Stephen Jackson Finally Gets His Wish: Traded From Warriors To Bobcats

Basketball Prospectus: Short-Term Gain, Long-Term Pain For Bobcats

Basketball Prospectus’ Kevin Pelton comes through with a very detailed analysis of yesterday’s trade that sent Stephen Jackson to Charlotte. Pelton concludes that the trade will help the Bobcats in the short-term, particularly offensively. Though Jackson isn’t a particularly efficient scorer, Charlotte is currently the worst offensive team in the league, so Jackson will still help them there.

However, Pelton also underscores why the Bobcats might pay dearly for this trade down the road.

The most obvious aspect is the financial impact of taking on Jackson’s contract. The disastrous three-year extension the Warriors gave him a year ago will take effect next season, paying Jackson $28 million over that span. Charlotte added more than $1.5 million to its payroll next year, the last of [Vladimir] Radmanovic’s contract, and $9.3 million and $10.1 million the following two seasons. From a team that has been actively shedding future salary, most notably in the [Tyson] Chandler-Emeka Okafor trade, the sudden change of heart is stunning. Now, the Bobcats will have a tough time clearing cap space by the summer of 2011.

[…]

The long-term cost seems way too high for a Charlotte team that seems to be aspiring to lose in the first round of the playoffs with little hope of improving from there. I’m not convinced the Bobcats need to start from scratch and rebuild, but making a playoff run with youth leading the way is very different than doing it with players like Jackson.

[…]

If the Bobcats start planning a parade for next April, you’ll know something is very wrong.

Does The Jackson Trade Allow The Warriors To Make A Bigger Move?

SB Nation's Warriors blog, Golden State of Mind, certainly thinks so.

Perhaps more significant though is the potential to make another move this year. In terms of the fabled "package of expiring deals to land a superstar", the Warriors will soon posses $14.36 million in contracts that come off the books next year. While that package would require wrapping up Raja with Mikki Moore, Speedy Claxton, Devean George and CJ Watson, sending out these players would allow the Warriors to pick up a player priced at up to $18million. (CBA rules prevent a team utilizing the traded player exception to make trades while over the cap from taking back more than 125% +$100k in salary than the combined players being traded away. Such a deal cannot happen for two month until Bell can be re-packaged in another trade.

*snip*

Solely in terms of cap implications, this makes it theoretically possible to construct a deal for all but 9 players in the association without the trading partner taking on a single contract that will extend into next season.

This wouldn't be totally unprecedented for the Warriors.  In 2005, despite being well out of the playoff race, they traded some expiring contracts to land Baron Davis.  That was the first step that temporarily turned around the franchise and led to the "We Believe" team.

So, if you're brainstorming which team Disgruntled Star X will be traded to during the season, don't forget to now include the Warriors on your list of possible suitors.

Experts Weigh In On The Trade: As Expected, Most Don't Like It For Charlotte

The opinions are flying in on the Stephen Jackson trade, and it shouldn't be too surprising that most people don't like this trade considering the two organizations that are involved.

Yahoo! Sports' Kelly Dwyer of Ball Don't Lie goes as far to say that Jackson, the Bobcats and the Warriors "deserved" the end result of the trade.

Jackson deserves to be exiled on a team like the Charlotte Bobcats. And the Golden State Warriors deserve to pick up a player who can only dribble with one (healthy) hand and a load who has only hit a third of his shots this season in return for someone who averaged nearly 21 points and seven assists last season, along with one of the few players that seemed to want to work hard for Golden State in its first nine games.

Dwyer then rips into Jackson, calling Jackson "a ridiculous waste of a 6-foot-8, 235-pound frame" and sharply criticizes the Bobcats for taking on yet another bad contract even though their ownership situation is a mess. 

ESPN's John Hollinger, on the other hand, saves most of his criticism for the Warriors for accepting the Bobcats' deal instead of a proposed offer from the Cavaliers.

What makes this even worse is that it appears Golden State took the second-best offer on the table. Multiple league sources told me the Cavaliers were ready to move ahead with a deal featuring a signed-and-traded Wally Szczerbiak, Delonte West and perhaps some ancillary flotsam in return for Jackson, a deal that would have been visibly superior to the Charlotte deal from both a cap-management and talent perspective.

Let's run through the math. Bell is a productive player -- but at a much lower level than Jackson -- and is on the final year of his contract, making the primary benefit of the deal for Golden State the fact it clears $9.2 million in cap space in 2011. The Warriors are now a potential player in that year's free-agent market, depending on future moves.

But they could have cleared even more cap space with Cleveland's offer. Such a deal would have given the Warriors full, immediate relief from Jackson's deal after the season once they waived West (whose contract isn't guaranteed for next year) and Szczerbiak (whose contract wouldn't be guaranteed beyond this year in a sign-and-trade).

Such an arrangement would also have given the Warriors two major assets in the "confederate money" of non-guaranteed contracts. They had the alternative of pursuing a big fish in a trade with those deals at the trade deadline, especially since acquiring West and Szczerbiak at this early juncture meant both players would have been eligible for inclusion in package deals by February.

However, the San Jose Mercury News' Tim Kawakami, who has been masterfully chronicling the dysfunction of the Warriors for years now, disagrees with Hollinger.

The big-picture particulars: Larry Riley and Don Nelson did better on this deal than almost anybody in the NBA expected. I kept hearing that teams wanted the Warriors to give up real talent or picks in order to move a pain like SJax.

They didn’t do that. They washed their hands of Jackson relatively cheaply. It took weeks. It was obvious they had to trade him back before training camp started. It soured everything this season.

They finally did it.

So, now someone has to defend this trade for Charlotte in some way, right?  TrueHoop's Henry Abbott steps up to the plate and attempts to do so, saying that "crazier things have worked."

In addition to Gerald Wallace, Tyson Chander and the surprisingly effective Nazr Mohammed, the Bobcats roster boasts a collection of players who can both create off the dribble and shoot. Raymond Felton, D.J. Augustin, Stephen Jackson, Boris Diaw ... Assuming Augustin emerges from his Larry Brown-induced shell, these are players who make opponents pay with shooting should they clog the lane. Perhaps they'll hit enough shots to convince defenders to chase shooters all over the floor, instead of sagging into the lane.

The Bobcats could start to look a bit like those various Ben Gordon teams -- the Bulls who almost knocked off the Celtics in last year's playoffs, or this year's Pistons, who have shown signs of proving doubters wrong this year.

If you can get defenders spread all over, leaving tons of room in the middle of the floor, the list of players who can put the ball on the floor to beat one man, and then get to the rim and score is long. That's what got a lot of these players to the NBA.

Stephen Jackson can be part of a team like that.

It's an admirable effort, but something about calling Nazr Mohammed, Raymond Felton, D.J. Augustin and Boris Diaw "players who can both create off the dribble and shoot" doesn't exactly sit right with me.  Not when Felton and Augustin are shooting 35.7% and 35.1%, respectively.  If those guys indeed could "create off the dribble and shoot," the Bobcats probably wouldn't have the worst offense in the league.

How Close Was Stephen Jackson To Becoming A Cavalier?

The Golden State Warriors have been publicly shopping Stephen Jackson for weeks now, and until this morning, most league sources would have predicted he would end up in Cleveland. So just how close to Stephen Jackson come to joining forces with Shaq and King James?

The Cleveland Plain-Dealer’s Brian Windhorst elaborates:

According to some league sources the Cavs indeed had an offer into the Warriors for Jackson. The two sides, I am told, talked about Zydrunas Ilgauskas, Delonte West and even a sign-and-trade for Wally Szczerbiak among other things.

With a 7-3 record and on a four-game winning streak with things still developing this early in the season, the Cavs were unwilling to improve their offer over the weekend. How close the Warriors were to accepting it is known only to their top decision makers.

But the Cavs were not willing to give up any of their size for Jackson and that was a road block. The only way they were willing to give up Ilgauskas is if there was an agreement to buy him out and have him return in 30 days, which is permitted under current rules. In addition, right now J.J. Hickson is virtually untouchable unless it is for a home run deal.

All good insight, and he adds this:

Sending Jackson somewhere he didn't want to go perhaps was a private goal in the Warriors' front office after the way he appeared to use them to get a new big contract only to revolt less than a year later.

To that final point, however, I must disagree. If that was really a goal of the Warriors management, then Stephen Jackson would have wound up playing in L.A. or Cleveland. Why? Because everything the Warriors management does is a spectacular failure, and that's just the way things work.

Warriors Fans: Not Exactly Sad To See Jackson Go

Here’s one from SB Nation’s Golden State of Mind. Click through to see more funny photos, including a brilliant Young Jeezy satire. Ahem… Trade Motivation 101: Let’s Get It!

"Good luck playing for a winner ‘Captain’!”

SB Nation's Bobcats And Warriors Blogs React To Jackson Trade

Over at SB Nation's Charlotte Bobcats blog, Rufus on Fire, David Arnott predictably wonders why the Bobcats are making yet another short-term move:

Here's hoping the Bobcats are planning to flip Jackson for more than they would have gotten for Bell alone. I love Cap'n Jack's game, but the Cats can't delude themselves into thinking he's the go-to scorer our mix of talent is missing.

Good luck with that. The Warriors spent two months desperately trying to move Jackson for any package they could get. I strongly doubt Charlotte's going to fare any better on that front.

Assuming the Bobcats didn't just get Jackson to trade him, then, as Arnott writes, this is yet another short-term fix for a team that desperately needs a long-term plan.

There's no way they intend to keep Jackson and build with him, is there? We traded an expiring contract and a two year contract for an expiring contract and a three year contract, which fits in with Charlotte's M.O. the past couple seasons.

We're a better team right now, assuming Jackson will actually play for Charlotte. Are we better positioned for the future?

Meanwhile, SB Nation's Golden State Warriors blog, Golden State of Mind, says what everyone is probably thinking right now.

My second thought: Good luck playing for a winner "Captain"!

You might recall that, when Jackson initially made his trade demand, he wanted to go to a winning team like Cleveland, Dallas or San Antonio. Instead, he's going to a franchise that hasn't won more than 35 games in its history. However, according to ESPN's Ric Bucher, Jackson is okay with his new club (for now at least).

I'm guessing that Jackson won't feel so good about the situation once Larry Brown jumps on him for launching ill-advised shots, but that's just me.

Did The Charlotte Bobcats Just Become More Dysfunctional Than Golden State?

What’s that? Warriors’ President Robert Rowell said Don Nelson’s job is safe? Okay then… so they’re definitely still the most dysfunctional team in the NBA. But doubtless, Charlotte closed the gap this morning by trading for Stephen Jackson. With this, the Bobcats—a team thought to be immersed in financial turmoil—well, as Chad Ford notes, "In 2011 they will owe $36 million to 4 role players Diaw, Diop, Wallace and Jackson." And remember when they traded Emeka Okafor for Tyson Chandler in what was ostensibly a salary dump? Now they’re taking on a guy who’s due to make nearly $30 over the next three years. What’s the plan here?

As ESPN’s Bobcats blog wonders:

Stephen Jackson to the Bobcats? Why? Just why?

Over at the Sporting News, though, Bethlehem Shoals offers a slightly more measured reaction:

For the Bobcats, shoot, they get an aging, but not aged, all-around contributor who falls into line when feeling secure and productive. Honestly, I don’t see how Jackson can hurt, provided he’s not a disruption. He just offers too much on the court, and that team lacks too much, for it not to be worth the gamble. Plus, if they ever get a Felton/Jackson/Wallace/Diaw/Chandler starting five going, that could be some serious future-ball.

So, he’s aging, sure, but he won’t hurt the team, and with his talent and Charlotte’s needs he could be a breath of fresh air. Especially if he can coexist with Larry Brown. So maybe this trade isn’t that nonsensical, and the Bobcats aren’t that crazy. Or maybe they are. Either way, the Golden State Warriors can make any franchise look sane:

Stephen Jackson Finally Gets His Wish: Traded To The Charlotte Bobcats

According to Yahoo Sports’ Marc Spears, a trade has been completed that will send controversial Warriors' forward Stephen Jackson and Acie Law to Charlotte in exchange for Vladamir Radmonovic and Raja Bell. More to come.