The 3 teams being the Blazers, the Mavs & the Clippers. Here it is:

http://espn.go.com/nba/tradeMachine?tradeId=6uwktdg

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I did several searches assuming there must be a thread up about this already. i seem to recall one but I can't track it down now. anyway, if you haven't thrown your hat in the ring at predicting wins and awards for next year. have at it.

Here's my guess:

West

Playoffs:

West: Lakers, OKC, Utah, Portland advance

Lakers over OKC in the WCF

East: Miami, Boston, Orlando, Chicago advance

Boston over Miami in the ECF

Boston over Lakers in the Finals

Awards:

MVP: Durant

ROY: Wall

COTY: Monty Williams

DPOY: Lebron James

NBA 1st team: Kobe, Wade, Lebron, Durant, Howard

NBA 2nd team: Williams, Paul, Anthony, Nowitzki, Gasol

NBA 3rd team: Rondo, Roy, Bosh, Duncan, Lopez

in a game who's officiating can only be described as interesting, the US prevails. on the final defensive series of the game kevin durant had back to back blocked shots including blocking the final attempt of the game by your very own rudy fernandez.

if you can catch the replay i recommend it. it will make you feel better about NBA officiating if nothing else.

claver played limited minutes and is number 10 if you're looking for him. rudy is sporting highlights in his hair, no joke. not sure who gave him that fashion advice but he shouldn't have listened.

rubio was impressive but wasn't played enough if you ask me. all of spain's runs came with him in the game. his defense is much better than he's given credit for.

andre igoudala would have been the mvp for spain had they won. he made some atrocious decisions but they didn't cost the team.

durant was the player of the game no doubt. i believe he led the team in scoring, had at least 8 boards and had the great defensive series mentioned above.

Superstar Theory

i read this article a couple weeks back and then headed out of town. I assumed it would be linked here within hours and I was busy. I'm catching up on the news of the past few weeks and from what I can tell, it hasn't been discussed here at all.

I'd always imagined that a lot of readers here also frequented Real GM but apparently not. Anyway the above article is a good read and a really interesting analysis of whether championship teams key ingredient is superstars or if this has simply been the prevailing theory that everyone subscribes to.

The author uses an interesting methodology to rank players through history and then looks at winners through the years and how they match up with the best players in the game. I think it's well researched and I would urge you to read the entire thing. It's fairly long and a lot of time is spent on the minutia of the player rankings but it helps make the historic ranking piece more logical & believable.

In case people don't want the conclusions revealed I've saved my thoughts on the article until after the jump...

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this occured to me somewhere during the 2nd quarter when i found myself once again glued to a game involve the suns this playoffs. for one I cannot recall a single time in a few decades of watching basketball that a playoff team truly used a 10 man rotation.

gentry has actually extended the minutes his 2nd unit has played on a few occasions and this is the 2nd time I can recall where they really turned the tide. the 2nd unit was gigantic in the 4th quarter tonight. it really looked like LA was going to drop the hammer in the 3rd quarter when they roared back to take a lead. then good ol' Tragic Johnson, Channing and the boys went on a run.

i also have to take my hat off to kobe bryant in this game. he really was the only reason it was close. outside of bryant the suns badly outplayed the lakers but bryant seemed like he couldn't miss for the entire 2nd and 3rd quarter. i was a bit surprised that the lakers couldn't figure out a way to keep kobe heavily involved in the 4th quarter.

also i find the suns "let's give artest a wide-open 3 defense" intriguing. before the series started jared dudley mentioned in a Bill Simmons podcast that they were going to force Artest to hit some 3's before they guarded them. i thought he was being tongue in cheek. who knew this was an actual strategy.

It's painful and it's really depressing but if pritchard has any sense then he must realize that it's time to admit that oden was a mistake and move on from this rather than exacerbate the situation. his recent long term planning has been based around building the team around a core of roy / oden & aldridge. that should change. maybe oden can come back and play well but the assumption should now be that he is going to continually get hurt and be limited in the minutes he can provide to this franchise.

what does this mean?

First I think it means that the Blazers must resist any temptation to extend this guy in the offseason. if oden can't come back from this injury or has another injury-plagued campaign in 2010/2011, the Blazers can walk away with no more financial obligations. if he does break out, they still have the option to match any offer he gets.

I think what also means that the Blazers need to consider packaging the remaining assets they have and work to find a 3rd piece to group with aldridge and roy. i think the timing is wrong to get that third impact guy in the lottery. his development would take time one, and two the blazers are not likely to be in a position to get a high pick. they may well miss the playoffs this year but they aren't going to do any worse than the 10 to 14 spot in the draft.

as for who this should be or what position they should play I honestly don't know. all i know is that I don't believe a team built around roy / aldridge + role players is ever going to contend for a title, these two are going to need another star-level guy to play with.

rudy and batum are probably the most attractive assets that we have. i like them both very much but i doubt that either one can develop to the star level we'll need to have a big three. both would be great role players but i believe role players are easier to find than core guys so if we have a chance to trade them and net that 3rd guy, it should be done.

i think anymore planning that is predicated around, "when greg comes back", wastes what opportunity we might have with roy. also this injury makes all the more painfully clear that it's roy that is this franchise for the forseeable future. as for aldridge, i really like him but i'm not sure he's got the talent to be 2nd bannana on a contending team. i think he's a solid third guy. i would honestly say that he should be on the table trade wise as well except that his current contracts renders him untradeable. that's not the end of the world. he's good, not 65 million over 5 years good, but good nonetheless.

the focus should be finding that 3rd guy to run with roy and LA, Greg's a great kid but the time for planning your organizations future around him should end today. whatever he can give us from here should be seen as a really nice bonus rather than something we're relying on.

There's a lot of talk now that the majority of the better UFA's have signed that there is no time pressure on the Blazers and they could make lopsided trades up until the deadline mid-season. I can't dispute that this is technically true but I also think there's a very serious risk if they choose to do this.

priority number one for the blazers should absolutely be acquiring upgrades at either the point or small forward. they need to take advantage of the cap room they have. to be blunt if the blazers net nothing out of RLEC and their 2009 cap space then i would consider this an abject failure on the part of Kevin Pritchard.

however there is another concern looming for the blazers which i also think they need to address this summer and that is the upcoming RFA status of brandon roy and lamarcus aldridge. if the blazers choose not to negotiate extensions for these two they would be able to match offers received next summer but don't think it's impossible that one of the two would receive an offer that the blazers would refuse. there are a number of reasons why 2010 will be quite different than many other FA periods.

a large number of teams have targeted the 2010 offseason as their opportunity to chase the big big names - lebron james, dwayne wade,  chris bosh. in fact all of the following teams have less than 30 million in guaranteed money post 2010:

atlanta

chicago

new jersey

houston

minnesota

new york

miami

memphis

portland* (player option for przybilla )

oklahoma city

NOTE: These numbers are based on hoopshype which while probably not 100% accurate gives a picture of how many more teams have caproom as opposed to say this offseason.

that's a whole lot of suitors at the ball for the big 3 guys mentioned above. a lot of people are getting left at the altar next season. and when teams are left at the altar they many times they go for the next best thing and will do anything to get it. moreover lamarcus while probably a step below chris bosh, is a very nice player and next year with so many teams with FA money to spend it's going to be a player's market.

in short, the likelihood that a player like lamarcus would get offered a max contract is pretty high in my estimation. now there's no question in my mind that the blazers are willing to pay max money to roy. but are they willing to pay the same for lamarcus? i don't think that's a certainty. for one lamarcus should absolutely not make the same money as roy and two lamarcus really isn't a max contract stature player.

i think this is the summer to extend both players but the trades need to happen before as the extensions will take the team well over the cap.

1. Start Greg Oden. i realize przybilla has earned the spot and this is not a condemnation of joel. however you slice it joel can't guard yao. we've seen this multiple times this year. i believe in order to stop yao the blazers will need to front him with aldridge. however the key to really stopping him will be to get him in foul trouble and that's where greg comes in. start greg, pound him in the low post and try and get foul calls on yao. that's about the only way i can think to stop him.

2. More ball movement  & open 3's. in the wake of the game one debacle i've read numerous articles about how brandon tried to carry the team and everyone else was the problem. i heartily disagree. While roy played nicely in the first quarter. In the second when the game was still in reach he went into hard core ballhog mode and ignored his teammates. there were 3 straight possessions in the 2nd quarter where he was the only guy to touch the ball. if brandon continues to play like this, we have no chance. the ball must move and brandon is as much a part of that as anyone.

3. Run. The blazers have shown some ability to do this even though it's not a key staple of their arsenal. they need to get some easy transition points. they need to take some risks in this department and push tempo. we're likely losing this series anyway so we shouldn't be trying desperately to avoid mistakes.

This may sound like sacrilege to some but even before i heard about the injuries to batum and aldridge i was weighing the merits of resting our starters for the clevelvand game.

I see no way the Blazers win this game at full strength with proper rest. Instead they play them on the 2nd night of a back to back and now will do so without Aldridge and likely without Batum.

Would it really be so unwise to start sergio / rudy / outlaw / frye / przybilla

Use oden, bayless, randolph off the bench. blake, roy and aldridge play too many minutes as it is and there's a lot of important basketball left. popovich did this before the allstar break to give his main guys a break.

i'd love to see nate do the same although i'm certain he would never willingly concede a game. if he did, how would you feel about it?