Just seeing the work of Kevin Pritchard in the draft over a period of years is amazing. He started the last three drafts with a total of twelve draft picks, and only ended up keeping four of them. Most of the time the draft picks that we get from other teams in a trade end up being turned around and given to another team when it's time to use it. I saw this as a prolonged version of the kind of thing we did with Phoenix to get James Jones and Rudy, (except, of course, that the deals I'm going to talk about weren't on the table all at once). So I've analyzed the evolution of two series of trades over the last three drafts, and how they've led to how our team looks today. The first series was initially the deal that got us LaMarcus Aldridge. We traded our pick of Tyrus Thomas and Viktor Khryapa for Aldridge and a pick, that ended up being Demitrius Nichols in 2007. We traded Nichols with Zach Randolph, Fred Jones, and Dan Dickau for Channing Frye, Steve Francis, a trade exception, and a pick that ended up being Omer Asik in 2008. We traded the exception and $3 million for James Jones and Rudy Fernandez. Omer Asik was traded for three 2009 second round picks (which means this carousel will probably continue at least through next season, so we're not done!). In the end, we traded Tyrus Thomas, Viktor Khryapa, Zach Randolph, Fred Jones, Dan Dickau, and $3 million, and ended up getting LaMarcus Aldridge, Channing Frye, Rudy Fernandez, James Jones, Steve Francis, and three 2009 second round picks. With the exception of Francis, who was immediately bought out, is there any player we ended up with that we'd trade back for any one guy we sent out straight up? I guess it depends on how much you liked Z-Bo, but I wouldn't. And who knows what those three picks will end up being? The second series started with James White. Who? We picked him #31 in the 2006 draft. He was traded for Alexander Johnson, a draft pick for 2007 that ended up being Derrick Byars, and a draft pick for 2008 that ended up being Mike Taylor. So far who cares, right? We traded Alexander Johnson for a draft pick in 2008 that ended up being Joey Dorsey. We bought the rights to Darrell Arthur and traded both him and Dorsey for Nicolas Batum. We traded Byars and cash for Petteri Koponen. And we traded Mike Taylor for a second round pick in 2009. So this trade ended up being James White and cash for Nicolas Batum, Petteri Koponen, and one 2009 second round pick. Okay, maybe that's not quite as impressive (well, yet), but I thought it was an interesting line to follow. Can anyone else think of a series of trades over more than one season that are kind of interesting?
Nice post. But I would remind some that we didn't really have some of the players listed, but it's easiest to use language that suggested we did. We did not choose Tyrus Thomas, for example. The trade was pre-arranged - we chose LMA with pick #2. They chose TT with pick #4. So, that it wasn't us who swindled Chicago in to taking Thomas for LMA, they chose TT. They could have chosen someone like Rudy Gay, for example. Ditto with Darrell Arthur, we never chose him, the other team did. We targeted Batum and got him. I suppose you could say something like we traded player x for pick 200x pick #x, but I'm not sure it's really necessary as long as we understand. OTOH it is just more fun to say that we Pritch-slapped several other teams! It would have been easier to reference, however, if you didn't list the trades in paragraph format.
I was going to say something similar to Wizard. From the interviews that KP does, he doesn't go about things the way you have laid them out. He collects assets, tries as hard as he can to make good deals with other GMs, always asking for extra picks, buying picks with Allen's money, etc. If he can't get exactly what he wants in a trade or draft or from a free agent, he tries to get what he thinks will be valuable to other GM's too, so he has flexibility. The team was more about targeting the players they wanted and trying to figure out clever ways to get them. The players in the middle are trivia, or as mentioned by Wizard, we picked for the other team. Thus, they were never-weres as far as the Blazers were concerned.
