In a story up on ESPN Dallas, Tim McMahon writes that it seems as if the Mavericks are exploring trade options for the young hybrid guard Rodrigue Beaubois:

The buzz is that Rodrigue Beaubois has gone from "pretty much untouchable" -- as Mark Cuban called the dynamic guard a couple years ago -- to being quietly shopped.

That's what ESPN The Magazine's Chris Broussard reports in his TrueHoop post on trade rumors:

Sources say Dallas is about ready to move on from the Roddy Beaubois experiment. The Mavericks have thought for years that the talented young Frenchman could be another Tony Parker, but he has not been able to master the move from shooting guard to point guard. Nor has he been able to fill the void left by J.J. Barea. If they don't move him before this year's deadline, he could be gone over the summer.

McMahon goes on to say that the price for Beaubois is most likely significantly lower than it may have been just two years ago, speculating that a draft pick outside of the lottery may get the deal done. While the Hornets would not be able to offer a sub-lottery draft pick within the next few years, there would be other ways to get the deal done.

Continue reading this post »

I was one of the few people who was glad that something shady went down in December when the Chris Paul to the Lakers trade fell through in mysterious fashion. We may never know what actually happened when David Stern swooped in and prevented the trade from going through, but I will remain forever grateful. Put me in the category of fan that wants to win a championship, not root for a team that is a 2nd-round playoff out every year. Therefore, going through a tough time period right now by blowing the roster up instead of rebuilding on the fly with a lesser potential team is my preferred way of rebuilding.

Continue reading this post »

The Hornets announced yesterday that Eric Gordon will have surgery and sit out at least another six weeks. If this timeline somehow escapes the errancy of each that preceded it, Gordon would be in line for an April return with anywhere from 5 to 15 games left in the season. The alternative -- that Gordon played his last game of the season on January 4th, 2012 -- feels, at this point, just as likely.

What this means for Gordon's future is unclear. I won't speculate on it too much. Will he return to his previous levels of athletic ability? Can he? I don't know. I'm optimistic because of his age, the (as far as we know) relative lack of severity of the injury, the recovery history of professional athletes from similar (and more complex) surgeries, and, I'll be frank, a sense of vague desperation on my own part. But I simply don't know. Will gave the best summary I've seen of the situation on Twitter last night:

Beyond those points, we don't know enough to talk with confidence about Gordon himself. But the timing is perfect to revisit the original Clippers trade, amidst the dozens of "ha ha, David Stern vetoed an awesome trade for this disaster, ha ha" jokes flying around Twitter since news of Gordon's surgery broke.

I was a big fan of the original veto. To refresh, the Hornets passed on this:

1. Lamar Odom
2. Luis Scola
3. Kevin Martin
4. Goran Dragic
5. New York's 2012 1st round pick (currently #13, but not lottery)

in order to pick up this:

1. Eric Gordon
2. Chris Kaman
3. Al-Farouq Aminu
4. Minnesota's 2012 1st round pick (currently #12, lottery)

Even though Minnesota will likely end up in the lottery and New York, in the lightweight East, will not, the picks won't be too drastically different. In terms of draft value, both the Lakers' and Clippers' deal offered New Orleans a very similar outcome. The trades really differed in terms of the long-term rebuilding plan the Hornets would end up with. It's true the Clippers offered the best overall player (factoring in age), but the Lakers' deal essentially gave the Hornets an immediately playoffs contending team. A lineup of Jarrett Jack - Kevin Martin - Trevor Ariza - Luis Scola - Emeka Okafor with a bench featuring one of the league's better backup points in Goran Dragic as well as the reigning NBA sixth man of the year in Lamar Odom probably would have made the postseason in a strange, strange year for the Western conference.

The problem, of course, was the ceiling of that team. Between Martin, Ariza, Scola, and Okafor, the Hornets would have locked in long term to a core with extremely minimal opportunity for growth. A 7th or 6th seed could have provided a shot at perhaps a wobbly Spurs team, maybe a fun revenge series against Chris Paul's Clippers. But come the summer, the Hornets would add something akin to the 22nd pick from the draft, nothing else (cap and tax considerations) and that would have been that. Off to 2012, maybe another 7th seed. Rinse and repeat. The Hornets would have been "competitive" but not competitive, the lamb that reigned supreme amongst its fellow sheep, elated to be satueed in its own juices for the NBA's lions.

It's always puzzled me why NBA fans are satisfied with this kind of existence. And I say this as a fan of a team that's never sniffed a Finals appearance. If a team's current 5 or 10 year road-map doesn't include at least a tiny opportunity to contend for a title at some point (any point!), blow it up. It's cynical, but as much as I want to replace "blow it up" with "switch to a road that works," the two concepts are synonymous in professional basketball. It's sad. It's what makes basketball below the uppermost level, below the HEAT and the Thunder and the Bulls and the other contenders du jour, so damn tough to watch. There's an enervating sense of emptiness that inevitably accompanies "competitive" but not competitive basketball; this is a sport that takes cinderellas, grinds them down into a powder, and smokes their remains, sneering in the knowledge that if Game 1 didn't do the trick, Games 2 through 7, and the next series, and the next series after that most certainly will.

The Clippers' deal didn't offer the raw talent of the Lakers' deal. In any sense of the word. The Hornets were getting more players, they were getting better players, and they were getting a better team. But they were also getting a team condemned to basketball purgatory.

The Clippers' deal offered a chance to vault past that purgatory in the best case scenario and a chance to put some devastatingly bad teams on the floor in the worst case. But therein lies the irony; the latter, for a small market, hilariously low budget team, is the only method of generating the former. A devastatingly bad team, in this comically warped league, is far more valuable than a merely good one if the end goal is a title. It's hardly a sure way -- the Hornets could strike out in 2012, again in 2013, again in 2014, fold in 2015, have all their former fans banished by the US government to North Korea in 2016 -- but it's the only way.

And it's why the most important aspect of the Clippers' deal was not Eric Gordon; rather, it was the opportunity to be terrible. To play painful basketball, to construct a .300 team and then take away its starting point guard, its starting shooting guard, its starting power forward, its starting center, and its backup power forward, to start players that came off the bench in the D-League, to make God himself turn away in horror.

The Lakers offered a mid-1st draft pick and a shot at being perennial first and second round fodder. The Clippers offered a mid-1st draft pick and, via Eric Gordon and the Hornets' own pick, a significantly lower shot at being something so much more. That hasn't changed today; if anything. it only enhances the original sentiment if Gordon is healthy in the long term.

David Stern's veto still makes perfect sense because his league decidedly does not.

The two most important commodities in the NBA are superstar players (LeBron, Wade, Howard, Paul) and elite defensive coaches (Thibodeau). Both bring a team closer to a title on the +6 paradigm than any other individual entity. We lost one last summer, but we also had the makings of another. Or so we thought.

But in the early season, Monty Williams' defense checks in at a -1.2 differential. Even in the absence of talent, defensive ability was something we (and projection systems like Basketball Prospectus' SCHOENE) expected to stay relatively constant. The schemes themselves were excellent in 2010-2011, and expecting a fair bit of carryover value seemed justified, even sans Chris Paul and the randomly defensively competent 2011 version of David West.

Of course, Monty Williams' right hand man and the ostensible architect of the defense, Mike Malone, is now Mark Jackson's assistant (or "assistant," depending on your perspective of Jackson) in Golden State. How much has the defense suffered as a result of his departure, and how much should we read into this significantly depreciated defense as a whole?

Continue reading this post »

The 2011-12 Hornets' season so far has been painful to say the least; a 4-17 record filled with tough losses has been difficult to digest. However, do not despair Hornets' fans! A new month begins tomorrow, and presents a great chance for N'awlins to rebound from a poor start. The schedule reads 14 games in 29 days (leap month), including two back-to-backs and one back-to-back-to-back. So what are three things to look forward to? Click the jump to find out!

Continue reading this post »

Today, we look at the third team that has been linked with the Hornets' Chris Kaman - the San Antonio Spurs. If you missed the earlier breakdowns of the Houston Rockets and the Indiana Pacers, those are here and here.

Kaman missed his third straight game last night, again not traveling with the team to Miami. As noted over the weekend, the Hornets cannot include Kaman in multiplayer deals until February 14th. Keep in mind, though, that this refers to the Hornets aggregating salaries on their end; Kaman cannot be traded in conjunction with other Hornets players before that date, but he can bring back any combination of players in an otherwise legal transaction. From a broader perspective, we're two weeks from the February 14th deadline, and waiting until then would give the Hornets a month to arrange a deal before the March 15th NBA trade deadline.

So hit the jump for some Spurs talk.

Continue reading this post »

On Friday, the New Orleans Hornets made it clear that Chris Kaman has played his last game for the team; Dell Demps, David Stern, and the front office are actively seeking trade options. Since the announcement, Kaman has missed two straight games - a home blowout of the Orlando Magic on Friday followed by a home blowout at the hands of the Atlanta Hawks yesterday. In both cases, the box score has listed him, rather uniquely as a "DNP - Organizational Decision."

The Houston Rockets, Indiana Pacers, and San Antonio have been the three reported front runners for Kaman's services via a trade. On Saturday, we looked at possible trade options with the Houston Rockets, concluding that some combination of 1. Hasheem Thabeet, 2. Jonny Flynn/Jordan Hill/Courtney Lee, 3. the lower of their and New York's 2012 1st round picks could be a possible return.

Today, let's move onto the Indiana Pacers, the home of former Hornets Darren Collison, David West, and James Posey.

Continue reading this post »

Chris Kaman has been been a consummate professional since joining the Hornets, and, if we're being honest, he's really been a lot more than that. He's embraced the city entirely, taking in its various sights, interacting with users on the internet, showing interest in how fans watch the Hornets on television, and just generally being highly appreciative of a situation that was thrust on him abruptly and, it could be said, antagonistically.

It's why yesterday's announcement that the Hornets are actively looking to trade him is saddening, even if Kaman has only been with the team for a month. But here we are. Kaman has likely played his last game as a member of the New Orleans Hornets, as Dell Demps/David Stern attempt to find a suitable landing spot.

Yesterday, we were given some insight into potential trade partners:

Wojnarowski went onto clarify that the Jazz were interested at one point but that Kaman doesn't make too much sense in their loaded frontcourt now. Sports Illustrated's Chris Mannix also corroborated the Houston Rockets' inclusion on the list, and also added that the Boston Celtics are interested but don't believe they have the pieces to get a deal done. Wojnarowski also noted later that the Hornets' current asking price is "draft picks, cap space, and a young player," something most teams have balked at.

We'll start today by looking at how a Chris Kaman to Houston trade could happen, and gradually work our way to the other teams over the next few days. Jump!

Continue reading this post »