SB Nation User Blog: gadogry

Look what we did!!

gadogry — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 18:41:01 -0000

Look what we did!!

Hornets fire Bryon Scott on the day after getting smoked by the Suns.

Hypothetical 3-team trade (Hinrich-JRich-Boozer)

gadogry — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 20:42:20 -0000

Ok, the offseason is long and even I'm falling for this. My proposed trade involves Suns sending JRich to the Jazz, Boozer going to the Bulls and us getting Kirk Hinrich and Tyrus Thomas.

Here's how that trade looks on ESPN's Trade Machine:

I'll explain this trade in more detail after the jump.

Why the Jazz would want to do it: It's well known that the Jazz is looking to move Boozer. JRich may not be Jerry Sloan's favourite type of player but he's a talented swingman who can bring another dimension to their offense. Currently, the only players on the Jazz who can shoot the 3 are Okur and Korver.

After what's been publicized about the Jazz and Boozer parting ways, it's almost inevitable that he has to be moved, and the Jazz would be hard pressed to get a player of JRich's caliber in any Boozer deal.

Why the Jazz wouldn't want to do it: Money money money. Boozer for JRich doesn't give them any cap relief. They actually add $1M to this year's already-crazy payroll. Also, since JRich's contract runs a year longer than Boozer's, that adds $14.4M to their 2010-2011 payroll, which will take them past next year's tax line already even if they don't add any more contracts.

But if they decide to go San Antonio (which could be the case, as they had the guts to match for Millsap), this is a trade that can give them more firepower and keep up with the haves of the league.

Why the Bulls would want to do it: Derrick Rose is obviously their point guard of the future (and present), and they would not want Hinrich riding the pine and making $9M per just like how we (or Kerr) didn't want Diaw making $9M per in a backup role. Given that the Bulls had brought back Lindsey Hunter and signed Pargo (and they have Salmons who can handle the ball part-time and play some SG), Hinrich is even more expandable. From all indication they almost traded him to the Blazers in July. And Boozer is obviously a low post scoring threat that they have been coveting since 1967.

Doing this trade, they essentially upgrade Tyrus Thomas to Boozer (both expirings), at the "cost" of losing Hinrich's services and contract ($9.5M this season, $9M in 10-11, $8M in 11-12). It would also get Bulls a BOATLOAD of cap space in the summer of 2010, which they can use to re-sign Boozer plus another max contract player.

Moreover, the Bulls payroll currently stands at $69M this season, which is dangerously close to the tax line. This trade would shave about $2M off that and give them some wiggle room. They can use that to re-sign another half-decent player, or just sign some vet-min 13th man and keep the rest in their pockets.

Why the Bulls wouldn't want to do it: One may argue that Thomas and Hinrich is a lot of talent to give away for Boozer, the betrayal skullhead Duke guy who can be a locker room cancer and has a 65% chance of breaking his leg within 2 months into the season. But I really think that (and I'm trying to be objective here) the Bulls are a more balanced and complete team after this trade. And it gives them a shot at DWade the next summer. To me, the good seems to outweigh the bad.

Why the Suns would want to do it: If we can turn JRich into Hinrich and Tyrus Thomas, I'd totally be doing backflips. First of all, let's all be honest that Dragic isn't ready to play 15-18mins every night. And it's also inevitable that Nash will have to sit out 10 or so games due to injuries and what not. LB is great but he really isn't a full-time PG material. Hinrich, however, is a natural PG. He makes his 3's (41% last season, 38% career) and defends 2.5 positions. In the immortal Bulls-Celtics series, he turned out to be their best defender on Paul Pierce. He's like Raja Bell with good PG skills.

After the trade, Hinrich, Nash and LB can just share the backcourt minutes, each getting around 32mpg. In the event of any of them getting injured, the other two can start together and play 40-ish minutes, with Goran/Tucker/Grant Hill pitching in. We may have problems against big backcourts with that, but it's not like we have a solution for that now.

As for Thomas, he's easily more talented than any of our frontcourt players who doesn't have an apostrophe in his first name. Plus, he's actually already a better defender than Amar'e right now. And he's an expiring contract so if it doesn't work out for whatever reason, we're not stuck with him.

Also, this trade takes us to 13 guys under contract, and thus will save about 14 hours of BSotS's members' time arguing about whom should we sign for the 13th spot.

Why the Suns wouldn't want to do it: The trade increases our payroll by $0.9M. But since we now only have 12 guys and need to fill another roster spot anyway, it's not like we could have saved all of that $0.9M.

Also, Hinrich's contract runs a year longer than JRich's. But it's 2012 we're talking about so let's not worry about it now. You may also argue that Tyrus Thomas isn't a model kid but it's not like he had 2 DUIs last season.

Finally, Goran and Earl Clark will see their minutes decrease after this trade. But the players we're bringing in are relatively young and are genuinely better players. So undermining our "own" young players should not be a concern.

So that's my case. What do y'all think about this?

Poll

How do you feel about the proposed trade?

Too good to be true.

79 votes

Intrigued but not sold.

40 votes

Hate it to no end.

11 votes

130 votes | Poll has closed

The Suns' (slim) draft lottery odds

gadogry — Wed, 13 May 2009 00:24:26 -0000

The last time the Suns had anything to do with the draft lottery was in 2007, when we had Atlanta's top-3 protected first round pick. Being a math geek myself, I needed to know the exact chance of us keeping their pick. Then I realized that to do that one actually has to calculate ALL chances of which team is picking at which positions, since these odds are all interconnected with each other. Then after some crunching, I came up with a table of all the odds and sent it to Henry Abbott at Truehoop (I wasn't aware of the existence of BSotS back then), who encouraged me to publish it on the web myself. So I started a little blog, and Truehoop ended up linking to it a few times.

Long story short (I can say that even if I've told you the long story already), I now have a program that, given the teams' records and tiebreakers, can figure out the chances of which team is picking where in no time.

Anyways, here are the numbers for 2009. They are all percentages. For example, The Clippers (LAC) have a 19.53% chance of picking 4th.

Pick#	Teams
Pick#	SAC	WAS	LAC	OKC	MIN	MEM	GST	NYK	TOR	MIL	NJ	CHA	IND	PHO
1	25.0	17.8	17.7	11.9	7.6	7.5	4.3	2.8	1.7	1.0	0.9	0.7	0.6	0.5
2	21.46	17.36	17.29	12.57	8.43	8.33	4.93	3.26	2.0	1.18	1.06	0.83	0.71	0.59
3	17.72	16.45	16.41	13.24	9.46	9.36	5.76	3.87	2.4	1.43	1.29	1.01	0.87	0.72
4	35.82	34.67	19.53	9.98	--	--	--	--	--	--	--	--	--	--
5	--	13.73	25.02	34.99	26.27	--	--	--	--	--	--	--	--	--
6	--	--	4.05	16.05	38.5	41.4	--	--	--	--	--	--	--	--
7	--	--	--	1.26	9.32	29.4	60.01	--	--	--	--	--	--	--
8	--	--	--	--	0.42	3.9	23.17	72.5	--	--	--	--	--	--
9	--	--	--	--	--	0.1	1.79	16.76	81.35	--	--	--	--	--
10	--	--	--	--	--	--	0.03	0.8	12.17	86.99	--	--	--	--
11	--	--	--	--	--	--	--	0.01	0.38	9.2	90.41	--	--	--
12	--	--	--	--	--	--	--	--	--	0.19	6.26	93.55	--	--
13	--	--	--	--	--	--	--	--	--	--	0.08	3.89	96.03	--
14	--	--	--	--	--	--	--	--	--	--	--	0.02	1.79	98.18

So as everyone around here probably knows already, we have a 0.5% chance of hitting the jackpot and picking 1st. What you may not have known is that we also have a 0.59% chance of getting the 2nd pick, and a 0.72% chance of getting the 3rd pick. That's about a 1-in-55 chance of lucking out (and 54-in-55 chance of picking 14th).

The last time we had ATL's pick, we had a 62.22% chance of keeping it, and we all know how that went down. The Hawks drafted Al Horford and we instead got their pick the following year, which turned out to be Fropez.

The odds for us are much longer this time, and we really shouldn't be getting our hopes up. But hey, anything's possible!

The lottery is taking place next Tuesday (May 19th).

Breaking news: Lakers disqualified, Suns in playoffs.

gadogry — Thu, 07 May 2009 19:31:45 -0000

The Associated Press -- Kobe Bryant must not have imagined this when he elbowed Ron Artest in the throat last night.

The NBA has taken drastic measures today, disqualifying the Los Angeles Lakers from the NBA playoffs for "unsportsmanship actions and behaviours detrimental to the NBA".

"By disqualifying the Lakers from the playoffs, we hope to send the message that any act of violence in an NBA game will not be tolerated", David Stern said in a statement. "Behaviours such as bodyslamming another player, flinging high elbows and messing with Ron Artest are certainly not acceptable".

To maintain the continuity of the playoffs, the NBA has decided that the Phoenix Suns, owner of the best record among non-playoff teams, will take the Lakers' place in the playoff bracket. They will play a best-of-five series with the Houston Rockets, with the winner advancing to the Western Conference Finals.

The sudden arrangement certainly took many Suns players by surprise. Steve Nash who is in Hawaii and had been doing nothing but updating his Facebook group, said that he is scrambling to book flight tickets to Houston and is doubtful for Game 1. Jason Richardson is in Michigan and had told the team that he would "drive as fast as I can" to Houston after dealing with an emergency in his family.

Despite the long layoff and a lack of preparation, some of the Suns players still appear confident going into the series. Amar'e Stoudamire, who missed the last 7 weeks of the regular season due to an eye injury, said that he has recovered and could give the Suns' already-potent offense a big boost. Center Shaquille O'Neal, who recently announced on Twitter that he cheated on his diet and ate the Jolly Green Giant for supper, posted another Tweet today comparing Houston center Yao Ming to General Tso's chicken.

Although it was unprecedented for the NBA to disqualify a team during the playoffs, the move was not unexpected. TV ratings of Lakers games had been dipping faster than Sasha Vuijvicivicicjvic reacts to foul calls, and there were rumours that the league wanted to win back its audiences by replacing the unpopular Lakers with the Suns, which plays an up-tempo style that's friendly to the casual fans.

Game 1 is in Friday night in Houston