D Will to Pacers?

I’m buying if he’s willing to extend. Selling if he still wants to test the market. I’ve never been sold on Collison being the long term solution @ PG. The alternative there sounds even worse, I like cheering for Eric Gordon on other teams. But would not want him on the Pacers, cause then I would hate him for being such a Prima Donna about playing.
“Ouuuch my pinky hurts, I need to sit out 6 weeks coach”.

While I’d rather start Williams/PG/Danny instead of Williams/Hill/PG, just sending Collison/hill doesn’t free up enough cap space to keep Roy (without going over the cap), who I feel would be crucial to convincing Williams to stick around. I doubt we want to pay luxury tax for a team that isn’t guaranteed to be awesome. So Danny would have to be included so we wouldn’t absorb so much salary. Plus it would take at least one draft pick from 2012, b/c NJN will be looking to recoup some of the picks they wasted trading for Williams in the first place.

If you don’t understand how Deron Williams makes us better, you must’ve just started watching basketball this year. He’s the second or third best player at his position in the entire league. He’s capable of averaging 18/9 on a craptastic team when he’s barely trying. Now, I’m not saying our team should blow up for him, but if he can be had reasonably, and commits to staying for more than a half year, he’s the type of player that puts the core group we already have into the title conversation.

But the idea of upgrading at PG is a good one in general. Collison is good and 5 years ago that might have been enough. But the league is so stacked with PGs right now that you simply can’t look at him and think that he’s PG who can lead you to a title without a mega-star next to him (and we don’t have a mega-star).

I’m not saying that this group of players are title contenders, but at some point you have to start building team chemistry. Back in the 90’s Indiana had some very good players on the team, Reggie being the closest thing to a “star”, but they never had a superstar player. Deron Willams is an elite player in this league, but if you trade away your good players for one great player you become the New Jersey Nets.

There’s only 240 minutes to go around. Having 12 really good players is nice, but you can only have 5 players on the court at any given time. None the less, you can’t just bring in a guy who’s shown some lack of effort and clashed with an HOF coach while your in the middle of a season where you are building chemistry with a great group of hard working guys.

If we could get him (with an 3+ year exetension) for some of the low cost stuff that people have mentioned, like Collison, a bench player (preferably not Hill), and our 1st rounder….I think you have to strongly consider that. But, I also don’t think that NJ would settle for such low end pieces.

I’m going to say no thanks to any realistic deal involving Williams at this point. Especially with his high salary. Even though, when he’s playing his game on a good team giving you an efficient 20/10 he’s well worth a max deal…we don’t have the cache to draw players the way NY, LAL, and MIA do so I’m afraid we’d get stuck with Hibbert (a good facilitator in the half court in his own right) and D.Will and not much else.

But then I thought about how he drove Jerry Sloan to retire and how he doesn’t seem to be trying all that hard. To me that’s a character problem that can’t be overlooked. Are the Nets thin on talent? Very much so. Does that mean he should throw in the towel? No. I hate Lebron James, but for what he did try with some pretty crappy teams in Cleveland and succeeded to a degree. That’s what a team’s best player should do. I just can’t like a guy that doesn’t want to try.

even though he may have been a reason jerry sloan retired, it’s not like sloan is completely free of guilt. sooner or later, you have to get with the times, and if sloan was refusing to adapt to his team, then it is also partially his fault. it’s not like he’s phil jackson or something. sloan has no rings. i personally think deron started getting a bad rep bc sloan is a HOF coach, blah, blah, blah.

and what is the basis for deron not putting in effort during games? i don’t see it. he’s been playing very well as of late. there is not a single instance of a teammate of deron’s saying he was a bad teammate or he that didn’t lead by example. even in europe, they were so impressed by him that they retired his number.