Bill Simmons's Pacer Ideas
by SethGrandpa on Dec 23, 2009 5:00 PM EST
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Print[From the FanPosts, sethgrandpa shares some thoughts on the Pacers' trade options from Bill Simmons. Only problem I have is him wondering if it's still too soon to joke about strip clubs and gun shots. More like too late. I'd say we're way past that point. - TL]
So ESPN's Bill Simmons went to detail explaining plans to financially help all the struggling teams in the league. The full story can be found here, but I'll just point out his plan for the Pacers.
The Pacers should be a small-market team that pays one big star (in this case, Danny Granger) and a bunch of scrappy role players. Right now, they're in no-man's land -- destined to win 35-42 games a year, with no chance of growing into something better than that. Why not just bottom out? Like what David Kahn tried to do in Minnesota, only not as clumsy and caked in double-talk.
• Mitigating Factor: Any "bottoming out" needs to include the team dumping Troy Murphy, Mike Dunleavy and/or T.J. Ford (making $60.3 million combined thruough 2011). On the Untradeable Scale from 1 to Gilbert Arenas, Murphy is a 2, Dunleavy is a 6.5 (because of knee issues), and T.J. Ford is an 8.
• VP's Verdict: Move those Dunleavy/Murphy contracts while they're in uniforms and not streetclothes or walking casts. For example …
Fake Trade 3a: Murphy and Dunleavy to Cleveland for Shaq's EC. Love the Murphy fit for Cleveland because he can shoot threes and rebound; they could play him, Varejao, LeBron, West and Williams at crunch time. Anything Dunleavy gives them is a bonus. For Indiana, they can buy out Shaq (saving a couple million), then save another $23 million next season. And you thought professional basketball couldn't be salvaged in Indiana! Let's celebrate by hitting a local strip club and firing gunshots into the air. What, too soon?
Fake Trade 3b: Murphy, Dunleavy and Travis Diener to Utah for Andrei Kirilenko, Kosta Koufos and Kyle Korver's EC. Admittedly, this trade makes no sense -- I just wanted to break the record for "most white guys in an all-white trade."
I totally agree with his thinking here. Your thoughts?
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if only either of the trades made sense...
He’s right about the second one, it just doesn’t even make sense.
The first one that he tried to explain in great detail is almost worse… Why would Cleveland trade Shaq? And why would the Pacers trade for Shaq right now and stunt the growth of Hibbert, that’s the last thing we need to do. Shaq doesn’t want to come to Indy… He would be like our Allen Iverson, only show up half the time if we are lucky, maybe even turn into a stephon marbury or another Jamaal Tinsley. That’s if he doesn’t go into the Cleveland front office and threaten to sit on Mike Brown until they resend the trade.
No way these trades make sense.
~SHaFF!~
The idea with Shaq
is that the Pacers buy him allowing him to land elsewhere. Since the Murph talk natrually leads to a swap with Ilgauskas, I’ve been looking at the Shaq angle although instead of Dunleavy, I try to sneak in TJ. Regardless, I usually end up adding players, forcing the Pacers to take back Boobie Gibson who has a few years left at around $4 mil per. Gotta give up something, though.
I'd give two options
Cavs, if you want Murphy, we’re willing to trade him, but he really fits well with you and he’s not so bad we have to get rid of him. So you either have to
1. Give us expirings and JJ Hickson. That seems reasonable, because he’s at best going to be their 4th big with Murphy in the fold.
2. Give us expirings and take Ford too.
If you haven't noticed Shaq sucks this year and is totally out of shape.
Cleveland plays a lot better without him in the lineup.
As for the Pacers, the idea is we’d immediately buy him out and save a ton of cash the next two seasons, which is something they need to do badly.
Picking up shaq just because of his expiring contract?
I could understand the move on the money side of things, but I just don’t think this trade makes sense because it would never happen. I don’t think there is any way that this trade would ever materialize… just my opinion.
~SHaFF!~
Here's my point: The team is in dire financail states.
There were even whippers of moving the Pacers last summer. The Shaq trade if executed in the way expressed above could elevate the financial burden and sure up the Pacers future off the court, even if it doesn’t help on the court.
Simmons is absolutely correct
This is a team in ‘No mans land’
I’ve been harping this point since 2005.
Why can’t Larry Bird see it?
" Tell me something Steve, How does a guy from Puerto Rico loose a ball in the Sun? "
I can't agree with his thinking...
…because the only thinking I saw in that was how to make a cute paragraph insulting the Pacers in a couple of different ways.
The strip club, gun, and white guy references were, I’m sure, much more important to good old Bill than the ‘ideas.’
Boo
If you can’t take a joke then you shouldn’t be reading Bill Simmions. There is almost no way to fix the Pacers right now so he came up with the only trade he thought made sense. The other trade and the joke were just there to make you laugh about a terrible situation.
by return2greatness on Jan 11, 2010 4:56 PM EST up reply actions
My fantasy Pacers season
1. Murphy + Ford + Dunleavy to the Cavs for Hickson + Shaq (to be bought out) + West (has a NG option for next year)
2. Foster + Head to the Blazers for Rudy Fernandez + Steve Blake
That basically cleans the slate for us.
1- Watson, Blake, Price
2- Rudy, West, Rush
3- Granger, D. Jones
4- Hickson, Hansbrough
5- Hibbert, S. Jones
Who cares: Diener, McRoberts
That puts our salary down to like $30M next year, including our draft pick, which, lets face it, will be a high lottery pick. But at that level, we’d have like $24M in cap space to spend too. I’m not sure I’d advocate spending all of it, but at the very least we could probably pick up one solid young player and/or buy a draft pick or two as well.
Most optimistically, we luck into John Wall and actually get some direction. Adding him to Granger and Rudy F would make for something sort of fun to watch. If we could add another reasonably talented player in free agency… maybe Rudy Gay… We could really get out and run.
Fine. Buy him out. Expiring contract. I could care less if he never sets foot on the court
The real value is clearing cap space.
White guys out
Does anyone remember that 5 game winning streak this year? Ya know? With the white guys hurt? Then they come back and we do this… There’s no such thing as coincidences in this league. I honestly think it’s Murph’s bad D. Nobody really says anything about it but when he came back Roy just kept getting back into foul trouble when he didn’t have an athletic 4 helping him guard the paint. Murph comes back, Roy starts to foul and lose his confidence, then we lose our inside game and flow. Kudos to the Pacers for not panicing and trying to ride it out but it startin to look like this isn’t gonna work. Anthony Randolph would be a great pairing with Hibbert. Hell if that doesn’t work out at least our summer league team would look AMAZING lol.
3 point shooting Zach
would be a monster a 24-12 guy hitting 2 3s a game,
What about a deal with the Kings
Maybe we could try and ship Dunleavy and Murphy to the Kings for Kevin Martin. There were rumours before about Sacremento trading Martin.
Sacremento could use the experience of Dunleavy and Murphy to help grow Casspi and Thompson (as both of these guys could be great players in the future), even if both Dunleavy and Murphy start off the bench. The Kings have a lot of cap space and could easily take both of these players. It allows the Pacers to easily clear cap space too.
Having the Pacers get Martin means we’ve got huge scorers at SG and SF. That should take some of the pressure off Earl Watson to score, and means he can focus on doing more of a Steve Nash impersonation and dishing it off lots for assists. McRoberts and Hansbrough will still play at PF and build their rebounding and defensive games without having the pressure of having to score. Hibbert keeps his Centre position and hopefully builds his game too (someone has to show him how to defend without fouling). So our lineup goes:
- Centre: Hibbert
- Power Forward: McRoberts / Hansbrough
- Small Forward: Granger
- Shooting Guard: Martin
- Point Guard: Watson
What’s your thoughts? It’s just an idea, may be impossible but thought I’d bring it up.
Oh and I forgot to add
We’d have to take Kenny Thomas with Kevin Martin, since both teams are over the cap limit this is the only way it would really work. His contract expires soon though.
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