Cleveland Cavaliers @ Chicago Bulls, Los Angeles Lakers @ Oklahoma City Thunder, and Phoenix Suns @ Portland Trail Blazers :: 2010 NBA Playoffs Day 6

Haha flip through the archives and you’ll see some of the vicious comments I got because of my take on that trade.

I’ve never met a single dubs fan who was happy about that trade

Haha. [Raises hand].

Well, “happy” isn’t really the right word. I loved JRich’s personality and liked his game. I was sad to see him go. When it started to become clear to me that either he or BD would eventually have to go, to avoid having the lion’s share of our payroll bound up in two talented-but-flawed backcourt players, I thought for a while it made more sense to keep JRich and let Baron go. Of the two, JRich seemed to me like the more reliable, more efficient, and less injury-prone (I think people tend to forget how maddeningly fragile, erratic and inefficient Baron was for the couple seasons leading up to the We Believe run). Plus, like a lot of fans, I just thought that JRich, as a lifetime Warrior and demonstrably cool dude, deserved a bit more loyalty and love than Baron.

By the end of the ‘06/07 season my feelings on the issue had evolved, for three main reasons: (1) Baron’s absolutely unreal performance during the We Believe run; (2) the emergence of Monta as a budding stud at shooting guard; and (3) our second-round spanking at the hands of Utah, during which our absence of a legit bigman was painfully evident. Personal affections aside, moving Richardson’s escalatingly pricy contract for the potential of legit bigman just seemed like a wise course of action. Heck, even Atma Bro has said that the idea was a reasonable one; that the problem with it wasn’t trading JRich per se, but trading him for a skinny question mark like Brandan Wright. If instead of picking the talented-but-fragile Wright, we had grabbed Joakim Noah, a defensive/rebounding beast who currently looks like the most valua-Bull not named Derrick Rose, the trade would look a little better right now.

Moreover, as has been mentioned many many many times here before (like pretty much everything related the JRich trade), after the trade, the Warriors got a bit better — six wins better, to be precise. We can conjecture about how much mo’ better they might have been with JRich starting and Monta coming off the bench, but then we’re into the land of alternative reality (see my alternate-universe starting 5 above for details). My guess is that we would have gained a couple games, say picked up 50-52 wins instead of 48, and slipped into the back end of the playoffs, and been bounced in the first round. And for the pleasure of that, we would have missed out on Randolph. And, depending on a few more hypotheticals, we likely would have been a bit better the season after that, and missed out on Steph Curry. Would’ves and could’ves…

Meanwhile — still recapping, not that anyone on this site doesn’t know the whole story backwards and forwards — the crappy team we traded JRich to (Charlotte) got a bit crappier, and eventually ended up shipping him to Phoenix. In turn, the Suns failed to improve, even got a bit worse, after acquiring JRich. This season, with the ageless Nash playing out of his mind, Amar’e looking like the Amare of old (you gotta love contract years), JRich playing really well, and a bunch of talented/underrated role players, the Suns seem to have coalesced. They’re almost certainly not championship contenders, but they look great. Nash, as always, is clearly the straw that stirs the drink, but the whole drink is tasty and cool right now. I’m happy for them, and happy for JRich.

Overall, the situation with JRich in the Spring of 2007 was pretty analogous to what we’re currently looking at with Monta. Talented, good-but-not-great player whose game has clearly plateaued (or in the case of Monta, declined). Plays the easiest position in basketball to fill. Bloated contract (in the case of JRich, escalating). Would anyone here trade Monta right now for $11M worth of salary cap relief, and the #8 pick in this year’s draft — say, Cole Aldrich or Greg Monroe or Ekpe Udoh? I know I would. And … I know a lot of people here wouldn’t. And I know (or at least strongly suspect), that if a trade along these lines happened, every time Monta dropped 40 on someone, or every time Aldrich/Monroe slipped on banana peel and got a boo-boo, those who hadn’t supported the trade would come on GSoM to air their displeasure. And conversely, every time Monta went 3-18 with 14 turnovers, or crashed his moped, or got another hideous tattoo, or every time Monroe/Aldrich/Udoh showed us something, the trade supporters would engage in their share of trash talk. Such is the nature of forums like this one.

As for the “vicious comments” Atma got, well … hand raised there too. I still feel really bad about the, er, ungracious tone of my comments during that era. And I’d guess Atma Bro probably said a few things he regrets too. Sounds silly, but I actually feel worse about the corrosive effect the JRich trade had on the theretofore harmonious GSoM community than the effect it had on the Warriors. I guess it will take another memorable playoff showing, ideally led by Curry/Randolph/Turner or Curry/Randolph/Cousins, to close that wound for good. Here’s hoping…

really made me miss him. I’d love for him to be a Warrior after his current expires, even if we have a glut of quality wings.