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if they're trading for odom (~9), scola (8.5), and martin (11.5), they'd need to add on ~3.3 million, or basically, marco belinelli.
i think it still works for them.
In addition to West's being a FA, West is West and Paul is Paul, and it doesn't set up Boston for a run at Dwight Howard.
I hope so. Hollinger should know that.
Ummmm...
EDIT:
Like Maxwn said, we all follow the NBA for the same reason: to watch David Stern and the owners do their thing. I am really excited about picking my "Front Office Pass" teams this year.
if he gets beat on anything, it's because he's so dominating that someone annoyed at him hands someone else a cookie (which does happen, but he can quickly confirm or deny what the claim is).
I was referencing the reaction from Laker media and Laker fans to the trade not going through. It was not relief that the trade was vetoed. Gasol is 31 and owed around 19 million the next three seasons. Odom is 32 and is signed to a bargain contract. Chris Paul is 26 and is one of the very best point guards who have ever lived. The Lakers have made three quarters for a dollar trades throughout team history (to their credit), and this was an example. The fan base is well aware of that, that's all I'm getting at from the Laker end. It was a good deal for the Lakers, assuming Paul's knee stays sound.
As you say, the New Orleans end of it is debatable. Just to get it out there though I will elaborate on why I think it is not a good deal for New Orleans. I understand in the abstract that Scola is a good player, as is Odom and Martin. Dragic is 25 and an ok player. But Simmons seems to have forgotten his own criteria for evaluating a trade. Did the Hornets get the best player in the trade? No. Did they get the second best player in the trade? No. Odom is 32 and on short money with a team option next year. That's ok if I'm the Hornets, he's good, and I can cut bait if I have to. Martin is 28 and makes 12 million and 13 million. That's ok, again, decent money and a short contract. Dragic might be something, is young, in the last year of a cheap contract, and can be gotten rid of if he doesn't pan out. But Scola? Really? He's 31 and makes roughly 8.5, 9.4, 10.2, and 11 million the next four seasons. Taking on salary in that fashion is terrible for a team in the Hornets' position. On top of that they didn't dump Okafor and didn't get any draft picks of note. For a team like New Orleans going nowhere fast, that is a terrible trade from my point of view. Others disagree.
To be clear, I don't think the deal should have been vetoed for "basketball reasons". I think its a terrible trade for New Orleans, but terrible trades get made all the time. I just think that coming out of a lockout having a league owned team trade Chris Paul to the LA Lakers does not do a whole lot for a league that inspires a substantial tin foil hat population. I've truly been surprised at the reaction to the veto. Some writers have said its worse than Donaghy. Really? I was told for years by Abbott and others that people who had sincere doubts about the integrity of refs were nuts. It turned out it was not so nuts, but that was only ONE ref. Rogue ref, isolated incident, that was the chorus from the NBA and NBA writers. This is a league that reinstated tax frauds to ref games. This is a league that had a brawl between fans and players. The veto damages the NBA more? The VETO? Having a league owned team trade an elite player to the Lakers is a bigger problem in my opinion. Despite loving soccer I don't follow the MLS for that very reason, having two teams that share an owner in a final is a joke.
I get that people say the veto damages competitive integrity even more, I do, I just disagree. I get that the owners chose to slaughter the players on BRI rather than focus on parity. I get that the NBA has never had parity and likely never will. I get that Gilbert is a titanic jerk. I get all that. I'm just saying as a sporting enterprise, I place the NBA somewhere above Serie A when it comes to legitimacy. But not by much, and that's sad. The league deserves better and the fans deserve better. The NBA ran out of black eyes awhile ago, I would not put the veto anywhere near the top of the list of things that have made the NBA look bad. I realize that viewpoint puts me in the minority.
Racist!
this is a decades-long bigtime agent
"Fegan read the following prepared statement over the phone to The Magazine: "I read reports today of a meeting between Dwight Howard, his representatives and the New Jersey Nets which claimed, according to the story's anonymous sources, that such a meeting violated the NBA's tampering policies. This story is clearly inaccurate with respect to tampering claims and other facts. Tampering doesn't apply once a team grants permission for a player and/or his representatives to make contact with another team. The Magic have given us permission to have contact with several teams in order for Dwight to explore his options. I most definitely had contact with the teams I was granted permission to speak with. Since we had permission to have contact with several teams the report of possible tampering is undeniably false.
"In addition, the report that Dwight was supposed to be traded today is also inaccurate. In fact, so many of the facts reported in today's story are inaccurate, it is difficult to separate the facts from fiction, so I'm not even going to bother to address the other inaccuracies.""
what's the alternative, though? LAC refused to offer gordon. GSW refused to offer curry. BOS is offering rondo, but that's nowhere near as good a deal as the lakers one.
i think what moved this so quickly was NOH's desire to not have this hang over the team's head going into the season. they wanted this resolved immediately, and since the clippers didn't step up, and since the warriors didn't step up, the lakers were the last, best option.
i think mark cuban has a point, though. the league did change the CBA to incentivize players to stay with their current team, and since NOH is a league owned team, it would make a little sense for the team to take the hardline stance and tell paul 'there is no trade coming, if you want to leave, you're gonna have to leave money on the table to do so.'
that option went out the window once this trade was agreed to, but i think if it had been the play from the start, it would probably have been the right one (at least as far as anyone other than chris paul is concerned).
If a league-owned team can't trade an elite player to the Lakers, who would they be allowed to deal with? Boston? New York? Or only the mid-majors? If the problem is that it's the Lakers, then that's a horrible reason to void the deal.
Wouldn't it make some sense to replace Odom with a Bynum/Okafor swap? I'm aware that the Lakers and specifically Jim Buss love Bynum, but I'd think that a frontcourt of Okafor and Odom would be better and more durable than one of Bynum and whoever they could quickly acquire at PF. That adjustment should diminish the possibility of Howard to the Lakers, which seems unlikely anyway but is the driving force behind the league blocking the deal. To make up for the loss of long-term potential for the Lakers, Luis Scola could go to LA rather than NO. That way the Lakers would be the team taking on money though in doing so they would retain a strong and deep frontcourt even with the loss of Bynum and Gasol. Would a trade that makes the Lakers even better right now but increases their payroll and roughly eliminates the Howard option be more palatable to Stern and the angry owners?
I would suggest clicking on the Lowe piece and reading it. He is a Celtics fan; it's pretty clear that the Laker stuff is a key issue for you here. And he brings something to this that such discussions generally lack: historical perspective.
As far the "NBA Sucks" stuff, that's fine, but I would make one point: when the James thing went down last summer, this thread exploded for about 36 hours, as one would expect, and the people going off on James and the league the loudest, were, without exception, not the hardcore thread regulars, but more casual fans and even a few non-fans, drawn in by the furor.
That is a reality that has two implications. First, you can argue that it shows the NBA has an optics problem, which it in many ways it does. But it also shows that people who go off on the league do so in part because they don't really get the nature and history of the sport. That doesn't mean they're not smart enough to get it; it just means that they don't have the knowledge base to contextualize the issues and, on a certain level, being casual fans simply means that they don't like the sport itself that much. Lowe, a guy who loves the sport, does a good job of contextualizing the issues and getting past the optics.
As far as this situation, earlier you said that the league needed to veto the deal. You seem to be backtracking that now, which is fine. But in breaking it down, you are presenting only one side:
Yes, Pau Gasol is 31 and is owed 60M. He is also one of the game's most skilled big men, one of the top 15-20 players in the league, and stathead hero Daryl Morey thinks enough of his future that he was ready to give up three pretty good players for him and take a run at contention by pairing him with Nene. Players with Gasol's skillset--length, height, finesse, not overly reliant on quickness and hops--tend to age well. Gasol actually mostly played very well last year during the season, and says that the personal issues that dragged him down in post-season are behind him.
Yes, Chris Paul is 26 and a great player. But if you look at his BaskRef page, his numbers the last two years have dropped off quite a bit from his earlier peak. While Nash and Stockton defied the pattern, short PGs tend to age quickly and lose a great deal of value as they hit 30. If you add this to Paul's knee problems, he has a real downside. Combining this with Andrew Bynum's health and personality issues, and Kobe Bryant's age, health, and mileage, there is real downside here for the Lakers, who gave up two of the four best players on a team that has won three conference titles and two titles and also gave up big guys to boot.
As to Odom, yes, he is 32, but also has a skillset that would seem likely to age well and played very well last year himself. He also has a very team-friendly deal. The main issue with Odom, on any new team, will be his head. He is, by all accounts, deeply upset by this deal, and given his age and life history, that might be a problem.
One can argue that Demps should have simply kept Gasol, rather than flipping him for Scola, Martin and Dragic. NO would then have re-created the Lakers' extremely successful frontline, more or less, by rotating Okafor/Odom/Gasol. But that is a separate issue; Stern didn't veto that deal--he vetoed the whole thing. Demps apparently decided that triggering on this was better than waiting to see about getting young guys who may never be as good as Scola, Martin, Dragic, and Odom, and picks, and decided it was better than trading Paul for Rajon Rondo. Maybe he was wrong; maybe he wasn't.
But again, I think Paul would be a Clipper or a Warrior today if those teams had been willing to part with Gordon and Curry. I can see why they didn't, but, presumably, one reason that Paul would rather be a Laker is the belief, based on the Lakers' historical record, that they will find a way to win--whereas those other teams won't.
In any case, I stand by the position that the deal is not nearly "bad" enough for New Orleans that the league should have shut it down, and I think Gilbert's, and, frankly, Cuban's--quotes and the accompanying context thereof speak for themselves.
That's my understanding. There's a different sort of weirdness with that. But in all things, there's a tension between optimizing for the league as a whole and optimizing for every city in the league. But I don't see what's untenable about that arrangement, except for the desire for individual owners to profit off the league.
Maybe.
1 Paul
2 Bryant
3 MWP/Barnes
4 Odom
5 Okafor
Okafor is actually a pretty good player, and he would fit very well with that group. That would be a very good team, with a hellacious luxury tax to pay and a huge issue in 2013-14, since Okafor's and Bryant's deals run past when the new tax kicks in (as Paul's would too of course).
Whether the owners/Stern would prefer that to the possibility of Howard landing here with Paul is an open question.
Well, supposedly one big issue people have with this is that by getting Paul while keeping Bynum, that sets up the Lakers to get Howard and Paul. Hollinger, Simmons and others have been saying for months that that getting both of them is nothing but the deluded menanderings of Laker fanboys--except now we have an NBA owner writing an email to the Commissioner about it.
Put Gasol in Houston, Bynum in New Orleans, keep Odom in LA, and send Okafor and his contract to LA, get NO a young guy and another pick, and as DLG says, Okafor takes Howard off the table for the Lakers, and probably puts him in Brooklyn or Chicago and maybe Stern says it's OK.
And if the Lakers traded BOTH Gasol AND Bynum for a PG, even if the PG is Chris Paul, they would need a 5 back.
Also, Bynum has a team option for 12-13--he is someone Demps could flip if he wanted to.
Heh.(Not taunting you DK--if that is true, though, I am snickering at Cuban. Thought the new CBA was supposed to keep them stars at home).
he's interesting. 6-7, 8.5/7.5/5.3 in 36.5 min, 1.5stl, 2.4 to, 0.6, 51% fg (5.8 att), 26% 3pt (1.5 att), 56% ft (4.0 att), plus d, thought to have a shot at getting picked in round 2 of the last draft.
go on - guess his weakness! (his shooting was atrocious in limited attempts prior to his sr year).
ryan blake compared him to royal ivey. on paper, this guy is more of a playmaker and rebounder and is quite a bit taller, but far less of a scorer. than royal ivey.
***
yeah, i thought about bolding that for you robinred... but figured you'd see it without that help. :)
EDIT: didn't feel taunted. and if you had, that'd be okay.
dallas should get a big TPE w/ the chandler deal, right?
assuming the guys in china come back, and assuming the guy's a player, it would be really interesting to see denver with a lineup of stone at PG, chandler at SG, gallinari at SF, faried at PF, and harrington at C. 6'7, 6'8 6'10, 6'8, 6'9. i mean, how would an opponent defend that?
Yes, but it's not the same. I don't know how it works legally but the teams are all technically owned by the league and operated by individual companies (with some exceptions of course). The players all sign contracts with the league rather than an individual team. The league as a whole takes care of some expenses (I think they pay salaries up to the salary cap) and the "owner/operator" takes care of other expenses, and certain percentages of ticket sales, sponsorships, etc. go back to the league.
However, owners don't have veto power over teams' personnel moves, as long as the moves follow the rules (there's a salary cap and other rules).
I think this sort of structure makes sense for a nascent league like MLS, or like the re-formed Arena football league (which is also single-entity) where multiple teams would be in danger of folding without the security afforded by the structure, and taking the league with them. It would also make sense for WPS (women's pro soccer), but for some reason they decided not to do their league that way. It's like super-duper revenue sharing.
AEG being the "owner/operator" of both the Houston and LA teams is closer...but at one point 3 organizations (I think it was 3) owned all the teams out of necessity, so the current situation is a vast improvement. I don't know how the league deals with the possibility of one team trading assets to the other to make a superclub.
Yeah, but Cuban wouldn't think of using it to land an elite player. Might compromise the CBA. ;-
One add: while Dandy's idea was not unreasonable, I kind of doubt that Buss Jr will trigger on a deal with Bynum that does not get Howard. Buss, like his old man, isn't much of a talker, but it is pretty well-known that he loves Bynum.
Sure. Then Jerry and Jim Buss can go on ESPNLA and talk about the message of the CBA, and Michael Jordan can text Stern explaining why he needs to step in.
No one in the MSM is picking up the Jamal story, so I wonder what that's about. Everyone's focusing on Rip.
From KC:
I don't see the Bulls adding Rip and Jamal, although I'd be in favor of it. It'd obviously have to be a S&T to get Jamal. Either Korver or Brewer is redundant on a team with Rip/Jamal, Watson isn't a necessity, and Bogans is perfect cap filler for a trade since his team option is non-guaranteed. But if the luxury tax is a concern and the Bulls are using the MLE on Rip, I don't see Jamal too. If he really does want more than the MLE - like KC keeps saying - say $7mil or so, Korver is $5mil, Watson $3.4mil, Bogans $1.7 mil, they could probably squeeze it all in under the luxury tax (say Jamal gets 3rs/$21mil, with a salary that goes up each season but keeps them out of the tax this year). Bulls have a low round pick or 2nd rounder or 2 they could throw in if they want. From ATL's perspective, Korver would help and none of those guys are signed past this season.
BTW, allow me to say a pre-emptive #### you to Reinsdorf for really ####### cheaping out here. Rose's extension kicks in next year, but they have a real shot here and if he's going to count his change and that's going to stop the Bulls from getting as good as they can be, I'm going to be really pissed.
Couple of Stein Tweets:
Dallas is trying to get Dalembert to sign a one-year using TPE. Cuban very focused on having massive cap space to make a run at big dogs in 2012 FA (one of the many reasons for my cynicism about Cuban's being so vocally opposed to the Lakers' getting Paul).
The Kings, apparently needing more guards, "covet" Barea.
I'd prefer Crawford. He's better at stretching a defense, something they need, and though he can get shoot happy it's not like there aren't shots available on that team. I'd also imagine he's a little better defensively than Hamilton.
I would take Hamilton because he plays better off the ball. Crawford would help the Bulls a lot when Rose is off the floor.
I wonder if Denver would have interest in bringing Billups back.
And you're definitely right, Spivey, they shouldn't care about the tax. But right now, they do.
Waiver wire. Teams with cap space submit bids for what they'll pay annually, high bid wins. After that, then they're FA. Not sure the waiver time period (48 hrs is normal waiver wire). And the question I keep asking - what about trading a claimed guy?
I missed when the league started running Orlando.
Go back into retirement, Sugar Ray.
There we go Moses. I'm more than happy with Hamilton. Although he'll be 33 this season, he has a game that should age well, and he should feel refreshed and motivated now that's he's out of purgatory in Detroit. He's not a great 3 point shooter but he can nail the corner three and play a little defense. You have to guard him, which is more than can be said for Bogans and Brewer.
I don't think it can be under stated how much of an improvement he is from Bogans. If this holds true, the Bulls went from having the worst starting SG in the league to now having an average one. Heck yea.
[edit: scuttlebutt seems to be this is a done deal and will be announced within a day or two. They are waiting on Rip to clear waivers, which from what I've read is a formality. Thibs moved the first double practice to Tuesday, which seems to indicate he's waiting on new player(s). [/edit]
It was a throwaway joke.
If you have some substance to bring about the NBA in general or the Paul situation, bring it. Always looking for new perspectives here. Insults on the internet are easy--particularly weak ones like that, picked up from a reference by someone else.
I don't get why the league would approve one deal and not the other. That's ridiculous.
Approving this trade would be good if inconsistent. Better to be hypocritical if you were clearly wrong the first time.
So, if we assume that:
a) The small-market owners want more money out of the Lakers
b) They want to reduce the chances of the Lakers adding Howard
The owners liking it better if the Lakers take on Okafor makes some sense, as Dandy and Dagoberto suggested.
BTW, if the regular crew thinks it is time for me to retire, I will, as long as I get to post the monthly joke on the thread lead. I did go to Germany and got some platelets injected into my brain during the off-season, though.
So where does Turiaf end up? I like to see him on the spurs as an off the bench defensive big. How is he on pick and roll?
This has been an exciting offseason. While it has mostly been negative publicity, I think overall it's been a good thing for the league. You have to hope somebody internally is going to work on bridging these divides. The acrimony seems like it could break out and kill a season in 6 yrs.
I don't see Cuban having any luck in FA next year. It seems likely to me that Howard pairs with Williams. They would then both stick around. Then what is he going to do? No one else is available.
Chandler deal was completed today--he is in DC:
The Knicks sent veteran center Ronny Turiaf, cash considerations and a 2013 second-round pick to Washington. They also dealt second-year guard Andy Rautins to the Dallas Mavericks. Dallas sent a second-round 2012 draft choice to Washington and the draft rights to Ahmad Nivins and Giorgos Printezis to New York. Washington also sent a future second round draft choice to Dallas.
This is some god damn circular and contradictory thinking from the NBA owners. They have the cap to force the Lakers and others to pay a tax if they go over the cap, but they object if the Lakers find a way to get under it because they want Lakers to pay the tax.
#### the NBA owners.
I kind of want a LAL-PHI finals, just so you and STEAGLES can post 10,000 times in a day.
Well, that was pretty much what Coon said WRT Gilbert's email. But maybe Gilbert et al didn't influence this that much; we don't really know.
I assume the revised deal will be approved. If it is, the terms will tell us something.
Heh.
Have had some free time while helping the students through finals, have been a little sick, and frankly did not expect the events that have transpired. Didn't think the Lakers would be at the center of all the Paul/Howard shitt.
What those say is that NO really wants Lamar Odom--he is staying in the deal. Lakers may send Ebanks along.
Some people are speculating that my earlier joke about Ariza is actually true; he is coming back here.
Figure we will know in an hour or so--and then the Howard rumors will crank up.
The Knicks have a really nice (albeit pricey) starting frontline now. I like how the owners put in this amnesty thing, and the Bulls are using it to address SG and the Knicks used it to get a good center.
I agree. And I still say they should add Crawford, too.
I like how the owners put in this amnesty thing, and the Bulls are using it to address SG
Technically speaking, the Pistons aren't using the amnesty on Rip, this is a good old fashioned buyout. He's actually giving up almost $11mil, that's why the Bulls are paying him $10mil (over 2 years). Only official amnesties so far are Arenas and Billups, right? I'm sure there'll be more, but the deadline is Tue or Wed though.
I asked about trades before, only thing I've seen about that is that guys claimed via amnesty can't be traded for 90 days, and that wasn't confirmed (and it didn't say how much they counted for salary-wise in a deal).
Scola took a very positive approach as well, but Odom has apparently taken it very hard. Showed up 90 minutes late yesterday and didn't practice. Worth remembering that these guys are all established, quality, players, whatever one thinks of the actual deal.
The Raps did sign Aaron Gray though, so they'll be fine.
He still won't rebound.
More.
Vince Carter too, I think.
Carter had a 4M buyout clause IIRC, so I don't think he is an amnesty guy.
______
Came via Hornets 24/7 and The Painted Area blog.
I guess that Stern's story is that Sperling put the kibosh on it for basketball reasons. Tough sale.
i don't think what he's doing there is a good thing, but i can't blame him too much for making clear his desire to choose where he plays.
*fingers crossed*
in other related sixers news, evan turner has gotten a ton of praise for the improvement to his jumpshot over the lockout. also, spencer hawes has signed his qualifying offer, and he's basically the last remaining loose end going into training camp.
and now, with both hawes and yonug in camp, the sixers are expected to find somewhere to send marreese speights. that might be tough, since the sixers are not looking to take on any long-term salary whatsoever, and since their rotation is already pretty much set, there won't really be any need for a short-term contributor, either. i'm not really seeing anything on storytellers that would be a fit in light of these two things, so i think he may be here despite the team's apparent desire for him not to be.
Well, Billups was traded out of his hometown to accommodate Anthony, and then amnestied to accomodate Chandler. I think it is more of a personal reaction to his own situation than it is a commentary on the amnesty clause.
The baseline is showing up, playing hard, and not poisoning the locker room. Nobody is asking him to be active in the community or whatever other "above and beyond" aspects there are that are associated with the concept of team loyalty (which is the other side of the "above and beyond" the language of the contract coin).
I don't hold a grudge against him at all, but he had a breakout year in MN then left for Detroit for similar money, so it's not like he puts loyalty above all else.
Yeah, fair enough. I didn't mean to say that you mischaracterized it, just that anyone who gets defensive over "loyalty" in pro sports is either disingenuous or hopelessly naive, and I don't feel professionally sorry for him in the least. Personally, yeah, but playing hard and being decent to teammates is not a personal issue.
Over/under on date Simmons will apologize for his line about 300mm in bad player contracts?
also richard jefferson.
and i think there are various other situations where its use would make sense (i.e. the sixers using the clause to amnesty andre iguodala after next season, which, along with elton brand's expiring deal, would give the team 34 million in cap space going into free agency).
Jeff Green signs 1/9m deal with Boston
Jeff Foster returns to Indiana
Mike Bibby signs 1-year deal with New York
James comes off as the sorta guy that because he's an expert on one thing thinks he's an expert on everything. His quote tells me the whole fiasco went completely over his head. Nobody was concerned this trade unduly strengthened the Lakers and that's not why the NBA owners and Stern cancelled the deal.
I suspect James is looking at it from the point of view of "If one is in this deeply flawed situation, here's how you optimize it." I guess that's his gig, but still, weird. It's like "What's the optimum lineup if your team has no infielders?"
I disagree to an extent. I think people/the league felt, and feel, like that if Paul is here, then Howard will want to come, too, so the league guys/Stern couldn't let Paul come here unless they did more to seal off Howard's possible path to LA.
I don't know if that was the key factor in the veto, but I do believe it was a factor.
Why, does Dwight Howard drink Jameson and PBR too?
I an genuinely interested (and more than a bit skeptical) how popular the Nets and Howard are going to be in Brooklyn and NYC. I lived in NYC for 5 years and worked for 3 of them about two blocks from where the new Arena is. The Knicks are a cultural institution in the city and the Nets simply moving into Brooklyn isn't going to change that. The arena has the benefit of being a stones throw away from the Atlantic Avenue transit center, so I don't doubt they will sell out most games, but as far as growing the fanbase -- I think they have a tough road to hoe.
The Knicks, despite ITs best efforts, are a strong brand, the Nets are not. Simply changing the name and moving corporate HQs aren't going to change that overnight. In 10 years you will have kids that have never known the Nets as anything other than "brooklyn's team". That's when the tide might start to shift.
As for the hipsters, I doubt many of them could be bothered to come down from Williamsburg, the LES and Bushwick. I suspect most of the initial new Nets fans will be middle class, non-white Brooklynites.
Any guesses on how the CP3 trade is amended? I'll say all the original components remain, plus now the Hornets also receive Jordan Hill, Steve Blake, and a 1st rounder from the Lakers; Houston gets Darius Morris; and either Okafor or Ariza heads to LA. The Hornets would gain a young player and a pick -- supposedly what was lacking from the first deal -- and the Lakers would be somewhat worse off financially. I predict that Stern would accept such a proposal if the Magic trade Howard to the Nets this weekend and reject it otherwise.
So, assuming the deal goes through as theorized, and the Nyets are:
PG: Deron Williams
SG: ??? Morrow??? I have no clue who plays here
SF: Outlaw
PF: Humphries (???) assuming they bring him back
C: Howard
6th man: Farmar (? not sure if he's in the deal or not)
Is this a contender? I am leaning towards yes, 50 wins and a 2nd round exit.
His evangelical Christianity strikes a chord with them.
Although I agree that Manhattan/Bronx will generally stick with the Knicks, I think the rest of the city (and Long Island) is going to gravitate towards the Nets. Another factor is that I believe there is a lot of pent-up demand for "Brooklyn" to have a major league sports franchise. I'm sure no one on this site needs to be reminded that you still incessantly hear about the Brooklyn Dodgers 50 years after they ceased to exist.
Anywho, Woj:
Forgot about him. Still not great to start a rookie, especially not one drafted at the very end of the round. Landry Fields aside, rarely a great move.
Really? Outlaw's been good more recently than Tukeyglue.
This is certainly true, and it's my opinion that most Brooklynites have the single strongest sense of burough pride and a large number of them that are currently Knicks fans will probably switch right away. Furthermore, it's the most populous and despite chronic census under counting, boasts an official 2.6 million people. That's a pretty damn large pool to draw from if you're the Nyets.
There was a good amount of backlash wrt to "Atlantic Yards", of which the new arena is part of, as a dystopic developer's dream only boondogle, but by the time I left last summer most of that had seemed to wash away. You might have some hardcore people in Brooklyn Heights and Brownstone Brooklyn that will be opposed to the Nyets on political grounds, but it's a miniscule fraction of the total base.
We shall see.
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