everyone is tradable on this team for a right offer and that includes Kevin also
I think this is true but of course it depends on what is received in return. For instance, if Kevin was traded for an expiring contract and a first round pick, the front office needs to be lynched. Trading a potential star for uncertain return is irresponsible.
As to Miller, he seems to be one of the few players who has a solid and well defined roll on the Kings and he is playing it well -
FINALLY!!!!!. No matter what his age and what may happen in a few years, he would be a great loss to the Kings right now and the fans again would start a lynch party if nothing of value was obtained in return. Any player who touches the ball a lot in the flow of the offense, the best use of Miller, will have turn overs, whether they are the Midwestern apple kind or the basketball kind.
Now to focus on the usual suspects. I have seen one person, Kingster I believe, nail the situation with Bibby on the head. Even dumping his salary for nothing, which is really not possible, gets us nothing in the immediate future. It doesn't free up cap space. If you add Martin's salary of next year and the fact we are roughly $10 mil above the cap now, at the best it brings us down to the cap but certainly not lower so that the money freed up is useful.
There are some odd parts to the cap rules that make it more difficult to free up cap room. I believe it is paragraph 19 or 20 (off the top of my head). If your team salary is below the cap, the effective cap space is that amount plus the exceptions available. For instance, if we free up enough salary to be $5.8 mil under the cap, we need to add the MLE and that brings us up to zero cap room.
To free up $10 mil to go on a free agent hunt, we need to lower our salaries to $20 mil under the cap. (
What, Glenn ???????) This is because the effective cap space is $20 mil minus the totals of the MLE, Traded Player Exception, Bi-Annual Exception and Disabled Exceptions - whichever exceptions apply to our team.
This cannot be achieved with doing anything at all with Bibby's contract.
Artest is a different matter. I think he is very difficult to trade for the usual reasons of his impulsiveness and the troubles it causes but also because of the uncertainty of his status. He can opt out. Who wants to trade someone only to lose Artest in five months? If the value of losing him is the cap space he frees up, why don't we just let him go and claim that cap space, useful or not, for ourselves?
Then add in our need to trade a swing man or two. This is our biggest strength and our biggest problem. Doing anything with Bibby does nothing to solve that problem.
Trading Artest goes a long way to solving that problem and giving our offense more of a flow. Probably the only way of getting value out of Artest is with a sign and trade. This way the team who gets Artest gets a known situation - no opt out is possible. For Artest it means he doesn't have to settle for the MLE and it establishes his Bird Rights.
In the summer of 2010, we will have a lot of cap space. In fact it will be enough to get a major free agent. The problem with this is that free agents are not that easy to acquire and if you look up the free agents who will pop free in that summer, you will find very few and even less that might like to come to small town Sacramento.
So what's the best approach? I think the best approach to getting a power forward is a sign and trade with Artest. Acquiring a power froward also can be done with Bibby but Bibby has value even to us so I see it as a second choice. As much as people are in love with Udrih, he just might not be an adequate starting pg. Trading Bibby may not leave us in a position of finding a 2nd string pg but more in a position to get a first string pg!
As risk is always a part of a rebuild or any trade, rebuild or not, I'm inclined to take that risk as the combo of Udrih and Jones might work out just fine. If it doesn't, there are temporary stopgap measures in the use of Cisco and Salmons.
My approach takes as much wild speculation out of our circumstance as it can. Trading Bibby and Artest for draft choices, used shot clocks, bags of chips, and Nacho Grande and other uncertainties is not a wise use of two proven talents. Use them to get a power froward and a pure pg if possible.
They are worth it to the right team.
and occasionally blocking a shot every now and then. His passing has always been great.
