a) peoples' numbers are always down the first year back from knee surgery. That was only compounded with the awkward fit with Love. He also played a few fewer minutes.
b) he only had the one injury, and came back to play 76 of 82 games in his first year back. Its been a long time (80s) since torn ACLs were a kiss of doom on a career.
c) this is really a bird in the bush sort of proposal. Take the sure thing rather than gamble on a draft pick who may or may not work out. The sure thing in this case is a 20-10 guy with probably the best post game in basketball, so that draft pick not only has to work out, he has to work out in a big big way to make this a ridiculous idea.
d) of course much woudl depend on how he would work with Dalembert, and I am not truly buying that he and Dalembert both play in the post. Saying a guy who scorer 8ppg plays inthe post is kind of silly. He (Dalembert) obviously clears out when Jefferson goes to work in that scenario. Should be noted hwoever that Doug Collins (who may or may not be right) listed as one fo the reasons he was behind the Dalembert trade was because he did not think Dalembert and Brand played well together. Jefferson is >>> Brand at this stage, but stylistically there may be some similariities.
e) Dalembert/Jefferson/Thompson/Landry is now taking things too far the other way -- you don't have minutes for all those guys unless Landry slides over and plays some of his bench minutes at SF. That worked for the Rockets BTW, but otherwise at a bare minimum you are talking Jefferson 32, Dalembert 24, leaving 40 total minutes for Landry and Thompson together.
f) I still have concerns over Jefferson's fluidity and ability to fully mesh in a winning team's offense, but so much of that just may be because we've never seen it. And the team's he has been a part of truly have been terrible -- its not as if there were any of them that were dissapointing. Talentwise he's been sitting out there all alone wiht a buunch of complete garbage around him. Arriving in Sacto with all our accumulated young talent might be a heck of a relief for him. (Now how often can you say arriving in Sacto is a big step up in talent?)
g) remember my proposal last month about trading for Jefferson and then going to LeBron and saying how would you like to play alongside Reke and Big Al?
Unfortunately that was predicated on us matching salaries so at to preserve Lebron cap room, and unless we somehow pulled that off here even with Noc's salary gone, this deal for Big Baby would essentially eat not only our #5, but out cap room as well. So you are talking two major assets.