Agreed, but his value as a contract goes up. I'm not opposed to trading him this year, but as there isn't exactly a great group of FA available, why do it if you don't get more than what you would if you waited one year.
a) you don't get more. Guys are getting older, their roles are declining, this IS the peak value for players liek Brad and John.
b) you lose development time for your kids. Every minute Spencer is on the court instead of Brad, every extra minute we get to see ouot of Donte, help them develop, and help us guage their development. Also helps increase their trade value if we wanted to move them. The old guys are stifling them.
c) the fanbase needs a shakeup. Desperately. When you are a terrible team you can;t jsut keep on trotting out the same terrible players. Nobody wants to see them out there anymore. Soon nobody will care at all if we insist on sitting on them. There is absolutely no excitrment with this team. A young team wiht guys on the rise can be exciting even while losing.
d) better draft picks. Given how miserable we currently are, maybe this no longer applies. But in general, you ship out your vets, acquire assets, acquire caproom, and notch a couple of extra losses along the wy to improve your draft position.
e) free agency flexibility. EVERYBODY is trying to free capspace for 2010. If we put all our eggs in that basket we could be facing 10 other teams wiht major caproom, and threaten to get shut out entirely, especially if guys like LeBron start realizing where their bread is buttered and resign. If we have the caproom by this summer, then we can use it now, while few other teams are competing, or hang onto it for 2010 if there is nothing we like available. Lessons the chance of doing all the prepwork for 2010 and then coming up empty and saying what now. Also opens us up as a potential trade partner for various teams looking to dump sdalary before the 2010 rush.