[h2]
The Baron Davis Silly Season begins: The Knicks! Of course! Do the Warriors get Isiah in the deal?[/h2]
By Tim Kawakami
Friday, May 23rd, 2008 at 6:07 am in
NBA,
Warriors.
Very interesting Newsday story today
suggesting that Baron Davis' representatives have contacted several teams (YES OF COURSE THE KNICKS, IT'S ALWAYS THE KNICKS) hoping to get interest in a sign-and-trade landing place.
Interesting. It's always interesting. But does it tell us anything we didn't already know? Not unless there's more to this story than an agent whispering sweet $$$ to a reporter…
Let's get to the details…
* The story suggests that Baron and/or his representatives are unhappy with the Warriors' reluctance to pay him great gobs of money in an mega-extension. WELL HOW SHOCKING.
Baron wants $$. The Warriors so far haven't coughed it up. He's 29. He can get ornery. His agent wants money. Voila!
* As a result, apparently a BD associate is checking around with other teams to measure interest in a free-agent deal should he opt-out of his remaining one year and $17.8M or should he not opt-out but demand a trade.
NO KIDDING. I thought Baron would be happy forever in a Warriors uniform. (
Sarcasm attack.)
Do I think the Warriors would trade Baron if they could get something? YES. I think I might've suggested that 10 or 50 times so far this off-season. But only if it's a good deal.
* One team Baron Camp might be eyeing is YOU GUESSED IT… the Knicks. WHO ARE OVER THE CAP, I shyly point out.
So yes. Oh my! Sound the alarm! BD MIGHT BE GOING TO THE KNICKS! (Or better yet: Huzzah throughout the Warriors Nation. BD might be opting himself out of town!)
-
Sorry, I do have to throw some water on the all the excitement: This is a fun, kooky NON-STARTER. There isn't much to this until Baron starts screaming he wants the Warriors to trade him.
A trade demand probably will happen. But all this stuff is just agents whispering to reporters and nothing actually happening that means anything.
This is the same old story, repeated every summer by the New York papers (just change the name to Baron this year)-at some point, every unhappy big-named player is rumored to go to the Knicks.
And yet, not every unhappy big-named player can actually go to the Knicks, especially now that Isiah Thomas isn't running things any more.
Hey, I'm sure somebody close to Davis told somebody that he wanted out from the Bay Area. I'm sure BD may think he has to get out.
So it's interesting to hear if Baron really is so desperate that he's readying a trade demand or he's egging on the Knicks (or Newsday, at the very least-but unfortunately, Newsday is even more over the cap than the Knicks.)
Look at this with some common sense…
As the story points out and we have been discussing for a year or more, Davis has $17.8M due to him next season-if he opts-out, he loses that money and nobody else is going to pay him anything near that.
So what's Davis' control in this situation? None. Not if he wants the $17.8M. END OF REAL STORY, pretty much, and then you start wandering into New York Knick Fairyland, as we always do in NBA summertime.
Believe me, if Baron opts-out on June 30, I'll salute him. That'd take guts. I actually dare him to do that.
Do it, BD, prove me wrong.
He'll be braving the free free market and he will have $0 guaranteed and very few teams under the cap to pay him anything close to even $10M.
INCLUDING THE KNICKS, by the way. They're way, way, way over because of a former policy of trading for every overweight post player and washed up point guard in the history of the NBA.
The most the Knicks could offer Davis in unrestricted free agency is the mid-level exception, which would start him at $5.7M and that's a lot less than $17.8M.
So that's not much of a threat or a temptation, I'd say.
The article suggests Baron wants to opt-out then fashion a sign-and-trade to a team that wants him and will pay him… LIKE THE KNICKS!
That's a way for an over-the-cap team (like the Knicks) to pay Baron big money if they can give back the Warriors a similar amount of combined salaries.
But why would the Warriors do that? To take Zach Randolph? No. Eddy Curry? No.
Stephon Marbury? No.
The Knicks' No. 6 overall pick plus one of those horrid contracts? No, because Baron can't be traded until after July 9, presuming he doesn't give written notification that he's NOT opting out before the draft.
Maybe Baron will do that. Maybe he'll tell the Warriors on June 26, draft night, that he's not opting out (if he tells them he
is opting out, they can't trade him because he'll have no contract).
Maybe, if BD says he's NOT opting-out, there's a deal possible-Marbury (expiring deal after next season) plus the No. 6 and maybe plus David Lee for Baron plus No. 14, with salary ballast to help the deal.
(I guess there's another surreptitious way: BD doesn't opt-out or doesn't indicate either way by draft night, but Warriors and Knicks agree to a deal, Knicks pick 6th for Warriors then wait until July 9 to finish the trade, BD for Marbury plus drafted player. I'm highly dubious that would pass NBA muster.)
Why would the Knicks do Marbury plus pick for BD? Davis would demand a contract extension-he's not signing any one-year deal, I'll tell you that… That's the whole point: BD wants to get paid. The whole point.
So the Knicks would have to pay him four- or five-years, $60M or $70M or more. And how does that help the Knicks?
That is
exactly the kind of garbage that ruined the Isiah Era-all they did was exchange expiring huge deals for bigger long-term deals over and over in a Ponzi Scheme that got them Marbury, Randolph, Stevie Francis, Curry and the rest…
So they want to make Baron the new Marbury? Yep, right back into the lottery for them in 2009. Then trade Baron for, I don't know, the 2015 rights to Bob Cousy?
You know, I'm sure every agent is still hoping the Knicks are paying crazy money to aging former stars… It's right in the Agent Handbook: Call Isiah if you can't get ridiculous money from anybody else.
But Isiah's gone. The Knicks are going to run this right, I think. That means sitting tight, letting your big contracts expire, seeing what you can do in the summer of 2010 when Dwyane Wade and LeBron James can become free agents.
Mike D'Antoni respects Baron… but you think he'd risk total rebuilding in 2010 to have Baron's tweaky hamstrings running the show now? How Isiah.
Donnie Walsh isn't Isiah Thomas, no matter how much the New York papers dream of that.
OK, say Baron doesn't opt-out. Good assumption.
What he and his agent might do is demand a trade, while maintaining the $17.8M-that way he can cause a lot of trouble and yet keep all his guaranteed money.
He could become a major, major pain in the butt, as we know. While counting his money. As we know. That's BD. Great player, major potential headache at all times.
Baron and his agent don't really have another play, so yeah, I could see that. In fact, now that I think about it, I'd guess they do it at some point between now and July 9-no opt out, trade demand.
Can't wait for the headline: BARON DEMANDS TRADE BUT KEEPS $17.8M. Perfect. It's really who he is. I expect this.
But hmm. Remember, the Warriors don't have to do
anything. They especially don't have to panic and trade for somebody else's dumb contract and bad players just because Baron is telling them to.
Again: That'd be Isiah-style. I know the New York reporters are used to that kind of thinking…
but other teams don't necessarily have to act like their sainted former GM and panic at every new development.
If Baron doesn't opt out but demands a trade, there are some potential good ones out there for the Warriors… My deal is Elton Brand (double sign-and-trade), as you know…
(Months ago, I suggested using the trade exception-Baron for Elton straight up and entice the Clips by taking Cuttino Mobley with the TE, but oh well, that can't happen due to deadline rules since neither Baron nor Brand can be traded until after the TE expires.)
OK, getting the 6th pick from the Knicks would be tempting for Chris Mullin. If he could do that, maybe he'd think about it. But again: Why would Donnie Walsh do that? Just to please Todd Ramasar?
And again, you couldn't trade Baron on draft night, so you probably couldn't arrange to pick for the Knicks at the 6th slot, so if they end up taking someone Don Nelson doesn't want, say, Anthony Randolph, there's no chance at this.
--Here's what really got me from the Newsday story, but I've waited this long: The reporter mentions that a source close to Monta Ellis says that he "definitely has eyes" for the Knicks' new uptempo style.
Classic New York summer phrasing. Writing that the Knicks are the only team left in the universe that can spend money and of course everybody wants to play for them.
Umm… I hate to point out that Ellis is a restricted free agent. The Knicks are way, way over the cap. As Newsday notes, the Knicks can only offer Ellis the mid-level. And the Warriors can match anything.
Yet Newsday warns that if the Warriors match the Knicks' mid-level offer, the Warriors might not have enough money to re-sign Andris Biedrins, too.
Are you kidding me? If the Warriors got Ellis at a salary starting at $5.7M (by matching a mid-level offer sheet), they'd have about $4M EXTRA per year to use to sign Biedrins.
Mullin would be jumping for joy if Ellis brought him back a multi-year MLE offer sheet. Does Newsday not know that?
The story also suggests, well, maybe the Knicks can do a sign-and-trade for Ellis. Involving… whom?
Thank you for the entertainment. This is the official beginning of the Silly Season.
I expect a Baron Trade Demand at any point now. And I still don't expect him to move… unless there's a great deal out there.
Sad for BD: the louder he gets, the less likely it is that the Warriors will find a deal they like to trade him.
He'll have to sit and take his $17.8M next season and probably be overpaid by $7M or $8M. How horrible for him.
