Saturday, June 29, 2013

Boston/Brooklyn. Now and the future

Though the trade can't officially be completed until July 10, when the new salary cap is announced and teams find out how much money they're allowed to spend, it appears the Boston/Brooklyn trade will consist of the following:

The Nets will get Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce, and Jason Terry from the Celtics. In return, the Celtics will get Gerald Wallace, Kris Joseph, and Kris Humphries, plus maybe Marshon Brooks and Keith Bogus.

Wait a minute -- Kris Humphries? Wasn't he married to a Kardashian for about 5 minutes? Or was that a Gabor? Different generation and hair color, but the same species. Whatever.

But the big deal is Boston gets 3 first-round draft picks from the Nets as part of the package. Yes, they're spread out over a few years, and shy of a can't miss talent like Lebron James the draft can be a crap shoot -- but still -- these are valuable commodities indeed.

Let's look at possible, even probable scenarios of both teams, next year and into the future.

Boston. GM Danny Ainge is no fool. He certainly realized his Celtics were going nowhere soon with what they had. After all, they'd only qualified for this year's playoffs as a #7 seed, only to be eliminated in the first round by the NY Knicks. The glory days with the existing talent in Beantown were over. To his credit, rather than trying to limp the Celtics along to respectability for the next couple years, with ZERO chance of winning a title, Ainge decided to blow it up and start over. Sure, the Celtics will likely be terrible for a while, but Ainge has his eye on the future. Smart front office personnel know when to hold-em, and know when to fold-em. And let's face it -- the Celtics were running on fumes of glory days past. Again, nobody knows how the draft will work out for them in the future, along with various free agent signings that may happen along the way -- but they really didn't have much to lose. Given the storied history of the Boston Celtics, somehow I just don't see them staying down for very long. It may take a while, but they'll be back.

Brooklyn. Certainly they'll be better for a short while after this trade. Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce represent major upgrades in what they already had. And Jason Terry is no slouch himself. But beyond that, it's difficult to understand why they would do this deal. Sure, fairly new owner Mikhail Prokhorov may want to win NOW, but guess what? He won't. It's not even a close call.

Consider:  Kevin Garnett is 37 years old and Paul Pierce will soon turn 36. Yes, they've had magnificent careers and will be shoo-ins to the NBA Hall of Fame when they become eligible. But the harsh reality is -- they're getting old by NBA standards. It's highly unlikely either will be able to play for much more than a couple more years.

More importantly, even if KG and PP have great debuts with Nets -- it probably doesn't matter anyway. The cross-town Knicks will be a handful for them. How about the Chicago Bulls when superstar Derrick Rose returns from his injury next year? Remember those guys? They were pretty good without Rose. They'll be a heck of a lot better with him. The Indiana Pacers are a young, well rounded team that are already good and look to get better. And then there's the gorilla in the room. The 2-time defending NBA champion Miami Heat. Lebron and Co. don't show any signs of slowing down any year soon. And that's just in the eastern conference. If by some miracle the Nets were to make it through to the Finals, does anybody really think they could defeat whatever "best of the west" team survived their own formidable playoff gauntlet and emerged to meet them? Not me.

How Mr. Prokhorov and Nets' GM Billy King think they will be serious contenders by adding a couple aging superstars that are far past their prime would seem to be a mystery. Throw in the fact the Nets have a brand new coach in one Jason Kidd. Sure, Kidd was arguably amongst the top 5 point guards to ever play the game -- but he's never coached before, at any level, let alone taking over the reins of a team that's been radically altered. How all that will play out is anybody's guess.

Final analysis. While Boston is looking to the future, which is certainly unknown, the Nets appear to have crippled themselves, not just for now with taking on the huge contracts of KG and PP (by the way, Jason Terry will soon be 36 himself, not exactly a youngster) , while having a minimal chance at a title -- but have traded their future away by giving up all those draft picks.

Then again, I'm probably missing something. After all, Nets' owner Mikhail Prokhorov is a billionaire and I'm still growing my own vegetables in the back yard. Just a slight difference. It would seem to be a reasonable assumption that the good Mr. Prokhorov thinks on a bit of a higher plane than yours truly. Da? Nyet?

Like I said in the previous post -- a Russian always has a plan.













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