Reply With Quote
Dorell Wright for Andre Miller =
I wouldn't trade Wright for two Andre Millers. Wright is the best perimeter playing rebounder to come into the league since Jason Kidd.
are you crazy? Posey by himself is too much to give for Miller, then you add in one of the most promising young players in the league and a 15-18 draft pick for a fat, donut eating PG who might give you a couple of wins...you're
Dorell Wright for Andre Miller =
I wouldn't trade Wright for two Andre Millers. Wright is the best perimeter playing rebounder to come into the league since Jason Kidd.
It depends on how desparate that team may be. Miami could afford to lose James Posey plus give up a (late) draft pick, but maybe you're not calling Posey a young good player anymore - it's debateable. Not sure Miami would want to trade any more draft picks, as aging as their team is.
Miller has some real value in a league lacking some good point guards. For a two year rental he's not a bad option at all.
I guess you are in fact underrating Miller a bit.
the teams I mentioned care for winning now, so if they think Miller is the missing piece, they will be willing to part with a late 1.round pick AND a young player.
We will see but I don't see at all Sixers able to get a talented young like Varejao and Wright (even without a pick).
To me, Miller is quite old, his contract isn't very atractive and he isn't that good.
Future will tell.
please consider that in my first post I tried to display a best-case scenario, how the Sixers might end up with a trade, that doesn't look as bad as AI for Miller+2 picks looks right now.
Is this the most unbalanced non-sign-and-trade trade since the Lakers got Kareem?
I mean, Lamar Odom and Caron Butler were two real up-and-comers (who have since become excellent players) at the time of the trade for Shaq.
Jeff Hornacek was an all-star. Not on the level of Barkley, but not a piece of crap either.
Vlade Divac was a well-above-average center, and Kobe was just some immensely talented high-school kid, before the NBA GMs were willing to take risks on high-school kids.
Andre Miller is a disappointment who everyone thought would be good years ago, but who has regressed at a ridiculous level since his 2000 season in Cleveland. Now he's fat, and a guy no GM in the league really wants. Billy King is a moron for getting suckered into this deal.
only Denver fans must truly know valued Andre is. GK didnt want to part with him but he had no choice in the end.
Dre is a warrior who never misses a game. How many point guards in the league will give u 20pts a night if u need him to, 5-6boards, 9 or more dimes and some steals?
HE could score 20ppg no problem if required but the Nuggets never relied on his offense too much.
I agree with the people saying that a winning team now in need of a point guard would be crazy not to get Dre.
Very nice trade for Denver. Like the J.R. Smith trade, in that they held out for 40 cents on the dollar and wound up getting their price.
(I'm surprised the Sixers didn't at least pick up Linas Kleiza as a throw-in, but apparently reducing costs overcame any other consideration. I think Kleiza could help Philly right now at PF, especially with Shavlik Randolph out indefinitely, and he's a good piece for the future, too.)
Denver is maybe the only second-level team whose half-court offense was bad enough for Iverson (at PG!) to be an immediate improvement, so it's a good fit on that score. I still don't think the Nuggets can be efficient enough to keep up with the top teams over a seven-game series...still, no question they're much more interesting now than they were a week ago.
Danger, High Voltage
By Michael Wilbon
Wednesday, December 20, 2006; E01
What a wonderful basketball experiment the Denver Nuggets are putting together with the acquisition of Allen Iverson. How cool is this: Having the NBA's top two scorers together on one team when it isn't the all-star team? How bizarre is it to pair two players, each of whom has always taken the big shots, the last shots, all the shots that mattered?
We won't know for some time whether this lab experiment will work, what with Carmelo Anthony suspended for 15 games for throwing that punch the other night. For the next month, Iverson will only be asked to do in Denver what he did in Philly, which is to say, be the virtuoso. If the Nuggets are going to stay afloat in the beastly Western Conference for the four-plus weeks Anthony and J.R. Smith are away on suspension, they're going to need Iverson to score the way he's always scored.
Then the fun begins.
One of the two is going to have to do something he has never done in his basketball life: defer.
And Iverson is the one who's going to have to make the concession.
Pro basketball, more than any other sport, has a pecking order. Okay, once every green moon there's a team like the Detroit Pistons that doesn't have one. But the exceptions are so rare they're not worth talking about.
When Nuggets executive Rex Chapman asked after the trade, "How many times has this ever happened?" -- that the top two scorers in the league played for the same team -- he didn't know the answer was "twice." It happened in 1954-55 when Neil Johnston and Paul Arizin played for the Philadelphia Warriors and in 1982-83 when Alex English and Kiki Vandeweghe played for, of all teams, the Nuggets.
So we're talking about the third such case in history. And I know for a fact that Vandeweghe and English were nowhere near the divas that Anthony and Iverson are.
Don't read too much into that last sentence. I think the Anthony-Iverson coupling can and will work to a great degree, because Iverson will compromise as he has never compromised before. And don't get me wrong, Iverson can still be difficult to get along with, but he wants so desperately to win. And what he found out the hard way these last few seasons in Philly is that no matter how much he scores he cannot carry a team into serious contention by himself. Iverson has been celebrated to the high heavens, but the fact is he still hasn't won . . . not in college and not in the NBA.
He's been the league's rookie of the year. He's led the NBA in scoring multiple times. He's averaged more points than anybody in league history besides Wilt and Jordan, and isn't that rarified air? Iverson has been the league MVP (2001). He has twice been voted MVP of the all-star game. He's even led a team to the NBA Finals.
But he's never won.
Not that it was his fault, but he didn't win the Olympic gold medal either.
That summer, 2004 in Athens, when the U.S. players were perceived as selfish bums, Iverson was anything but. He was overjoyed to represent his country for the first time; he talked eloquently about the privilege of being able to do so and how he didn't understand why players wouldn't want to. Iverson at 31 isn't Iverson at 20 . . . or 25. Is he going to practice like Jordan did? Ah, no. Is he going to drive George Karl crazy at times? Yes, absolutely.
But the bet here is that Iverson wants so desperately to be a part of the big action again, the playoff games in May and June that he'll find a way to coexist with Anthony, even play off of him. If this is going to work, Iverson has to realize the moment he puts on the uniform that Denver is Anthony's team, which is an important realization in the NBA.
Of course, winning is relative. Anthony and Iverson still might not win their division. Utah is better. In the conference, Dallas, San Antonio and Phoenix are all better teams than Denver. But hey, Denver wasn't going to win with the roster it had either, and the acquisition of Iverson gets the Nuggets a couple of steps closer, at least.
The aforementioned Karl, who temporarily removed himself from the increased scrutiny over his petty part in creating an atmosphere that led to the brawl in New York on Saturday, sure changed the conversation in Denver, didn't he?
Anyway, Karl has always done well with shooting point guards, such as Gary Payton all those years in Seattle and Sam Cassell in Milwaukee.
Andre Miller is a nice player, but not Karl's type. It's going to take Anthony and Iverson a month of playing together, but during those final two months of the season the Nuggets should be something fabulous to watch. Remember, Anthony is averaging 31.6 points per game while Iverson is averaging 31.2. The NBA has never had teammates average 30 points, and it's up to Karl, Anthony and Iverson to make sure that's a blessing and not a curse. If all three -- and each is famously headstrong -- keep their senses about them, the Nuggets should be a nightmare to guard.
Of course, Georgetown's Iverson isn't the only man with local ties involved in this drama that took more than a week to play out. Billy King, the 76ers president, is from right here, Reston to be exact. He was charged with the unenviable task of getting back enough value in this trade to put a product on the floor that his demanding ticket holders will want to see and make the kind of deal that will allow the Sixers to assemble the pieces that will lead to contention within the next five years.
Did he get them in Miller, Maryland's Joe Smith and two No. 1 picks in the next draft?
Nobody knows.
The Sixers figure to be bad enough to figure prominently in the draft lottery. With their own pick and a little luck, they could get Ohio State's 7-foot phenom Greg Oden, who is shooting 90 percent (from the floor, not the free throw line) and has had the most impressive first four games of any freshman I've ever seen. Or maybe with the consolation prize they get Florida's 6-11 Joakim Noah. You get one of those two, the two non-lottery draft picks become a lot more important, especially because the 2007 draft looks like it's not only great at the top but uncommonly deep.
You never ever get equal value when you trade a star in the NBA. But Philly, with Iverson as its only star, was going nowhere. So King got one expiring contract (Smith's) and, hopefully for him, picks that will turn into at least one franchise player. And Denver got one of the most fascinating players in league history, a player dying to find a team with another great player and hope. The Anthony-Iverson pairing could blend beautifully or blow up. Either way, we cast our eyes west.
Iverson deal is a surprise
By Jason Reid, Times Staff Writer
December 20, 2006
Andre Miller, Joe Smith and two first-round draft picks.
That's what it took for the Denver Nuggets to acquire Allen Iverson on Tuesday from the Philadelphia 76ers, and some in the Clippers organization privately expressed surprise that that's all it took.
ADVERTISEMENT
Click here to find out more!
General Manager Elgin Baylor and Coach Mike Dunleavy declined to comment on their efforts to acquire the four-time scoring champion, but team sources said the Clippers apparently made every player available to Philadelphia except Elton Brand, Chris Kaman and Shaun Livingston.
Moreover, the Clippers were willing to trade their own first-round draft pick this season and the lottery-protected first-round pick they received in the Sam Cassell trade. Many in the front office acknowledged Corey Maggette was the centerpiece of the Clippers' final proposal, which also probably included Cuttino Mobley, Zeljko Rebraca and the draft choices.
If the Clippers get Minnesota's pick for June's draft, both could be higher than the Nuggets' two first-round picks, projected to be in the 20s.
The Clippers figured Philadelphia would come back to them before trading Iverson, sources said, because the Clippers' offer was considered better than Denver's best bid.
Philadelphia might have focused on completing a deal with the Clippers if Livingston was available, but Dunleavy wasn't interested in any proposals, including potential three-team trades, that involved the 6-foot-7, third-year point guard. And to make it work for them financially, the Clippers had to send Mobley and his $7.7-million salary to Philadelphia as part of any deal to acquire Iverson.
Cassell was among the players who expressed concern that the ongoing Iverson trade speculation had become a distraction for the team. And what's the mood in the locker room now that Iverson is playing for one of the many teams ahead of the Clippers in the Western Conference?
"We can't worry about where guys are going, what guys are doing on other teams or what might happen in the future, we just have to concentrate on getting this basketball team back to playing the way we know we can play," Cassell said. "We're not where we want to be, we know we're not playing great basketball right now, but we can fix that."
Sidelined recently because of a painful heel injury, Cassell said the Clippers must correct their problems from within.
"We have the guys here to win basketball games and get back to where we should be," he said. "There's no doubt about that in my mind."
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)
Posting Permissions
