Mark Deeks

Mark Deeks owns and operates ShamSports, and doesn’t do much else with his time. He is even more not-Canadian than Trey Kerby, being born, raised and stuck in England. When not writing about basketball, he can be found either appearing on game shows, inventing character names for non-existent sitcoms, or Googling his own name.

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Even though they agreed to a rather unilateral choice of words that are quite clear in their intention, the NBA Player’s Association are trying to bend a CBA rule that they only just signed off to. Supposedly misleading terminology with regards to quite when a player’s “Bird rights clock” resets — as to whether it resets upon being placed on waivers, or upon clearing them — has seen an action brought that might change the status of some players, for example Chauncy Billups, heading into this summer’s free agency period.

There wasn’t any confusion about it until someone decided it would be really convenient if there was, but anyhoo.

If the action is successful — which it surely won’t be, but still — no one stands to gain more from this than the New York Knicks. Very, very few are ever claimed off waivers, yet the Knicks currently have two such players obtained in this way; not only that, the two were big contributors this season. Without Steve Novak and Jeremy Lin, an unsatisfactory Knicks season would have been an outright disaster.

If the NBPA’s “our bad, we didn’t mean that, can we have another go?” legal argument is successful, the Knicks will thus have early Bird rights on both Lin and Novak. They will then be able to spend an amount up to (and in fact slightly exceeding) the mid-level exception, without having to use their actual mid-level exception to do so, in re-signing them, as opposed to the barely-above-minimum contracts that non-Bird rights offer. If the action is successful.

If.

However, if the NBPA’s claim isn’t successful, the Knicks are in a bind. They’ll now have these two key players as free agents, and likely a third, too, as J.R. Smith has a player option for next season. If he also opts out, he too will have only non-Bird rights, and can be re-signed for only 120 percent of this year’s salary, as-near-as-is $2.8 million. Failing that, he too will cost some or all of the MLE. And failing that, he’s leaving. The Knicks didn’t have very many key contributors this season, and yet three of them may be about to bail because the Knicks just can’t pay them.

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The San Antonio Spurs just absolutely bowled over the L.A Clippers, a week after absolutely bowling over the Utah Jazz. They are on an 18-game winning streak, 24-point deficits be damned, and have been thoroughly untroubled on their way to the Western Conference Finals. Over the last month of the season, they have been the best team in the league, and it’s not been especially close.

Like a fine wine, and completely unlike gum disease, the Spurs only seem to improve with age. They have won four of the last 14 championships, and made the playoffs for 15 straight years, winning no fewer than 50 games in any full length regular season during that time and only failing to get out of the first round three times. Their winning percentage in that time is about 135 percent. And they never, ever seem to fall off.

It is not a coincidence that, 15 years ago, they drafted Tim Duncan, the unquestionable best power forward of all time even if he is a center. It is too simple, however, to credit the Spurs’ two decades of continued success solely to him. Nor is it fair to credit it all to Gregg Popovich, the NBA’s longest tenured coach in his first and only NBA gig. San Antonio’s continued success is multifaceted, contingent not just upon Duncan, Tony Parker, Manu Ginobili, Gregg Popovich, R.C. Buford or the role players, but all of it. The pattern. The formula. The Spurs way of doing things. Spurs basketball. Whatever that is.

One alpha dog, two beta dogs, and a few puppies. Few bad eggs, and even the bad eggs they have will play hard. A mixture of age and youth, athleticism and guile, defense and offense, jumpshooting and paint production, transition and halfcourt. Doing so on a smaller budget than most, constantly flirting with (and sometimes paying) the luxury tax, but without ever wanting or wishing to. Finding cheapies, plugging them in, building them up, letting them leave, finding new cheapies. Moving the ball, shooting the ball, rotating, picking and rolling, carpe dieming, with precisely one All-Star in this superteams era. It doesn’t seem that hard, but seemingly no one else can do it this well.

The Spurs continue to milk this formula, with an alpha dog whose averages are only slightly better than those than Carlos Boozer. And yet Tim Duncan never declines significantly. He plays less now, but he plays just as well. He passes just as well. He reads the defense just as well. He shoots bankers just as well. His driving righty flip-hook-layup-whatever-it-is thing is just as good. He still never, ever goaltends. He produces 90 percent of what he did when he won his first title, 14 years on. And now, rather than relying on Mario Elie, Malik Rose and Jaren Jackson for support. Duncan has a deep, deep supporting cast.

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Time was when a torn anterior cruciate ligament meant your career was over. At best, it was far different. As Bernard King can attest to, torn ACL’s weren’t understood, well treated, or even properly diagnosed. Bad knees were bad knees. Your knee didn’t stop hurting, you got taken out back and shot. That was the last time you ever used the knee.

However, the 21st century, with its flying robot cars and jetpacks for all, is a very different place. Advances in medical science, and a more important concurrent awareness of these advances, have led to enlightened times. Now, a player can tear an ACL and still play.

There is no greater testament to this than the fact that, as best as I can ascertain, 18 players currently in the NBA have previously had torn ACL’s surgically repaired.

That number does not include Ricky Rubio and Eric Maynor, promising young guards who tore ACL’s earlier this season. It does not include Derrick Rose and Iman Shumpert, who tore their ACL’s earlier this week. It also does not include the dozens of others in the recent history of American professional basketball to have had the surgery — of which a non-exhaustive list can be found here — nor does it include the hundreds of NFL players, other sportsmen, or those of us in every day life. Now that we’ve learned (and been bothered) to diagnose it properly, it turns out the injury is rather common.

You can play again after tearing your ACL. In fact, you can even play without having any at all.

The more pertinent question is to what standard you can play. The proliferation of torn ACL’s does not make the injury any less severe. No two ACL tears are the same, nor are any two victims, if that’s the right word. You can’t compare Adam Morrison’s athleticism after his ACL tear to Derrick Rose’s before his, not unless you were playing the Opposites Game. (And if you were, you’d win.) To find a median, then, we ought perhaps look at the aforementioned 18 and try to establish some precedent.

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To trade someone so quickly after committing to them for so long is very rare, especially when you’ve owned the incumbent player for a full decade beforehand. But it does happen. In light of trading him Washington yesterday, a mere three months after re-signing him to a 5-year $65 million contract, Denver are being accused of demonstrating buyer’s remorse over Nene.

But this is not strictly true.

Sam Amick reports that Denver began working on trading Nene almost immediately after re-signing him. He is unmistakably right, and it took only three months to go from the planning stage to completion. However, looking to trade Nene immediately is not, in itself, evidence of buyer’s remorse. That is evidence of something else.

That, if anything, is reselling, pawnbrokering, wheeler-dealing, merchanting. That is buying purely with intent to sell later on. That is either asset management or borderline deception, depending on your opinion. Whatever it is, it is not remorseful.

It was deliberate from the start.

Denver knew something we didn’t, something they never told us. They never wanted to re-sign Nene in the first place. Nene was re-signed for five years and $65 million because that was the cost of re-signing Nene, and not because Denver thought he was worth it. Denver had a choice — either lose Nene for nothing, or overpay him significantly. Even knowing that they would rather give minutes to Kenneth Faried, Kosta Koufos and Timofey Mozgov, young bigs with potential, they chose the latter, re-signed Nene for big bucks, and then spend half the year playing him out of position. An overpaid asset is a better asset than no asset at all, and for as long as Nene’s perceived value (scorching hot after the summer courtship) outweighed his actual value, Denver intended to cash in. They did just that.

With this in mind, the trade starts to look a little different.

Regardless of any individual opinion with regards to the returned player, Javale McGee, Denver just got a productive, athletic, young big and emphatic salary relief in exchange for their non-All-Star highest-paid player whom they did not even want. “Buyer’s remorse” is not as fair of a representation of the saga as might be “buyer’s consolidation.” Denver didn’t regret re-signing Nene, as they did it specifically to deal him. A delayed sign-and-trade, if you will. And they’ve been able to complete it far soon than perhaps they expected.

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Indisputably, incontrovertibly and unmistakably, Derek Fisher can no longer play at a high level. He exists solely now as a mistake-free three-point specialist who even then hits only two threes a week, to the point that rookie Andrew Goudelock became the Lakers’ go-to three-point option instead of him. The defense has gone, the shot is going, and the point guard play was never really there. With all due respect, Fisher is a shell of his former self.

Of course, although he couldn’t play, he did play. A lot. Alongside the similarly struggling Steve Blake (24.7mpg, 5.7ppg, 3.5 apg), Fisher was half of the worst positional rotation in basketball. It was no secret that this week, somehow, the Lakers were getting a point guard. The only thing unclear was who.

The Lakers got that point guard yesterday, trading Luke Walton along with a first round pick and Jason Kapono as salary filler, to Cleveland in exchange for Ramon Sessions and Christian Eyenga.

Sessions had long been considered the target, so this was no surprise. The only surprise was the inclusion of Walton’s redundant, dead-weight, not-expiring, still-amazed-they-didn’t-amnesty-it contract (and its 7.5 percent trade kicker). Walton will now earn over $6 million next season to do nothing at all for Cleveland, and all they get to offset that cost (which is roughly equal to what Eyenga and Sessions would earn combined if Sessions opted in) is a protected low first-round pick. The Cavaliers, willing and able to pay bad salaries if they get future assets in the process, have done a much lesser version of what they did at the last deadline, taking on Baron Davis to get Kyrie Irving. But taking on Luke Walton to get Festus Ezeli isn’t quite the same. Sessions should have had more value than this, and only the threat of his possible opt-out this summer can really explain the cheap dump and hefty Walton penalty.

Eyenga and Kapono can be disregarded as salary filler. Eyenga lost any role he may have had with his underwhelming play, lack of development, and the emergence of Alonzo Gee as the far superior contributor. Like Fisher, Kapono is a three-point specialist who never actually shot them, mainly because he barely played. Their roles in the deal were merely financial. Even the pick and Walton were, and will be, largely meaningless. This was about Sessions.

Sessions gives the Lakers what Fisher and Blake never did: a pick-and-roll option. Criticisms of Kobe Bryant’s ball dominance and shot selection maybe be valid — very, very valid — yet they must be tempered with the realization that no one else could really do anything. It was tough enough for Fisher to get the ball up court sometimes, and the small forward trio of Devin Ebanks, Matt Barnes and Ronny Peace weren’t helping. Sessions gives the Lakers this ball-handling option, the man who gets the ball over halfcourt every time, can find Pau Gasol in pick-and-pop situations, will get Andrew Bynum the ball in the middle, finds the rolling man, hits cutters, and can drive-and-kick to the Lakers’ mediocre outside shooters. He expands a playbook that, whoever’s fault it is, wasn’t very expansive.

It must be noted, however, that Sessions is ball dominant. Whenever he has thrived as a player — most notably, the crazy Larry Krystkowiak era — Sessions did what he did because he had free reign to do what he wanted. No one else could handle the ball, so Sessions did, solely and exclusively. Off the ball, his usefulness is extremely limited. Moreover, since his explosion into the league as an assist machine, Sessions has bizarrely tried harder and harder to be a scoring talent. And he just isn’t one. His jumper is poor, his efficiency worse, and his finishing around the basket isn’t great, yet too often, Sessions looks for his rather than others. Considering how good he can be at looking for others, it is frustrating.

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The Portland Trail Blazers’ 2011-12 season started terribly when Brandon Roy announced his retirement, and then it got worse. It got worse and worse and worse and worse and worse, to the point that they fell behind by 43 points in a recent loss to the Celtics, and damn near surpassed that with a 42-point loss Wednesday night to a team whose coach quit earlier that morning. And then yesterday, it got worse.

Or, if you like, better.

With two deals, and the firing of coach Nate McMillan, Portland didn’t so much press the reset button today as park a bus on top of it. They dealt Gerald Wallace to New Jersey for an expiring salary, a dead salary, and a potentially lucrative pick, and followed that with a second deal that sent Marcus Camby to Houston for Jonny Flynn, Hasheem Thabeet and a second round draft pick. They’ve enjoyed and suffered through the busiest day of anyone since Ray Liotta in “Goodfellas,” but in doing so, they may have stopped the rot.

What they didn’t do was what we most expected them to do — trade their backcourt. But it wasn’t for a lack of wanting to. Raymond Felton is in the midst of an absolutely terrible year on the court, turning it over too often, having more field goal attempts than points, demonstrating scant little understanding of time and score and yet seemingly not being too bothered about the whole thing. Off the court, he has one-upped that by leading a “revolt” against head coach Nate McMillan. In between his poor play and toxic behavior, Felton has made himself thoroughly undesirable, even (it seems) as an expiring $7.6 million contract.

The Blazers searched “desperately” for a taker for Felton, and the only option with traction was a swap with the Lakers centered around Steve Blake. But Blake has two guaranteed years of salary after this one, whereas Felton expires this summer. Felton may have been a mistake, but compounding it with another one solved nothing. So, for now at least, Felton stays.

Similarly, prized offseason acquisition Jamal Crawford was shopped all over the show, and no one offered enough. The L.A. Clippers offered Ryan Gomes, but the Blazers balked at it on account of Gomes’ guaranteed salary for next year. The same is true of the Lakers’ offer of Derek Fisher. The Timberwolves talked about a swap for Michael Beasley, but changed their minds, and the teams who competed with Portland for Crawford this summer — Chicago and Sacramento — no longer seemed interested. In between shooting 40 percent and selling out his coach, it appeared that like Felton, Crawford ruined his own trade value. And rather than committing to unwanted salary, the Blazers preferred to gamble on him opting out.

While those two survived the cull, a third supposed problem child did not. Not so long ago, whilst making known to the public the depth of the problems with Felton and Crawford, John Canzano also openly cited Camby and his “lethargy” as part of the problem with the team. Combined with the almost 350 career games that the near-38 year old has missed in his career, his declined athleticism, and almost total lack of contribution as an offensive player these days, Camby’s trade value has diminished to this point, a point where he’s dealt for nothing more than two emphatic draft busts and a pick in the 50′s.

The Blazers hope for addition by subtraction. The Rockets hope to score a cheap starter. Both might be right. For whatever reason, Houston thrives on rejects and misfits. Channeling the 1999 Spurs, they actively seek them out, which is why they had Flynn and Thabeet in the first place. It cost them a first rounder to get Flynn, and it cost them a second to move him; in light of what has transpired this season, Camby can be considered a reject, thereby continuing this trend.

Nevertheless, this is nothing but a short rental. All salaries involved in the deal were expiring. Houston had previously declined the team options on both Flynn and Thabeet, two former top six picks not even making it to the end of their rookie scale contracts. This is not the answer to Houston’s center search. This a rental for a second round pick. And Portland knows this too.

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The biggest deal of deadline day thus far sees the New Jersey Nets trade Mehmet Okur, his expiring $10.89 million salary, Shawne Williams, his not-expiring $3 million salary, and a 2012 first round pick to Portland, in exchange for Gerald Wallace.

Wallace, a one time All-Star and long-time quality player, averages nearly 13 points, 7 rebounds and 3 assists on the year, in addition to quality, versatile defense. He dramatically improves New Jersey’s weakest position, small forward, where a whole host of players have been rotated through. After deciding Stephen Graham probably wasn’t the answer, the Nets turned to Damion James. When he got hurt, Keith Bogans, Larry Owens, Andre Emmett, Gerald Green and Dennis Horner all took turns. The longest runs have been given to Williams and DeShawn Stevenson, who are shooting 29 percent and 25 percent from the field respectively. Given that they had absolutely nothing at that position, and traded absolutely no production to get it, getting a fringe All-Star is a significant upgrade to the collective nothing that went before.

But let’s not lose sight of the issue. In spite of how good he is, and how bad D-Steve has been, New Jersey are not really trading for Gerald Wallace. They are really trading for Deron Williams, again.

And inevitably, it’s all for Dwight Howard.

The entire plan, the whole thing, the whole shaboodle, everything the Nets have thrown away the last two years for, is based around Dwight. Prokhorov didn’t buy the team to get Dwight, the team isn’t moving to Brooklyn because of Dwight and they didn’t trade their only semblance of a long term plan for Deron because, at the time, they expected to get Dwight. But it did become the expectation, and it did become the plan.

It became a very good plan, too. The future looked good. Deron Williams, the impressive rookie MarShon Brooks, the probably impressive rookie Harrison Barnes, Kris Humphries, Dwight. That’s some front five. New city, new arena, new fan base, plenty of money in reserve, Jay-Z adding some luster. No depth, but that doesn’t matter. That was the plan. It was beautiful. And when Howard declined a move to the Chicago Bulls, the best team in the league, because Derrick Rose was too famous or the weather was too windy or whatever the hell reason he used, the Nets’ plan looked almost consummated. You don’t disregard Chicago and consider joining the Nets unless you really, really want to join the Nets. Up until this week, it was all-consuming.

But it didn’t work. Dwight opted in. It seems now that he didn’t really, really want to join the Nets after all.

Not yet, at least. The pipe dream still exists. Dwight didn’t sign an extension with Orlando, commit his adult life to them, or declare an undying love that would only have looked facetious by this time; instead, he merely opted in. He opted in for only one year. In 12 months time, therefore, it is more than likely to be the case that Howard — who has trolled the entire NBA media and tormented his own team’s fans for a whole year — is going to be doing it all again. And so what is a stay of execution for Orlando is essentially an adjournment for New Jersey. The plan is still to get Dwight. By this time, it rather has to be.

However, in the time in between the two, one big variable exists. While Dwight Howard opted in, Deron Williams didn’t. The whole Dwight plan was, and is, dependent upon Deron. Concurrently, keeping Deron was, and is, dependent on getting Dwight.

New Jersey knows Dwight only joins them if Deron Williams is here. It’s why they traded for him in the first place. And it’s still the case. This year, they didn’t get Dwight, even with Deron. Now, to get Dwight next year, they need to keep Deron.

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Mark Deeks

Recent Posts

Why this summer is a tricky one for the Knicks

Posted by Mark Deeks under New York Knicks on May 24, 2012

On the San Antonio Spurs’ continued greatness

Posted by Mark Deeks under San Antonio Spurs on May 22, 2012

Why Derrick Rose’s ACL tear isn’t the end of the world

Posted by Mark Deeks under 2012 NBA Playoffs, Chicago Bulls on May 03, 2012

Why trading Nene was always Denver’s plan

Posted by Mark Deeks under 2012 Trade Deadline, Denver Nuggets, Los Angeles Clippers, Washington Wizards on Mar 16, 2012

Nostalgia is dead — Examining the Lakers’ point guard upgrade

Posted by Mark Deeks under 2012 Trade Deadline, Houston Rockets, Los Angeles Lakers on Mar 16, 2012

How the Trail Blazers totally nailed their one-day rebuild

Posted by Mark Deeks under 2012 Trade Deadline, Portland Trail Blazers on Mar 16, 2012

Why the Gerald Wallace trade is really about Dwight Howard

Posted by Mark Deeks under 2012 Trade Deadline, Brooklyn Nets, New Jersey Nets, Portland Trail Blazers on Mar 15, 2012

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