A pending decision

Throwing money at guys in their mid 30s isn’t wise. Bell is 33. Bad teams shouldn’t hitch contracts to guys that old. Ray Allen would also be a poor investment as he’ll be 35 next year. If we were a winning team and keeping these guys around to give it another try, then things would be different, but it would be inexcusably foolish to tie up any part of our cap space on guys at that stage of their career.

I also suspect that Rudy Gay will be the next Maggette: paid too much for what he brings, even if he’s not a bad player. He’s not a passer, is an acceptable rebounder as a 2/3, seems to be heading in the right direction as a scorer, but isn’t other-worldly. It would be real easy to get over-excited about him expecting him to continue to get better, but he won’t get that much better, but someone is likely to pay him like he will.

Wouldn’t mind Cardinal coming back. Would give us some depth and when everyone is healthy, is not to proud to cheer from the bench. Radmonovic is going to be no help at the four.

Is there any indication that the Kings are interested in Maggette? I know they’re poking around Dalembert, but his contract is shorter and they’d be sending a long deal out… I have trouble believing they’d trade an expiring for four years of Maggette. Like Jack, Maggette’s a guy who we’ll only be able to move when someone gets desperate.

But there is a team out there that’s desperate… like the Bobcats, they’re struggling, antsy and not that smart. Which is why we should be pursuing Corey Maggette and Speedy Claxton for Peja Stojakovic and a 2011 first-round pick.

The Hornets have three pressing needs. They need help at the wing. They need to show Chris Paul that they’re serious about surrounding him with talent. And they need to cut payroll for next season if at all possible. A Maggette/Speedy package addresses all three of those needs: they get a good small forward in Maggette (who’s off to a blazing start), they show CP3 that all may not be lost, and they cut $5.7M from their ‘10-’11 salary commitments, meaning they save $11.4M when factoring in luxury tax payments. I really think they’re desperate enough to do this.

Turning Maggette into Peja makes our present even worse. So what? The present sucks regardless. Nellie is robbed of the other vet he relies on, and his favorite faux big man. So what? Nellie can either commit to teaching the kids and playing regular lineups, or he can get the hell out of the way. We regress from a 32-win team to a 25-win team. So what? We get a better shot in the lottery that way, and at least the fans get the clear message that we’re finally burning this thing down and rebuilding in earnest. With this trade, we’d finally commit to a direction. And that direction points to 2011-12.

In 2011-12, we’d have Curry, Monta, Randolph, Wright, Turiaf and Biedrins under contract for a total of $35 million, plus a ‘10-’11 rookie who’d cost maybe $3 million more… ‘Buike and Morrow will be free agents, and even if New Jersey vultures our pick (unlikely), we’ll now have the Hornets’ pick. (I think they’d part with an ‘11 first-rounder… that’s one less guaranteed contract for them to worry about.) There’s no way to know what the cap will be like that year, but it’s expected to be higher than next year’s estimated $53 million. We would probably be at least $16-18 million under the cap before re-signing ’Buike and/or Morrow.

Now, 2011 won’t be a bonanza of a free agency market, unless Durant wants out of OKC… but maybe we’re not bidders by then anyway. Maybe we’ve already added a guy with Peja’s $15.3M expiring contract. Or maybe we keep the cap space till 2012, to give ourselves a shot at ‘Melo and whoever else, before we extend Randolph. The point is, we get options. With this trade, we’d assure ourselves of a clean slate in 19 months… all we’d have is young players on competitive contracts, draft picks and space. Till then, we focus on teaching the kids, no matter how games it costs us. Ideally a new coach is in town, but if Nellie actually wants to take this challenge on, so be it.

That doesn’t mean we’re committing to a Curry/Monta/Wright/Randolph/Biedrin/Turiaf core, that we’re going to war with them for the next eight years no matter well or poorly they do. It just means we’re going to give them a full-fledged shot to prove themselves, so we can evaluate them clearly and figure out who (if any) the real keepers are. If Monta’s unhappiness persists? Fine, we can trade him down the line… he’s young and cheap enough so that it shouldn’t be hard. If Biedrins’s defensive struggles persist, even with more competent help in front of him? Maybe we make a move in a year. Wright can’t stay healthy? Sucks for him, but we can jettison him. We don’t have a single core free agent till 2011… we have an unusually big window to sort out the wheat from the chaff here.

Let’s get off this treadmill of mediocrity, where we add a semi-star and lose one over and over. Let’s trade Maggette and get worse so we can get better. We can figure everything else out later.