From Chris Broussard on TrueHoop: I still maintain that if we offered Andre and Joel (plus cash and picks or rights to Freeland and/or Claver) for Mo Williams and Varejao Cleveland would bite, if only to get out from their long contracts. And Mo Williams would be an extra shooter in our starting five. But Dre certainly deserves better.
I kind of hate Mo Williams' game, but that swap would definitely be a net positive for the Blazers. Varejao is a great hustle big man and would draw just as many charges (or more!) as Joel and he'd have enough versatility to play at either front-court spot, plus his pick and roll defense is really pretty good too.
Varejao would be a good addition, and would kind of fill that role of being a pest defensively to the opposing team. We saw a little bit of that with Oberto (on a much lesser scale), but we haven't had a player like that in awhile.
I would rather leave Miller for Williams out and give them other considerations. Miller's playmaking ability is severely taken for granted. Varejao for Joel is not that big of upgrade if Joel can come back in a couple of weeks. A three man rotation at C and PF of Joel, Camby, and LA will be solid.
Unfortunately I think he just linked to Sam Amico's twitter feed instead of the message he wanted to highlight. So I'm in the same boat, I'm not sure what he's pointing at.
For some reason, I have this problem often. I got the "tweet" off HoopsHype's aggregation of NBA writers' twitter feeds. If you go there and search for Amico, you'll see that he has even more recent comments, for example: However, if you click on his name on that page it takes you to his Twitter page, and it seems to be several comments behind. Weird.
*BUMP* I wonder, now that the Cavs are in a dogfight for the playoffs with the Knicks, and are playing amazingly well WITHOUT Varejao (still out with a fractured wrist) if they'd reconsider trading him. I have coveted him on our team for a couple of years at least, but since our defense started looking so utterly shite I have coveted him all the more. I thought they'd offload him after LeBron split, but they hung on, and he was playing almost all-star level before he got injured. (So why would they trade him? Because he's a long-range contract which would cut into the major cap room they'd otherwise have. And now they have a PG who's looking like a young Chris Paul, they might actually be tempting to FAs.)
Love varejos hustle. Flopper extraordinaire. But great defender, gets under the other teams skin and can knock down that 10-15 ft jumper. Probably Aldridge moves to center with this deal.