How about this? It saves the Hornets a bunch of money, and they just acquired Kaman. I doubt they can do better, because Okafor is way overpaid. I think we would miss Camby in a lot of ways (high post passing, for example) but we wouldn't have him for much longer anyway.
I wouldn't scream if we made that trade, but is Emeka Okafor worth torpedoing our chances for 1 or 2 max/near max free agents?
From a short term basketball perspective I like this, but from a long range perspective, does reconstituting the "Felton, Wallace, Okafor" Bobcats and adding LMA and some other bits and pieces a contender make? I don't know the answer to that question for sure, but I've got a hunch.
There aren't many available bigs around the League and it wouldn't hurt to take a swing at a few of these guys and see if they pan out. We have two centers pushing 40 and one that is perpetually rehabbing. Lopez has the tools to become a very solid defensive 7-footer. He's just not consistent. A lot of Suns fans have soured on him but developing bigs takes a lot of time. He's a legit 7'1" with decent athletic ability. For an example: First four years in the League: 1.9 PPG | 4.3 RPG |
I'm amused that the trade machine says that this trade increases the Blazers wins by 30, and the Hornets wins by 32. Clearly this is a trade that needs to happen! barfo
You'll get no arguments from me, my only contention was about Okafor in particular. He's getting paid more money per year than LaMarcus and he's under contract for another two years after this one. I'd much rather see the team take a flier on a guy like Lopez and see if he's got some upside left (cheaply) vs. tying up the team's financial flexibility in a guy who's been a bucket of "meh" since he entered the league.
If we were close to winning a title and planning to use our cap space to retain all of our upcoming free agents I'd be for the Okafor trade. This is the type of deal the Blazers should consider at the trade deadline if the team is fighting for one of the top two seeds. Alternatively if we look like we may miss the playoffs we should dump our veterans for any young assets we can get. Most likely we will be somewhere in the middle in which case we should just play out the season and re-evaluate in the off season when we have lots of cap flexibility. Losing that cap flexability to take on Okafor doesn't make sense unless he could be the final role player for a contender.
