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Little left in Atlanta
NBA Columnist Ira Winderman
Thoughts on the passing of the NBA trading deadline:
Perhaps the Hawks' incoming owners are being prudent in holding off on their purchase of the franchise. Soon there might not be anything left to buy.
Two weeks ago, the Hawks had assets in Shareef Abdur-Rahim, Theo Ratliff and Dan Dickau.
But now, after first trading those three to Portland for Rasheed Wallace, precious little remains.
After forwarding Wallace to Detroit, all Atlanta has left to show for Abdur-Rahim, Ratliff and Dickau is the sum total of about $20 million in cap space and a mid-first-round pick in this June's draft.
And for this Hawks Director of Basketball Operations Billy Knight is being lauded?
The draft pick, which initially belonged to Milwaukee, came courtesy of Detroit. Otherwise, the fallout in Atlanta has been nothing but the expiring contracts of Wesley Person, Bob Sura, Chris Mills and Zeljko Rebraca.
Considering the failures in recent years on the free-agent market by Chicago and Utah, what exactly does the cap space guarantee?
Especially in an arena where ushers and vendors make up the majority of the attendance.
With the likelihood that Kobe Bryant and Kenyon Martin aren't headed to Philips Arena, does adding Quentin Richardson this summer as a free agent make it all worthwhile? It's not as if the free-agent class of '04 gets much better.
"You want to have flexibility," Knight said. "Some people are saying, `Oh well, they're going after a max-out free agent.' It doesn't necessarily mean that. It just means that it could happen if we wanted to."
Certainly, the chemistry of Glenn Robinson, Abdur-Rahim and Ratliff was a disaster. But what the Hawks have left themselves with doesn't set up as discernibly better.
As Detroit moved closer to securing Wallace, the thought was that the Pistons merely were renting a contributor for a playoff run. The priority remained freeing enough salary-cap space to eventually retain forward Mehmet Okur, an impending free agent.
Now that the Pistons have Rasheed, who also is an impending free agent, that thinking could change.
Under cap rules, had Detroit not cleared cap space by dumping Chucky Atkins, Sura and Rebraca, it would have been unable to offer Okur more than about $5.1 million for next season.
Now, those restraints are gone -- but only if the Pistons renounce their offseason rights to Wallace.
And that's where it gets tricky.
Under salary-cap rules, the only way the Pistons could retain their rights to extend a market-value contract to Wallace would be to place a salary hold on their cap at about $25 million. That would again limit the maximum they could offer Okur to what is expected to be a league-average $5.1 million salary for next season.
Ultimately, these final two months of the season could have Wallace and Okur competing for a single payday in Detroit. Then again, if Wallace produces his typical numbers, it could moderate Okur's productivity to where his value would fall into the $5.1 million range.
One thing is certain: Wallace will not be the one taking the $5.1 million from the Pistons. He could get that same mid-level salary-cap exception from New York, his preferred destination.
Then there is Danny Ainge and his bizarro world in Boston.
Yes, by agreeing to be the third wheel in the Atlanta-Detroit Wallace deal, he secured an additional first-round pick. But at the time of the trade, that pick acquired from the Pistons stood at No. 22, a spot that yielded the mighty Zoran Planinic last year.
To get that pick, Ainge had to take on Atkins' additional two seasons, at $4.2 million next season and $4.5 million the year after.
In addition, Ainge had to send former Heat guard Mike James to Detroit.
Pistons President Joe Dumars said James was more than a throw-in.
"Don't fall asleep on this guy," Dumars said. "We really think he's going to be able to help us."
THE FALLOUT
Atlanta made few friends by gifting Wallace to Detroit. In fact, Nets President Rod Thorn tried to preempt the trade by warning the Hawks that they would be getting fleeced. Remember, with a better record, Detroit would get second-round homecourt advantage over New Jersey, even if the Nets emerge as a higher playoff seed by virtue of an Atlantic Division title. ...
One other issue regarding the Hawks' questionable approach: Why, if they were looking to move Wallace, did they play him Wednesday in New Jersey in what turned into a one-game Atlanta career for the forward? Were his 20 points in a loss so necessary that it was worth risking injury and the loss of the draft pick eventually received in the trade? ...
Speaking of Wallace, the Elias Sports Bureau could find only two other instances when a player was traded after playing just one game with a team (Robert Archibald with Orlando earlier this season and Cadillac Anderson with New Jersey in 1991).
ON THE OUTS
The Jazz wasn't able to lose Greg Ostertag at the trade deadline, but it almost certainly will during this summer's free agency. Eleven total rebounds over a recent three-game span hardly sat well with coach Jerry Sloan. "If you're going to be seven feet tall, you can't play like you're 6-1," Sloan said of the 7-2 sloth. "I don't know what else I have to say or do. I'm not going to beg. I'm not going to kiss his feet to play. I'm not going to go that far. But I will kiss anywhere else he needs kissed if that will help him play." ...
Magic forward Gordan Giricek, after scoring 15 points in Wednesday's home victory over Utah said, "I hope this game was good enough to stay here. We'll see." It wasn't. He was dealt a day later to the Jazz for guard DeShawn Stevenson. The Magic received interest from seven teams regarding Giricek, including East front-runners New Jersey, Indiana and Detroit. ...
As a reserve on a seven-year, $51 million deal, Pacers forward Austin Croshere appreciated his chances of being dealt were slim. "I haven't even bothered looking on the internet this year," he said, back home in Indiana at least for the balance of the season.
BREAK TIME
While the NBA agreed to extend the All-Star break from four to five days next year, as the final tradeoff for the extension of the first round of the playoffs from best-of-5 to best-of-7, the benefit will be minimal unless the extra day comes after the All-Star Game. This year, with only one day off between Sunday's late game in Los Angeles and the resumption of the schedule Tuesday, Ron Artest, Allen Iverson and Shaquille O'Neal all missed practice the day after their appearances at Staples Center. With two days off after the All-Star Game, it would give participants a travel day as well as a day of practice. ...
And why was Artest late getting back to Indiana? Because after being pampered with private jets throughout his career, he did not realize he couldn't simply walk to the counter immediately before the flight he wanted, grab a ticket, and head to his seat. He had given up his seat on a Pacers charter to travel with his wife and children. ...
Omitted from the Rookie Challenge, Darko Milicic apparently had his own All-Star Weekend moment, after all. Yes, that was the Pistons forward you spotted on South Beach in a Bentley, rented for $1,000 a day. Considering the No. 2 overall pick in last June's draft is only 18, we could imagine the cost of the insurance waiver. ...
Forward Keith Van Horn was at Disney World during the break with friends when he learned of his trade from New York to Milwaukee for Tim Thomas. "It was my daughter's fourth birthday and I was getting ready to take her to a birthday party with Cinderella," he said, his New York slipper suddenly no longer a snug fit. ...
Thomas also was in the state when the deal went down, enjoying the break in South Florida. In fact, the day before the trade was made official, he ran into Knicks nut Spike Lee. The first thing he asked me was, `Are you ready to come home?'" Thomas, a New Jersey native, said. "I looked at him like he was crazy, and I said, `Of course.' The very next day, I get the call." ...
The trade for Thomas inflated the Knicks' payroll from $91 million to $94 million. When factoring in the overall payout including the dollar-for-dollar luxury tax, the total charges run close to $135 million.
TEMPERS FLARE
That Vince Carter was injured last week while defended by Bruce Bowen hardly was a shock. The Spurs forward had a nifty takedown of the Raptors forward while with the Heat a few years back, and the two were called for dual technicals in first Spurs-Raptors meeting this season. This time, it was a severe ankle sprain for Carter. "The question was, was it an accident or was it on purpose?" Carter said. "It's not very often you see someone put their foot up under you like that." ...
Whether or not Gary Payton tried to take a bite out of Golden State's Speedy Claxton during Wednesday's dust-up, the Lakers' O'Neal got his shot in, referring to 5-8 Eric Musselman as, "the little midget Warrior coach." ...
With Kobe Bryant possibly headed elsewhere as a free agent this summer, O'Neal said he's not about to beg his Lakers teammate to stay. "If one wants to be here, then persuasion is not necessary," Shaq said. "I don't need my wife to come home and bring me flowers and be nice to me to get me to stay, because I already want to stay." He added, "Make sure you print that, so she reads that."
NET-SCAPES
Why life in the NBA is good, even when you don't ever hit the court: Cut by New Jersey before he ever suited up for a game (but not until after an ugly incident at a New Jersey hotel that had police involved), forward Eddie Griffin received $125,000 of his $371,000 contract as a parting settlement from the Nets. ...
Ah, the humor of kid-coach Lawrence Frank of the Nets. The diminutive 33-year-old spent the All-Star break in Puerto Rico, growing a beard, of sorts. "I was trying to get into R-rated movies," he said.
Ira Winderman can be reached at iwinderman@sun-sentinel.com. He can be heard this week on WQAM's Hank Goldberg Show at 5 p.m. Tuesday.
Little left in Atlanta
NBA Columnist Ira Winderman
Thoughts on the passing of the NBA trading deadline:
Perhaps the Hawks' incoming owners are being prudent in holding off on their purchase of the franchise. Soon there might not be anything left to buy.
Two weeks ago, the Hawks had assets in Shareef Abdur-Rahim, Theo Ratliff and Dan Dickau.
But now, after first trading those three to Portland for Rasheed Wallace, precious little remains.
After forwarding Wallace to Detroit, all Atlanta has left to show for Abdur-Rahim, Ratliff and Dickau is the sum total of about $20 million in cap space and a mid-first-round pick in this June's draft.
And for this Hawks Director of Basketball Operations Billy Knight is being lauded?
The draft pick, which initially belonged to Milwaukee, came courtesy of Detroit. Otherwise, the fallout in Atlanta has been nothing but the expiring contracts of Wesley Person, Bob Sura, Chris Mills and Zeljko Rebraca.
Considering the failures in recent years on the free-agent market by Chicago and Utah, what exactly does the cap space guarantee?
Especially in an arena where ushers and vendors make up the majority of the attendance.
With the likelihood that Kobe Bryant and Kenyon Martin aren't headed to Philips Arena, does adding Quentin Richardson this summer as a free agent make it all worthwhile? It's not as if the free-agent class of '04 gets much better.
"You want to have flexibility," Knight said. "Some people are saying, `Oh well, they're going after a max-out free agent.' It doesn't necessarily mean that. It just means that it could happen if we wanted to."
Certainly, the chemistry of Glenn Robinson, Abdur-Rahim and Ratliff was a disaster. But what the Hawks have left themselves with doesn't set up as discernibly better.
As Detroit moved closer to securing Wallace, the thought was that the Pistons merely were renting a contributor for a playoff run. The priority remained freeing enough salary-cap space to eventually retain forward Mehmet Okur, an impending free agent.
Now that the Pistons have Rasheed, who also is an impending free agent, that thinking could change.
Under cap rules, had Detroit not cleared cap space by dumping Chucky Atkins, Sura and Rebraca, it would have been unable to offer Okur more than about $5.1 million for next season.
Now, those restraints are gone -- but only if the Pistons renounce their offseason rights to Wallace.
And that's where it gets tricky.
Under salary-cap rules, the only way the Pistons could retain their rights to extend a market-value contract to Wallace would be to place a salary hold on their cap at about $25 million. That would again limit the maximum they could offer Okur to what is expected to be a league-average $5.1 million salary for next season.
Ultimately, these final two months of the season could have Wallace and Okur competing for a single payday in Detroit. Then again, if Wallace produces his typical numbers, it could moderate Okur's productivity to where his value would fall into the $5.1 million range.
One thing is certain: Wallace will not be the one taking the $5.1 million from the Pistons. He could get that same mid-level salary-cap exception from New York, his preferred destination.
Then there is Danny Ainge and his bizarro world in Boston.
Yes, by agreeing to be the third wheel in the Atlanta-Detroit Wallace deal, he secured an additional first-round pick. But at the time of the trade, that pick acquired from the Pistons stood at No. 22, a spot that yielded the mighty Zoran Planinic last year.
To get that pick, Ainge had to take on Atkins' additional two seasons, at $4.2 million next season and $4.5 million the year after.
In addition, Ainge had to send former Heat guard Mike James to Detroit.
Pistons President Joe Dumars said James was more than a throw-in.
"Don't fall asleep on this guy," Dumars said. "We really think he's going to be able to help us."
THE FALLOUT
Atlanta made few friends by gifting Wallace to Detroit. In fact, Nets President Rod Thorn tried to preempt the trade by warning the Hawks that they would be getting fleeced. Remember, with a better record, Detroit would get second-round homecourt advantage over New Jersey, even if the Nets emerge as a higher playoff seed by virtue of an Atlantic Division title. ...
One other issue regarding the Hawks' questionable approach: Why, if they were looking to move Wallace, did they play him Wednesday in New Jersey in what turned into a one-game Atlanta career for the forward? Were his 20 points in a loss so necessary that it was worth risking injury and the loss of the draft pick eventually received in the trade? ...
Speaking of Wallace, the Elias Sports Bureau could find only two other instances when a player was traded after playing just one game with a team (Robert Archibald with Orlando earlier this season and Cadillac Anderson with New Jersey in 1991).
ON THE OUTS
The Jazz wasn't able to lose Greg Ostertag at the trade deadline, but it almost certainly will during this summer's free agency. Eleven total rebounds over a recent three-game span hardly sat well with coach Jerry Sloan. "If you're going to be seven feet tall, you can't play like you're 6-1," Sloan said of the 7-2 sloth. "I don't know what else I have to say or do. I'm not going to beg. I'm not going to kiss his feet to play. I'm not going to go that far. But I will kiss anywhere else he needs kissed if that will help him play." ...
Magic forward Gordan Giricek, after scoring 15 points in Wednesday's home victory over Utah said, "I hope this game was good enough to stay here. We'll see." It wasn't. He was dealt a day later to the Jazz for guard DeShawn Stevenson. The Magic received interest from seven teams regarding Giricek, including East front-runners New Jersey, Indiana and Detroit. ...
As a reserve on a seven-year, $51 million deal, Pacers forward Austin Croshere appreciated his chances of being dealt were slim. "I haven't even bothered looking on the internet this year," he said, back home in Indiana at least for the balance of the season.
BREAK TIME
While the NBA agreed to extend the All-Star break from four to five days next year, as the final tradeoff for the extension of the first round of the playoffs from best-of-5 to best-of-7, the benefit will be minimal unless the extra day comes after the All-Star Game. This year, with only one day off between Sunday's late game in Los Angeles and the resumption of the schedule Tuesday, Ron Artest, Allen Iverson and Shaquille O'Neal all missed practice the day after their appearances at Staples Center. With two days off after the All-Star Game, it would give participants a travel day as well as a day of practice. ...
And why was Artest late getting back to Indiana? Because after being pampered with private jets throughout his career, he did not realize he couldn't simply walk to the counter immediately before the flight he wanted, grab a ticket, and head to his seat. He had given up his seat on a Pacers charter to travel with his wife and children. ...
Omitted from the Rookie Challenge, Darko Milicic apparently had his own All-Star Weekend moment, after all. Yes, that was the Pistons forward you spotted on South Beach in a Bentley, rented for $1,000 a day. Considering the No. 2 overall pick in last June's draft is only 18, we could imagine the cost of the insurance waiver. ...
Forward Keith Van Horn was at Disney World during the break with friends when he learned of his trade from New York to Milwaukee for Tim Thomas. "It was my daughter's fourth birthday and I was getting ready to take her to a birthday party with Cinderella," he said, his New York slipper suddenly no longer a snug fit. ...
Thomas also was in the state when the deal went down, enjoying the break in South Florida. In fact, the day before the trade was made official, he ran into Knicks nut Spike Lee. The first thing he asked me was, `Are you ready to come home?'" Thomas, a New Jersey native, said. "I looked at him like he was crazy, and I said, `Of course.' The very next day, I get the call." ...
The trade for Thomas inflated the Knicks' payroll from $91 million to $94 million. When factoring in the overall payout including the dollar-for-dollar luxury tax, the total charges run close to $135 million.
TEMPERS FLARE
That Vince Carter was injured last week while defended by Bruce Bowen hardly was a shock. The Spurs forward had a nifty takedown of the Raptors forward while with the Heat a few years back, and the two were called for dual technicals in first Spurs-Raptors meeting this season. This time, it was a severe ankle sprain for Carter. "The question was, was it an accident or was it on purpose?" Carter said. "It's not very often you see someone put their foot up under you like that." ...
Whether or not Gary Payton tried to take a bite out of Golden State's Speedy Claxton during Wednesday's dust-up, the Lakers' O'Neal got his shot in, referring to 5-8 Eric Musselman as, "the little midget Warrior coach." ...
With Kobe Bryant possibly headed elsewhere as a free agent this summer, O'Neal said he's not about to beg his Lakers teammate to stay. "If one wants to be here, then persuasion is not necessary," Shaq said. "I don't need my wife to come home and bring me flowers and be nice to me to get me to stay, because I already want to stay." He added, "Make sure you print that, so she reads that."
NET-SCAPES
Why life in the NBA is good, even when you don't ever hit the court: Cut by New Jersey before he ever suited up for a game (but not until after an ugly incident at a New Jersey hotel that had police involved), forward Eddie Griffin received $125,000 of his $371,000 contract as a parting settlement from the Nets. ...
Ah, the humor of kid-coach Lawrence Frank of the Nets. The diminutive 33-year-old spent the All-Star break in Puerto Rico, growing a beard, of sorts. "I was trying to get into R-rated movies," he said.
Ira Winderman can be reached at iwinderman@sun-sentinel.com. He can be heard this week on WQAM's Hank Goldberg Show at 5 p.m. Tuesday.
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