DLD 2/6/08 Really Crazy Trade Edition
by mikeA on Feb 6, 2008 3:55 PM PST
Email
PrintIt's a trade so craaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaazy that it nearly satisfies the character requirement for diaries by itself.
The Phoenix Suns have acquired Shaquille O'Neal in a stunning, blockbuster deal that sends four-time All-Star Shawn Marion and Marcus Banks to the Miami Heat.
Good news for the Warriors.
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I... just... don't... understand
Why would you trade Shawn Marion for the corpse of Shaq?
I'm trying to come up with an appropriate analogy here, but I'm having some trouble with it.
Alex Rios for Bartolo Colon? I think that's roughly what we're talking about here. (Well, except Colon is still a free agent. Bear with me.)
i have no idea
why they would do that. i guess they figure that they need stoudemire on gasol and a body for bynum...but it's not like they play the lakers every game, and it's not like stoudemire plays any defense anyway.
My guess is they figure they need a half-court
offensive option in the post-season.
by FreeSeatUpgrade on Feb 6, 2008 5:08 PM PST up reply actions
it almost seems out of desperation
after the Lakers' pick up, but the games do slow down in the playoffs, and even semi-healthy, Shaq is still an imposing figure in the trenches.
now they just have to figure out how to keep him semi-healthy.
it's either a shot in the arm or one to the head.
It does make some sense
Marion has talked a lot about leaving anyways. If his contract is up he'd be walking next season anyways. But the trade does accomplish a couple things. It lets Stoudemire play PF which is his more natural position and having Shaq banging down low it should open up Stoudemire for scoring opportunities. The Suns also kind of stick it to the Lakers by bringing Shaq back into the division which could help to motivate Shaq. It also allows the Suns to match up a little bit better against the Lakers with Shaq and Stoudemire covering Bynum and Gasol. I'm reserving judgment because I think it could actually work.
by methodrampage on Feb 6, 2008 6:51 PM PST up reply actions
they already have the best offense in the nba
and it destroys their defense. (and makes their offense worse)
Almost true
I really don't think the trade really hurts the Suns and if on the off chance that the change of scenery helps to motivate Shaq I think he could still be a force to reckon with.
by methodrampage on Feb 6, 2008 7:24 PM PST up reply actions
PPG isn't worth much
They're #1 in points per possession and 11th on D.
last time i checked
you won games by total you score at the end of the game not how many points you scored per possession.
by methodrampage on Feb 6, 2008 9:57 PM PST up reply actions
but games vary in number of possessions ...
and both teams usually have more or less the same number.
If a team plays a style that leads to games with more possessions they will both score and give up more points. Looking at the totals don't necessarily give you an accurate read. It's like comparing raw totals of a lead off hitter to a #9 hitter. The lead off hitter is going to get 15% or so more PAs than the #9 by virtue of his lineup position. The lead off hitter should get more hits, regardless of whether or not he's actually the better hitter.
i'm coming around
on the trade as well. Well obviously it's great for Miami ... but I'm starting to see it for Phoenix too. Here's the logic:
- Their run-and-gun offense is built mostly on Nash and then a bunch of interchangeable parts. In otherwise, good as Marion is, they won't miss him much. Leandro Barbosa will step in, Boris Diaw will step in, etc. What's one guy out of the six or seven running mates Nash has? And they managed to get rid of the unhappy guy, at that.
- Shaq won't hold back the Suns' fast break because you don't need five guys to run the break. A fast-break is usually 3-on-2 or 2-on-1, is it not? The Suns will still run the break, and Shaq will trail the break. No problem.
- The Suns' shit doesn't work during the playoffs. It hasn't worked yet, anyway. This gives them another offensive option if they're forced to play half-court, and it gives them a defensive presence in the half-court.
The jury's still out. But if Shaq does prove a good fit, then God, the West is good.
A possible line of thinking:
With Nash feeding Shaq from all angles, perhaps he'll get back to his old 30+ppg?
That, and Marion wanted out.
A Suns Fan's Take
Sorry I'm a little late here - work sucks!
This reminds me of the A's trading Swisher. Not so much in what both teams got in return, but in the fact that both had an abundance of players at a particular position.
Shawn Marion, Boris Diaw and Grant Hill created a log jamb at small forward. I'm guessing that Steve Kerr figures that Grant Hill is healthy enough to pick up more minutes and, as last night shows, Diaw is a very capable NBA small forward with better ball handling and passing skills than The Matrix. Trading Marion made the most sense because he was the player that would net the best return.
The downside is that Shaq may be washed up. His hip could cause him to gimp through the remaining $40M on his contract and the Suns could regret the move. The trade also puts two foul-prone players in the front court at once - rarely does Stoudemire have fewer than 4 fouls midway through the fourth quarter.
The upside is that Shaq may return to some form of his former self and allow Stoudemire to move to the power forward to kill all other PFs.
Much like the Swisher trade, I like this deal the more I think about it.
Shaq to Phoenix
My gut reaction: highway robbery for the Heat, who not only get to get out from underneath Shaq's contract, but who get a significant talent in the deal as well.
I'm kind of curious to see what Simmons will say about all these NBA trades; Simmons spends every trade deadline imagining up NBA blockbusters that never happen with the enthusiasm of a little kid who writes letters to the GM. (When I was a little kid, I wrote a letter to the A's GM saying that they ought to trade for Don Baylor and Oil Can Boyd. They did later pick up Baylor as a free agent.)
But Simmons I think is still hung suffering post-Patriot depression. That Super Bowl column was actually a pretty good one; since Bill's such a heart-on-his-sleeve Patriot fan, I was thinking I'd write him an e-mail along the lines of "HA HA HA HA HA ...," but never got around to it.
Anyway, no commentary from Simmons on the Shaq-to-Phoenix trade, but I did find some commentary from this guy.
Off to a late start, it's 4 PM. Better set our sights lower. 50 Comments?!
Beer gets seatbelt.
... I mean... I'd understand if it was Fat Tire... but Busch?
by ConditionOakland on Feb 6, 2008 4:51 PM PST reply actions
Tar Heels, Bay-beeeeeeee!
Ahhhhhhh....Can't beat Carolina-Duke. Even though I'm pessimistic with Lawson out, it's still a fine thing to be a part of. And Oakland Tech's Quentin Thomas gets a chance to shine.
And apparently there's a plan for Heels students to wear yellow shirts, to help Duke reminisce about their '07 tourney exit at the hands of the yellow-clad Virginia Commonwealth Rams.
Stick a fork in Carolina
They're done without Lawson.
Their offense doesn't run without him at the point.
On the bright side, there's always UCLA-WSU to watch tomorrow.
I hope you're wrong
but fear you're right. But Q is not without skills...at Tech he could play shoot-first or pass-first PG depending on team need...and he's as good as Lawson on D. Yeah, I'm grasping at reeds, but Carolina-Duke has a way of working out close (unless Matt Doherty's around).
UCLA-WSU...that's elegant hoops right there. Over/Under might be 100 total.
by FreeSeatUpgrade on Feb 6, 2008 6:02 PM PST up reply actions
Actually, the first game ran into the high 70s
in points scored.
If you really want to see "slow," watch the next WSU-Stanford game (or a rerun of the last one)...
Yeah yeah yeah
Duke played well tonight, in the face of a strong Carolina effort, Lawsonlessness notwithstanding. I look forward to the March 8 rematch.
by FreeSeatUpgrade on Feb 6, 2008 8:48 PM PST up reply actions
As I suspected might be the case
That Nevada kid with the story about being conned by a Jeff Tedford impersonator made the whole thing up.
good gracious
That's an astoundingly warped sense of reality/non-reality or maybe just not thinking things out too thoroughly. Maybe he's read "The Secret" one too many times?
That's going to play hell with the euphemisms.
Red Sox re-sign Kielty
Perhaps I should have put an "OT" warning tag on this, as it is about baseball.
I'll start commenting on baseball again in 2010..
Fine
but are you just going to pocket two years worth of comments, or will you save them up and post them when the team is competitive again?
I'm going to invest in a pun manual
Doesn't Pun Manuel play for the Mets?
Oh wait... that's Cockfight McCockfighty.
Warning:
For PaulThomas
Woody Allen (you know who he is, right?) talks about meaning, injustice, Dostoevsky, and his fear that your mystery woman is tumbling straight down that well-worn Hollywood path to perdition.
(by "perdition", I mean "coke snorting, club hopping mess who picks movie roles by firing darts at piles of gin-stained c-grade scripts and leaves belligerent voicemails on Sofia Coppola's cellphone demanding she make Lost in Translation 2 in time for Oscar season")
She was the LiT chick?
Hm. I really disliked that movie. I thought it took riffs on all the easy jokes about Japan without otherwise actually needing to be set there as opposed to, say, The Gambia.
Also, it was boring.
She was.
I think in that film, Japan-ness, specifically, is less important than foreignness, generally.
I was not bored, and liked it very much.
On the other hand, I'd be hard pressed to think of a movie more wildly misaligned with the sensibilities of the AN intelligentsia.
I thought it was a fantastic movie ...
I'm with thou.
That movie was aces. Having been in a very similar situation a time or two, I connected and then some.
And, as well, it was just good.
curious what you mean by the last sentence...
Was it really that cryptic?
I meant: That movie does not strike me as one that would appeal to the generally analytical, ordered, rigorously reason-adhering bent of many regular AN posters (such as Paul and sal). Or those whose aesthetic preferences seem to reside in the realm of form/cleverness/ingenuity (such as monkeyball).
I knew there was a reason why i liked you
Most overrated movie ever, and i i have the same gripe, all the easy jokes, no substance.
Couldn't stand the character, wtf was she doing in Japan?, just to keep an eye on her husband?
Where's the Dostoyevsky?
I'm probably the only one here who followed the link in order to find out what Woody Allen has to say about Dostoyevsky. I'm very ticked off to find that he doesn't discuss Dostoyevsky at all.
Shame on you, 74mk, for teasing me so.
I don't think it's old, unless you mean ...
... cockfighting.
I think this one's going to be interesting, for a couple reasons.
1--the parallels to Vick are very clear, in the basic nature of the event -- animals fight to the death for human amusement, and profit.
but
2--it's legal in the DomRep, and the "culture" argument will rear its stupid head, again, and
3--it's food animals, most of whom live And die in gruesome fashion right here, right now, under a heavy cloaks of secrecy and friendly government regulation, and
4--although many people suspect or know #3 at some level, they do not want to know more. Knowing more will put many folks in a cognitively dissonant position about their eating habits. Ignorance has rarely been so blissful.
I'm guessing that the combined influence of MLB (yet-another-scandal avoidance), the Food Industry (we worked hard to make this cloak -- here, have a tasty McNugget) and maybe a dash of post-Vick compassion fatigue will sweep this new outrage under the rug. But I hope not.
by The Dogfather on Feb 7, 2008 7:28 AM PST up reply actions
Yup -- therein lies the bliss. Then there's this:
by The Dogfather on Feb 7, 2008 7:42 AM PST up reply actions
holy cow
how did you find that?
Takes me back to my baseball card collecting days...until Mom made good on her promise and threw them away. If she only knew....
I didn't find it. It was posted in a fark.com
thread on this subject. Dates from 1970, I think. I wonder if it represents any social progress that Topps probably wouldn't put that on a card today?
Nah. Prolly not.
by The Dogfather on Feb 7, 2008 9:12 AM PST up reply actions
Dude ripped it up in the Midwest League.
I'm guessing he pitched better when there were hen houses nearby.
It won't come to anything.
Reason one: Legality where it happened.
Reason two: Unlike with dogs, not many people have chickens at home. And those that do, kill them often.
slightly old
http://www.athleticsnation.com/comme...
This thread is horribly offensive!
by The Pilots Dared Me To Die on Feb 6, 2008 11:47 PM PST reply actions
never mind, no it's not...
I guess basketball isn't as bad as politics, but it's close!
by The Pilots Dared Me To Die on Feb 6, 2008 11:49 PM PST up reply actions
Speculation at minorleagueball
is that the teams in talks are the Reds and Dodgers.
mlbtraderumors.com
suggests Reds, Twins, and Rays (don't know where they're getting those last two from).
Good lord is that video creepy.
Kenny needs to back off the camera by a good 2 feet.
He's really going out on a limb by saying, "Blanton may be traded." Thanks, Rosenthal. And who said this '50/50' stuff? Are we in a casino?
Nothing of substance in that clip.
blame david cone
Cone, union, kept drug testing out of contract during 1994-95 strike
David Cone is taking part of the responsibility for baseball’s steroids era.
The former pitcher was on the union’s negotiating team during the 1994-95 strike, when management proposed drug testing and the players’ association successfully fought it off.
"Certainly in retrospect, I think there’s plenty of blame to go around. Certainly I share some of that blame as being involved with the players’ association at that time," Cone said Wednesday. "It’s something I’m not proud of. It’s humbling. It’s embarrassing."
"Denorfia" misspelling watch
Today's review of the organization heading into spring training (written by "Jayson Addcox"... which I dearly hope is a pseudonym) contains three different and distinct spellings of the name.
One of the interesting stories will be whether Denorfia can break the all-time record for "most typos induced in a season." He's already shattered the mark for "most typos induced in an offseason at AN."
Record previously held by Scioscia.
For basketball junkies--
I had some time this morning so I read a couple of Phoenix Suns fan blogs. Many of the posters there had the same read I have about Marion--that he was a stat padder, garbage time specialist, a guy who chucked 3's and demanded shots.
But the most interesting discussion wasn't about Marion. It was about Amare Stoudamire. The bottom line sentiment about Amare was that he doesn't play D, is a matador in the lane--and is easily boxed out. Despite his awesome offensive numbers, he is seen as a tremendous liability defensively. I decided to check this theory out and looked at Amare's game by game log for the past couple of months. It was extremely eye-opening and I suspect holds the key to yesterdays trade.
Here are Amare's games in Jan. I'll list the C he defended first, then his pts and rebs. Pay attention to the rebound numbers!
Okafor 18-13, Mohammed 12-11; Duncan 16-17; Z 21-10; Al Jefferson 39-15, Bogut 19-12; AJ again 27-14; Kaman 9-18; Bogut again 29-11; Okur 22-17; Murphy 9-15; Chandler 19-11; K. Thomas 14-12. It looks even worse in December:
Mikki Moore 20-12; Kaman 22-20; Bynum 28-12; Bosh 42-13; Dirk 31-9; Duncan 36-17; Chandler 14-18; Millsap 20-13; Shaq 18-11; Al J again 32-20.
I remember looking at the stat lines for alot of these C's. For many of them, their Amare games were their best of the season.
The buzz in Phoenix has been (at least for the last 2 yrs) that they NEED Amare "step up" for them to succeed in the playoffs. Defensively, it just wasn't happening. When he DID try to play D against legit centers he usually got in foul trouble.
They were going to lose Marion at the end of the year anyway--so taking a flyer of someone who actually might box out and clog up the lane seems to make sense. Moving Amare to PF from C seems to be sensible as well. Time will tell.
If they wanted someone to play defense,
they chose an odd guy to do it.
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