Yeah, it's almost like they are Americans, free to choose who they work for. David Stern will put those uppity slaves in their proper place.
If we give away half the team for this little squirt, it reminds me of when we did the same for Damon. He was great in Toronto and good but not great here. That little dachsund Chris Paul will be the same.
Batum is Air Supply, except without the 'Fros. [video=youtube;6MIsRjfY_yc]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6MIsRjfY_yc[/video]
hahaha.... comparing Chris Paul to Damon Stoudamire is pure comedy. Giving up Rudy, Joel, and Miller wouldn't be trading half the team. Giving up Bayless and Batum or Oden would be the meat of the trade, but that's just a small sacrifice for the BEST POINT GUARD IN THE NBA.
Country Joe McDonald comes to mind. 1, 2, 3 what are we fighting for? don't ask me, I don't give a damn the next stop is Chris Paul land
I predict if he comes here, he'll be knocked out of the Top Three in the league. Damon was pretty hot stuff, too, Rookie of the Year. McMillan will have him playing like Blake in no time. The Sonics tried very hard to trade Payton after his second year. He was playing exactly like McMillan. Nate gets them in his claws and they lose their life force.
Damon had a PER of 16.7 in his ROY year. Paul poops that out for breakfast. Plus, Miller's PER last season was right in line with his Philly days, and even better than when he played for George Karl. What is your point?
If we got Chris Paul and Nate couldn't figure out how to utilize him effectively Nate would get fired.
My point is that just because some little shrimp likes cajun food doesn't mean he can handle salmon. There's a good-sized chance he'll get worse here.
I'm willing to take that chance. Aldridge would instantly be better, and Roy would finally get to play SG without having to carry a dud/bad shooter/white guy at PG.
Giving half the team is just the start. Then to prevent the little runt from joining his crush LeBron or Amare we have to give him a max contract as fast as we can. Same thing happened with Damon, a giant contract after giving many decent players. And that's the good outcome. The bad one is that even that much money can't hold him. And the midget is used to having the coach of his choice. He'll probably want the GM of his choice, too.
Giving up the bad half of the team is fine. All halves aren't created equal. I agree. Giving a max contract to one of the several best players in the NBA is cool, but having to hurry up the paperwork is intolerable. Well, the good outcome is that Paul's massively greater talent leads to massively better play. But I generally agree with you. Talent is usually not relevant. I've heard he's a big Trader Bob fan. I read that he was a big fan of Whitsitt's willingness to trade away half the team to get an impact player.
I'm seeing stuff floating around about how Orlando is allegedly Paul's preferred destination. I have two questions: 1.) Do the Hornets really care where Paul wants to go? I could see future free agents shying away from the Hornets (which they'll do anyway, because they'll suck), if New Orleans totally screws him over and trades him to the Clippers - but do the Hornets care if Paul's #1 choice is the Magic, and #3 or #4 was Portland? 2.) Do the Magic really have anything to trade? If they send Carter's expiring and Jameer Nelson for Paul and Okafor (which works under the cap), that means the Hornets basically get Jameer Nelson for Chris Paul. Is that a better deal than the Bayless / Fernandez / Miller (expiring) / Przybilla (expiring)? Is Batum necessary? Would Oden or Camby be - to be better than Jameer Nelson? I don't think so, but then, I'm not much of a Nelson fan.
I don't consider Oden, Batum, Miller, and Camby (4 names that pop up in most of the trade proposals) part of "the bad half of the team". I also don't think any team on Earth wants to trade for the bad half of another team, so your point is irrelevant.
Just because we were lucky in getting Camby to sign, everyone assumes that Paul will automatically sign long-term after accidentally landing in our boondocks city during his prison escape. The supposedly best PG in the league leaves small market New Orleans to go to...small market Portland, Oregon? For the short-term, but not permanently. We'd just be his hopping-off train station. The reason Camby stayed was that Juwan Howard told him he loved it here. We repaid Howard for saving our season by replacing him with either Ibekwe or Rayshawn Terry. I can't believe we dumped Howard. Anyway, multiply the probability of Paul getting worse here (either because he would at any new team, or because of McMillan) times the probability of Paul not staying beyond 2 years. Compare to the star we must give up, Aldridge or Oden. (Not just Batum, you fools.) It's not worth it for a mini-me. (Although the team could save money on little bobbleheads and just loan him around to fans.)
Camby almost never pops up in any realistic trade proposals. Przybilla, Miller, Batum, Bayless and Rudy seem to be the names that pop up the most. I also don't think even the players I listed comprise the precise "bad half" of the team. Any team Isiah Thomas is in charge of would be part of this Earth. So I agree with you that, at this moment in time, no team on Earth would want to trade for the bad half of another team, but there have been teams that wandered this Earth who might have. We'll have to agree to disagree. My point was that rhetoric like "half the team" (whether taken literally or figuratively to mean "a bunch of players") is fairly meaningless, because there are any number of "bunches of players" that would be well-worth shipping out for a high-level player. Portland traded "half its team" for Pippen, and that was an excellent trade. If someone wants to list a certain set of players and concretely argue that losing that group of players isn't worth Chris Paul, I think that's good fodder for a post. Throwing out a vague and useless term like "half the team" isn't very useful, in my opinion.
Aldridge isn't a star. Oden is currently only a star on a per-minute basis, but Aldridge isn't a star on a per-anything basis unless you subtract out the unproductive minutes.
