assessment, because the potential is so much higher. MDJ is a sub-par athlete who will always be limited in some areas. But Pietrus is an athletic freak who has no ceiling in that regard. You can teach the pick-n-roll, but you can't teach a 35" vertical leap.

So the thing with Pete is that it's hard to tell whether he'll always be a happy-go-lucky knucklehead, or whether he'll at some point become an intelligent player. See, IMO, unlike MDJ, Pietrus does have the potential to be an all-star. Whether he does that or not depends on his own mental growth as a player.

However, just like MDJ, Pietrus has been given plenty of time to audition and he's shown suprisingly little growth at all. In many respects he's the same player in year 4 that he was in year 1. He makes the same mistakes over and over.

There are a few things that separate the two players, though. First, Pietrus can play defense. Plain and simple. That's huge. The one thing you can count on if you're struggling is to go back to playing tough D. Because when you play tough D, you stop thinking and just start reacting. It helps to put you back in "the zone," because there's no eyes on you, and you just become a shadow of the person you're guarding. You can get lost in the flow of the game and that helps you kill your self-aware mind, the very thing that inhibits you on offense.

That's why there's more to the adage "defense leads to offense" than meets the eye. Often, if you're struggling on offense, it's because you're thinking too much, you're too attached to your ego or conscious thought-process to truly become present in the moment and enter what elite athletes call "the zone."

However, truly great players know that defense is actually the best gateway to enter the zone, for several reasons, as I mentioned above. You can cast off your critical mind and simply rely on your muscle memory and intuition to "become one" with the person you are guarding or your role within the defense. Then, once you've relaxed, loosened up and gotten into the flow, offense will be that much easier and natural.

So, Pietrus has that to fall back on. This is why he always manages to play with high energy despite his errors. Even in the 4th quarter MP is still a spark plug with a smile, and the game never seems to get him down. He just enjoys playing.

MDJ, on the other hand, has problems with entering "the zone." If his shots don't start falling, he seems to become cerebral, self-aware, and passive. He becomes a prisoner of his own consciousness, and takes himself out of the flow. The problem is he has trouble shaking that off. Tough, hungry D is the best cure for that, but that's where he differs from MP. He doesn't have that tenacious instinct for D, and so at times (as we are all so used to) he just simply disappears from the game like a shadow. He'll have some terrific games when he finds the rythm and rides it, but his biggest problem is inconsistency and he doesn't possess the ultimate cure, IMO: good defense.

The other thing about Pietrus is that he just feeds off the crowd so much. Many of his mistakes seem to be because he's too excited or too amped on adrenaline and just over-tries to do things, like throwing away an outlet pass or causing a charge because he's going 110% speed. But that energy, even though it leads to mistakes, that raw passion and exuberance is fuel for the spirits of his teammates. Even if he is shooting poorly or makes a bonehead play, he maintains that spark of energy which raises the intensity of the team.

That's why a 2pt dunk actually counts for more than 2pts, IMO. You know when the game is tight in the 4th, and the Warriors make a steal and MP gets a fast break dunk and the foul, and gets up with that big smile on his face, an d the crowd goes nuts, and everyone starts to believe that GS really could win this thing, that means so much to the momentum and outcome of the game.

MDJ is at his peak of trade value right now, and if a team is going to be silly enough to give us a player of Artest's caliber, pull the trigger. With Pietrus, we may not be able to sign him anyway, so the $$ decision on that is tough, so probably trade him too if it comes up. But of the 2 players MP could go on to bigger and better things IMO.

 

everybody makes compelling points for and against the trade but, what if Artest decides he dosen't want to be traded to the Warriors. Even if he dosen't have a choice he could hold out or just refused to report to the Warriors, so the trade might be moot.

 

<div class="quote_poster">AlleyOop Wrote</div><div class="quote_post">Well it's not like MDJ has finally gotten his chance to shine. I mean this is his fifth -- count em, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 -- year in the league. I'm not even taking his being the 3rd pick in the draft into question. I'm just saying he's had 4 years to audition what he's all about. It's not like a rookie with unknown potential who was always playing behind someone, like T-Mac playing behind Vince Carter, and suddenly emerging in Orlando when given minutes. MDJ was given the starter's role early on and given many games, months, seasons, to silence the critics/prove himself.

This year, he's been solid off the bench but that's it. I jkust can't see him going anywhere and being anything else than a decent NBA player, but never an all-star.

Now, as for Pietrus, it's a more difficult assessment, because the potential is so much higher. MDJ is a sub-par athlete who will always be limited in some areas. But Pietrus is an athletic freak who has no ceiling in that regard. You can teach the pick-n-roll, but you can't teach a 35" vertical leap.

So the thing with Pete is that it's hard to tell whether he'll always be a happy-go-lucky knucklehead, or whether he'll at some point become an intelligent player. See, IMO, unlike MDJ, Pietrus does have the potential to be an all-star. Whether he does that or not depends on his own mental growth as a player.

However, just like MDJ, Pietrus has been given plenty of time to audition and he's shown suprisingly little growth at all. In many respects he's the same player in year 4 that he was in year 1. He makes the same mistakes over and over.

There are a few things that separate the two players, though. First, Pietrus can play defense. Plain and simple. That's huge. The one thing you can count on if you're struggling is to go back to playing tough D. Because when you play tough D, you stop thinking and just start reacting. It helps to put you back in "the zone," because there's no eyes on you, and you just become a shadow of the person you're guarding. You can get lost in the flow of the game and that helps you kill your self-aware mind, the very thing that inhibits you on offense.

That's why there's more to the adage "defense leads to offense" than meets the eye. Often, if you're struggling on offense, it's because you're thinking too much, you're too attached to your ego or conscious thought-process to truly become present in the moment and enter what elite athletes call "the zone."

However, truly great players know that defense is actually the best gateway to enter the zone, for several reasons, as I mentioned above. You can cast off your critical mind and simply rely on your muscle memory and intuition to "become one" with the person you are guarding or your role within the defense. Then, once you've relaxed, loosened up and gotten into the flow, offense will be that much easier and natural.

So, Pietrus has that to fall back on. This is why he always manages to play with high energy despite his errors. Even in the 4th quarter MP is still a spark plug with a smile, and the game never seems to get him down. He just enjoys playing.

MDJ, on the other hand, has problems with entering "the zone." If his shots don't start falling, he seems to become cerebral, self-aware, and passive. He becomes a prisoner of his own consciousness, and takes himself out of the flow. The problem is he has trouble shaking that off. Tough, hungry D is the best cure for that, but that's where he differs from MP. He doesn't have that tenacious instinct for D, and so at times (as we are all so used to) he just simply disappears from the game like a shadow. He'll have some terrific games when he finds the rythm and rides it, but his biggest problem is inconsistency and he doesn't possess the ultimate cure, IMO: good defense.

The other thing about Pietrus is that he just feeds off the crowd so much. Many of his mistakes seem to be because he's too excited or too amped on adrenaline and just over-tries to do things, like throwing away an outlet pass or causing a charge because he's going 110% speed. But that energy, even though it leads to mistakes, that raw passion and exuberance is fuel for the spirits of his teammates. Even if he is shooting poorly or makes a bonehead play, he maintains that spark of energy which raises the intensity of the team.

That's why a 2pt dunk actually counts for more than 2pts, IMO. You know when the game is tight in the 4th, and the Warriors make a steal and MP gets a fast break dunk and the foul, and gets up with that big smile on his face, an d the crowd goes nuts, and everyone starts to believe that GS really could win this thing, that means so much to the momentum and outcome of the game.

MDJ is at his peak of trade value right now, and if a team is going to be silly enough to give us a player of Artest's caliber, pull the trigger. With Pietrus, we may not be able to sign him anyway, so the $$ decision on that is tough, so probably trade him too if it comes up. But of the 2 players MP could go on to bigger and better things IMO.</div>

Definitely man. We needed a player to be aggressive in mindset, strong and fast in body, capable of thinking before a play happens (court sense), and most importantly have all-around skills that one can fall back on if something isn't working right. If that shot ain't going down, what about layups or getting to the foul line? What about running plays for somebody else? What about concentrating on defense? What about drawing defenders away from the actual play so you can free somebody up? In football, there is more pressure to be offensively/defensively aware in order to react to or to run a play. The team strategy and concept of physical matchups to that game is very important in football and in Warriors basketball we're basically treating like it doesn't exist sometimes. That's honestly what I feel sometimes because certain players are not cut out for this level of quickness or quick thinking. Oh wow, Mike Dunleavy Jr. is a great college guy and his father was an nba player, so he will probably be special. Yeah, but not if you're the tallest small forward by about 4-5 inches and are considered athletic for that level of play. Also, having Jay Williams, Battier, and Boozer to feed off from must be helpful. Everything is relative. Even with Pietrus' allstar status in France, it's a different game here. He has a high ceiling, no doubt, but man is he a bonehead and I don't think it's because he's overly excited. He's a bonehead... but he's a bonehead who plays defense, gets high% inside plays, and gets important rebounds over much bigger players. Crap, I'll take French Shawn Marion lite over Dun anytime.

Sometimes you can't teach a 4th grader, quantum physics. Fine. Maybe, he'll learn it when he grows up. Sometimes you can't get Stephen Hawkins to improve his long jump by a few feet. Okay, maybe he's not capable.

Well, I'd like to believe that Pietrus is capable of learning how to play basketball. But damn it is like trying to teach Corky from Life Goes On Advanced Molecular Biology. It's not Corky's fault, and I'm not making fun, but everyone has a personal limit to how much they can learn unless they're a natural or they have the capacity to grow into it. Mental quickness and physical quickness + strength + size should be relative to the competition that's out there. If we can't find those guys on the market, well that's tough for us.