College Wolf wrote:

The Beard is a beautiful butterfly ready to spread his wings and soar through the air. But seriously he is limited w/ Durant and Westbrook doing all the scoring on that team. Watching him play he seems like a huge stud. He will be a 20 ppg guy that can pass and plays good defense. Ibaka on the other hand, I wouldn't be surprised if he doesn't get any better than he is right now.

roundhouse wrote: IBlocka is good. The problem this year is that things are getting horribly clogged up down low with Perkins. If you watch their games, you'll see.

If you put IBlock with Love, then that would be quite stellar. But I'd rather have The Beard than Iblocka, and then if we traded Love for both obviously Iblocka wouldn't be playing next to K-Lav.

WallyWorld wrote: Why do you dislike Harden so much? Besides Love/Rubio, the rest of our team is expendable. The Beard is going to be a star sooner rather than later. He'd be dominant playing 35+ minutes for us at SG.

IBlocka doesn't have a good basketball IQ so he will never be a really great player. I think he won't get much better.
Love on the other hand is getting better every year. I mean he is actually our best 3 point shooter. He can rebound, shoot and pass. What more can you get? Intelliegent players like Love win Championships.
Sure Harden is good. But it's better to look for a FA then give Love for him.

College Wolf wrote:
1. Seriously, stop trying to get under my skin. I have said numerous times I love Harden, Enough.
2. You misunderstand. See what I bolded above, specifically. Hence the fail/confusion

WallyWorld wrote:

Flash wrote: That is so blatantly wrong that I'm not going to even address it any further.

College Wolf wrote:
OK. You don't agree. Would you also say that he has a higher IQ then Love?

Flash wrote: NO, I never said that or implied it. What the heck?

Also, I don't agree... because Ibaka is a very smart player, especially defensively. Have you seen him play? He is one of the best shot blockers in the entire league and does it without fouling.

Just because someone can block shots doesn't mean he's smart. Tyrus Thomas can block shots too. McGee also.
Sure I watched him play. And he's not worth, together with Harden, giving up Love. Wally explained it.
We also have other assets to get a solid SG.

Flash wrote: Obviously not. And that's not even what I said. Good grief.

I am done with this ridiculous conversation about Ibaka's apparently low basketball IQ.

Yeah, I think it's safe to say Ibaka has a pretty solid basketball IQ on the defensive end. Gotta strongly agree with CW on this one. He is a high quality defensive player looking beyond just blocked shots.

And I agree with everyone here on Harden, he is for sure held back by the Thunder starting scoring tandem, but is this a bad thing? He would no doubt be a #1 or #2 player on most other NBA teams, so would many other guys in the league. Admitted. I will argue to the grave that being a #1 is not an ideal role for Harden, though.

I just see the trade like this. And no I'm not comparing Love to Chris Paul (although I really do think Love is set to have a similar impact, and I wouldnt exactly call Chris Paul 'Mr. Championship' himself. I really do think Love is this special of a player. He is top 8-13 in the league as it is and he continues to add tremendous attributes to his game). The question or decent comparison in my opinion is: would you, as the Hornets GM, UNPROVOKED (key, operative word), trade Chris Paul for Eric Gordon and Chris Kaman? Forget the draft pick and FailMinu. I think this is about as fair of a comparison as we can make to this trade.

And the answer is obviously no, unless you are, plainly put: an idiot, or Kahn.

To pull a CW, check out this article about how the Wolves had one of the worst supporting casts in the history of the league last year.

arturogalletti.wordpress.com/2011/03/14/1-in-10-million/

One man's (often flawed, as are stats-only sites) opinion. But relevant.

Now this year, with an electric point guard running that pick and roll with one of the, if not THE, most ideal pick and roll bigs in the league (maybe even more so than Dirk as of today).... it is just a no brainer to me. This is something worth gutting an entire team to build around. As CW said earlier, anyone on this team other than those 2 is perfectly expendable. You don't get rid of that for what is currently a 3rd wheel and a role player on a championship team. Saying it would 'make us a better team' because we would have a more complete lineup at the expense of top 12 (and growing?) talent is just...so, so, wrong.

In closing, are the Hornets better after trading CP3?

Given that the max is something like $16M/yr, or a little less than 1/4 of the cap, Love is a max player. I would argue that even last year's Old Kevin Love was a max player, although by a much slimmer margin. NEW Kevin Love with the mobility, stamina, step back 3, and same rebounding ability, plus RUBIO?

Obviously a max player. If we had won 1 or 2 of those first very close games, people would be arguing whether Love is one of the top 5 players in the league right now. He's averaging 25/15. He's hitting step back 3s and dunking like nobody's bidniss. He added tools to his toolkit like he said he would. He connects well with Rubio and is just flat out really, really good this year. Hell, he's even quicker on Defense, although there is still room to grow there.

You need a guy like him, a guy like Rubio, a good coach, and one other elite scorer and a bunch of role players to win in this league.

Beasley et al for someone like the Beard, Martin, or Eric Gordon would make this a top notch team.

Max players are the best value because the cap on individual salaries artificially increases their contributions per dollar spent. This has been covered over and over again. It's basically the entire premise of Morey's teams.

Love is a max player. While Beard and Ibaka are nice players, they are not max players. Love is the only guy we have who is elite. We have a ton of "role players" and not only are role players not a good way to win games in the NBA, they are expensive relative to their production.

If you could package a pile of role players to get Ibaka or Beard or both, then yeah you do it. But fragmenting a more talented player into two less talented players is always dumb in basketball, smart in football and baseball.

Spencer Hawes super duper stud max star player better than LeBron!!!!!!!!!!1

Why Spencer Hawes could be the next LeBron James


(Disclaimer: I think this article might be taking their previous Spencer Hawes argument a bit too far.)