|
July, 2006 With deals being finalized by the Hornets in what has been a busy off-season for the team, now might be a good time to start examining the moves by Hornets GM Jeff Bower. In this article I’ll play devils advocate, and let you decide what you think. Who’s in and who’s out? In the draft the Hornets took two big men in the first round. With the 12th pick they selected UConn center Hilton Armstrong. Three picks later with the 15th pick they selected NC State power forward Cedric Simmons. Lastly, in the second round with the 43rd pick they selected small forward Marcus Vinicius from Brazil. After the draft, the Hornets acquired forward Peja Stojakovic, from the Indiana Pacers. Peja was originally expected to simply sign with the Hornets as a free agent on July 12th, the first official day of the free agency period. However, he ended up being acquired in a sign-and-trade deal in which the Hornets sent out Andrew Betts, who was nothing more than a throw in to make the trade work. By doing this the Pacers, rather than lose Peja for nothing, were able to get a 7.5 million dollar trade exception. In return Indiana sent cash to the Hornets. By orchestrating the deal this way the Hornets were able to start his contract at a lower amount, but with higher raises in order to allow for more cap room this off-season. Other than that it did little more than put a little money back in Shinn's pocket. The next deal was to get Tyson Chandler from the Chicago Bulls. The Hornets, in return, sent out PJ Brown and JR Smith. Next, was coming to terms with free agent guard Bobby Jackson, of the Memphis Grizzlies. Jackson is expected to sign a three-year deal shortly. To round out the players on their way out, Hornets top reserve and Sixth Man Award runner-up; Speedy Claxton opted to sign with the Atlanta Hawks. Part-time starter Kirk Snyder was dealt to the Rockets for cash future draft considerations. Finally, seldom-used Arvydas Macijauskas was bought out and has signed with a club in Europe. Did you get all that? Incoming: Hilton Armstrong, Cedric Simmons, Marcus Vinicius, Peja Stojakovic, Tyson Chandler, and Bobby Jackson. Outgoing: PJ Brown, JR Smith, Speedy Claxton, Kirk Snyder, and Arvydas Macijauskas. So what does this all mean, where does this leave the team? The Optimistic View First off, the Hornets made a big splash by landing three-time All-Star, and arguably the second best free agent this off-season, Peja Stojakovic. Right off the bat this dramatically helped to fill one of the Hornets biggest needs and that was outside shooting, with the other being interior defense, which we’ll get to in a minute. Peja is one of the best three point shooters in the league and a former two-time Three-Point Shootout Champion in 2002 and 2003. Peja should come in and immediately give the Hornets nice size and a scoring punch in the backcourt with Chris Paul. He will spread the floor and knock down threes at a regular clip. He is a career 40% three-point shooter and 90% free throw shooter. Last year he ranked 13th and 2nd in three point and free throw shooting percentage respectively. Coach Scott’s history with Peja was a big influence on him coming to the Hornets and their good relationship should make for an easy transition with the team. With a fresh start with the Hornets, Peja will have the opportunity to show us how great of a shooter he really is. Taking the role as the teams primary scorer and having the benefit of constantly being set up by on of the leagues best point guards, he will have the opportunity to return to the 24ppg scorer that he was just two seasons ago. In their second big move, the Hornets helped to fill their other big need – interior defense. This was done with the acquisition of Tyson Chandler, who at only 23 is already a 5-year veteran in this league. Tyson is a big body whose main focus is on the defensive end. He is a good rebounder and shot blocker who will complement David West very nicely in the frontcourt for years and will certainly help the team’s paltry rank of 22nd and 24th in rebounds and blocked shots respectively. With most of the scoring coming from the newly acquired backcourt, he won’t be asked to carry much of the scoring load. You should, however, expect a slight increase in his scoring with Peja Stojakovic spreading the floor and Chris Paul running the show, he should get plenty of easy looks in transition. With top reserve Speedy Claxton asking a little more than the Hornets were looking at spending, the Hornets opted to replace his “sparkplug” role with that of Bobby Jackson, who is another top reserve in his own right. Bobby isn’t much of a traditional point guard and will probably see some spot minutes playing at the two, as Speedy did last season. He is more of a scorer than a playmaker, and that will probably be his primary role off of the bench. As one of the better 6th men in the league in the past Bobby should have no problems with this role. In the draft, the Hornets got the two players they were said to have had ranked the highest at that point in the draft. Hilton and Cedric will provide similar production. They are athletic big men who can run the floor along side Chris Paul, block shots, rebound, and get a few easy buckets, similar to Tyson Chandler. Both players played a respectable Summer League and should get some decent backup minutes here and there throughout the season. Lastly, while not an addition, by trading Kirk Snyder the team was able to free up enough space to resign Rasual Butler, who was their best three-point shooter from last season. This coming season his role will likely be limited to backing up Peja. Having Rasual coming off the bench will give the Hornets the benefit of not significantly losing their three-point threat when Peja sits. All in all the Hornets filled their primary needs going into the off-season, by adding three point shooting, and depth and defense to their frontcourt. Breakdown The Hornets are a better team; it’s as easy as that. They lacked three-point shooting, so they went out and got one of the best three-point shooters in the league. The lacked interior defense in rebounding and shot blocking, so they went out and got one of the better young big men whose focus is primarily focus is defense. They lost their sparkplug off of the bench, so they went out and found an adequate and cheaper replacement. These additions were made without giving up either of their core pieces: Rookie of The Year, Chris Paul, and the runner-up Most Improved Player, David West. Both of these young players will continue to improve. The additions of Peja and Tyson should only help their improvements. In contrast to last year, the team will also now have some depth and athleticism in the frontcourt, with their two young big men each coming off of the bench. Best of all they were able to make these improvements without giving up much in return. They gave up nothing of value to acquire Peja, and even got cash in return to boot. In acquiring Tyson they gave up only aging big man PJ Brown who had already expressed an interest in going to a contender, and disgruntled guard JR Smith, who was virtually unused last season. In acquiring Bobby Jackson they give up nothing by signing him as a free agent, only reducing they amount of money they are spending on their “spark-plug” role. Lastly they were able to make room to resign returning three-point leader Rasual Butler, by moving the contract of Kirk Snyder. The Hornets are now a better offensive and better defensive team. With the improvements to Chris Paul and David West, this team should have enough firepower to make up the gap between last seasons finish and a Playoff birth and eventually become a Championship contender, or will they? The Pessimistic View The Hornets addressed all of their major needs coming into this off-season. What could be bad about that you might ask? Well for starters they overpaid for Peja Stojakovic. His contract is for 64 million dollars over 5 years. That is an average of 12.8 million per year. Shinn is saying this might be the biggest free agent signing in the team’s history. The last time he shelled out big time dollars it was for Larry Johnson, and we all saw how that turned out. Peja’s contract might have been acceptable for him a couple of years back, but right now he is 29 years old and injury prone. Sure he is great three-point shooter, but he has also never played a full season and averages 9 missed games per season. Just a few months ago he missed the majority of the Pacers playoff series with the Nets, a series that the Pacers proceeded to lose without him. He certainly would have helped them, but he doesn’t exactly have a history of being a clutch player in the postseason either. The Playoffs are time when the star players’ stats usually increase, unfortunately for the Hornets, Peja’s drop. Speaking of dropping, Peja’s stats have declined the past two seasons from 24ppg in 2004, to 20ppg, and 18ppg, in the last two seasons respectively. The Hornets were scrapping for every win they got last year, can they really afford to have one of their star players missing games and not stepping up in the Playoffs, or not even continuing at the level he is already at for that matter? Speaking of injuries let me introduce Tyson Chandler. Tyson has Peja beat, he averages 14 missed games per season, and has a history of back problems. I could talk about how Tyson is overpaid, but what defensive minded big man isn’t? But seriously, 10.5 million per year, with 5 years left, for a guy who averaged 5ppg last season? True, Tyson isn’t going to be looked at to score points, he’s here for defense, but for that amount of money you had better be averaging more than 9rpg and 1.3bpg [his numbers from last year]. Tyson is like Ben Wallace, down to the horrid free throw shooting, its just Tyson is not anywhere near as good. Ironically that’s whom the Bulls signed as a free agent subsequently making Tyson available to the Hornets. Wait, I’m not done, everyone say hello to Bobby Jackson. Ok, now say goodbye to Bobby Jackson for about 19 games per season. Yep, you probably didn’t think anyone could beat Peja and Tyson, but here you have it, the third priority on the Hornets off-season plans. Bobby Jackson has a history of being a great 6th man off the bench, but a player is only effective when he is on the court? I’ll cut them a little slack here though; Bobby Jackson is coming fairly cheap and for not quite as long as the former two, but I can’t help but seeing a pattern here. On to the draft picks, no, they haven’t missed any pro games yet. I wouldn’t say the Hornets drafted poorly, but I also wouldn’t say they drafted that great. They took two big men, which wasn’t really a bad idea being that they were a little thin upfront, but we then found out right away that they had a deal working for Tyson Chandler, this then makes using both draft picks on big men a little bit more puzzling. Considering they were in need for a legitimate two guard as well, you would think this is something they would address in the draft, especially with Ronnie Brewer still up for grabs. Nope. Now fast-forward a couple of weeks and we see that all three of their shooting guards from last season are now gone, but we’ll get to that in a minute. Brewer was one of the most NBA ready players, especially when compared to the two picks the Hornets made. Brewer would have given youth, size, athleticism and a solid all-around player to put next to Chris Paul for years. He might not have solved their outside shooting need, but it could be worse, they could be paying 13 million per year for a 29 year old, injury prone…well you get the idea. Lastly, the team just shipped out Kirk Snyder, their starting two guard for much of last season. Kirk was the third shooting guard shipped out of town this week. You might expect to get something back for a young player who started much of last season for you, but they didn’t. In fairness, they did this as a salary cap move in order to retain Rasual Butler whom they obviously value higher, but the only thing they got was cash and future draft considerations, which is expected to be the option to swap future second round picks. Other than putting a little cash back into owner George Shinn’s pocket, that is hardly compensation. But that’s not quite it, not only did they give him away for virtually nothing, but they gave him to their division rival! Breakdown What does this all boil down to? Well last year the Hornets overachieved, a lot. Believe it or not, the Hornets were not as good as their record. Many of their wins came against teams playing without their star player, this isn’t something you can count on in the future, and isn’t something should be ignored in the past. Injuries cost wins, mark that down Hornets. Even with all of this overachieving the Hornets were still fourth out of five teams in their division, only beating out an injury depleted Rockets team, who, when healthy, is easily a top team in the West. So after all of these expensive moves to improve the roster the Hornets are likely at best the 4th best team in their division and that’s assuming they can make up the 11 game difference between them and the Grizzlies. If not they could very well finish last in their division. Ouch. Yes, the Hornets improved, they are a more talented team than last year, but so is everyone else. You would think that all of this spending and adding players would make them a Playoff lock and a possible Championship contender, but no, these moves did nothing more than make them a contender just to make the Playoffs. The Hornets started to decline at the end of last season while other teams got better. The Kings improved dramatically after trading Peja Stojakovic for Ron Artest. (Yes, the same Peja the Hornets just acquired, go figure.) The Rockets will improve by default. Simply getting their star players back healthy, catapults them above the Hornets. The Jazz who were also slightly better than the Hornets last year, also improved. They added veteran guard Derek Fisher, NBA ready Ronnie Brewer, and a healthy Carlos Boozer to start out the season. In case you’re counting, that’s one more example of a team suffering when one of its star players sits. So after all of this, the Hornets are better, they are a Playoff contender, but is that good enough? They now have a large chunk of money tied up in two players who probably aren’t worth their contract and who will continue to eat up cap space for 5 years. What happens when Chris Paul and David West are up for big money and this team is at best a perennial exit in the first round? What happens when Stojakovic has to sit part of the season? What happens if they do slip into the playoffs and Peja slips out the back door? What happens when Tyson’s back starts giving him trouble? What happens when their 6th man can’t make the trip from the bench to the court? What happens when this team is trapped as a mediocre team, with a Championship Contender’s pay roll? Worst of all, what if they never accomplish much and Chris Paul decides to leave town? Things may unfold in the optimistic light or they may turn out looking like the pessimistic view, I guess it remains to be seen. In all actuality it will probably be somewhere in-between the extremes, but I’m willing to bet it’s closer to the later. |
