How about this trade: Hickson and Nolan for Ridnour and Stiemsma? I'm getting really sick of not having a half-decent backup PG. I'd prefer one who could play a lick of defense, but you take what you can. And Stiemsma is pretty much the mirror-image of Hickson. He's decent-sized and a very good defender, even if he's a complete scrub on offense. And, while Hickson has one of the worst +/- on his team, Stiemsma has one of the few positive +/-s on the 'Wolves. We would suddenly be a lot more pasty, though. Our bench would be very vanilla. Copiously Caucasian.
http://www.basketball-reference.com/play-index/pcm_finder.cgi?request=1&sum=0&p1=hicksjj01&y1=2013&p2=stiemgr01&y2=2013 Stiemsma is god awful.
Think of him as Przybilla: his value is not so much in stats as knowing where to go on defense, spacing and so on. Hickson's real problem is that he just doesn't really seem to be able to understand what he's supposed to be doing. He's a great athlete and he really tries hard, but he's totally spacey. Check out our +/- stats: Code: Player 1 Team + - +/- Min G V. Claver Trail Blazers 693 -681 12 344:18 27 L. Aldridge Trail Blazers 3,813 -3,802 11 1872:17 49 S. Pavlovic Trail Blazers 751 -752 -1 378:28 30 D. Lillard Trail Blazers 4,015 -4,017 -2 1963:15 51 W. Matthews Trail Blazers 3,192 -3,205 -13 1563:27 44 J. Jeffries Trail Blazers 577 -591 -14 302:53 34 L. Babbitt Trail Blazers 1,067 -1,085 -18 536:05 43 J. Freeland Trail Blazers 483 -512 -29 265:05 29 N. Smith Trail Blazers 418 -449 -31 228:28 28 R. Price Trail Blazers 905 -973 -68 487:04 37 M. Leonard Trail Blazers 1,109 -1,196 -87 589:19 40 W. Barton Trail Blazers 848 -942 -94 460:52 44 N. Batum Trail Blazers 3,942 -4,039 -97 1941:50 50 J. Hickson Trail Blazers 2,952 -3,071 -119 1481:32 50 Of these, Batum's are the most alarming. But I think you can argue that a lot of that comes from playing with the bench. At least, I hope you can, because otherwise... Meanwhile, Hickson has worse +/- totals in fewer minutes, and he plays with the starters mostly. Hickson's effort and string of double-doubles seems to be obscuring the fact that the team is sucking with him on the floor, and it's not just because of him bobbling the ball so often. If you like, think of the main trade as Ridnour for Hickson (same contract, almost) and the value of Ridnour being that we never have to see Price or Smith "play PG" again. Plus Ridnour would mean that Lillard isn't totally worn down by too many minutes.
That trade idea would last exactly this long: "J.J., how would you like to go the the Timberwolves for the rest of the season. No?"
Oh yeah, I forgot that he has right of refusal. Hm. On the other hand, players do like Adelman and playing with Rubio - Batum cited both of those over the Summer (which we've forgiven him for). And he's said to have (a) insisted that he's a PF, and (b) moaned about the coaching staff (at least blamed them for the poor defense last night), so... Maybe he needs to be told that we're going to try starting Leonard and bumping up Freeland's minutes soon...
The amplified version of the discussion would be, "J.J., how would you like to give up your Bird Rights and go the the Timberwolves for the rest of the season. FUCK NO?"
Do we have his Bird rights? Even if we do, he could be informed that the first thing we do is renounce them to clear cap space. This would be true even if we planned to re-sign him (because wasn't that what happened last time?)
Yes, the Blazers do have his Bird Rights. I suppose they could do something like that, but it would really piss J.J. off and wouldn't do much for the Blazers' reputation around the league. Far better to try and do a sign-and-trade next summer.
We have his Bird rights, but his agent knows that if we renounce him to sign a player, there is a provision in the CBA that let's us retain his Bird rights if we don't sign the player we renounced him for.
we can't do a S&T...not for the amount he's going to want/get. It would make him BYC, and you can't involve a 3rd team in a S&T. And in new S&Ts, you only get 4 years max and 4.5% raises anyway, so it's not like he's getting more years or more money,
I just want to throw one thing out there with respect to Hickson's Bird Rights, do they really matter? He's not going to get a five year deal with big money.
You know the more we see Hickson get exposed on Defense, the more I think he's not going to get as big a payday as everyone thinks, especially with the new CBA.
