Kings acquire Hilton Armstrong

What does cap space have to do with the trading deadline? I can see your argument for the offseason but the trading deadline? Here's a straw, quick, grasp it.


Capspace has a lot to do with making any trade. We are under the cap. Means that we had the flexibility in trades to take on extra salary to make to work. Now we gave almost all fo that away. Does not make a trade impossible, but it negates the advantage we had over all the teams over the cap having to strictly match dollar for dollar (with the 25% window of course).
 
Here is a list of players Petrie has signed or traded for in the last 4-5 years. I may be missing someone but this isn't exactly a stellar record. Let's be honest, the man is a terrific drafter and besides that he's not bringing much to the table recently.

Hilton Armstrong
Sean May
Sergio Rodriguez
Andres Nocioni
Ime Uodoka
Beno Udrih
Desmond Mason
Calvin Booth
Bobby Brown
Ike Diogu
Drew Gooden
Rashad McCants
Mikki Moore
John Salmons
Cedric Simmons
Wil Solomon
Shelden Williams
Orien Greene
Lorenzen Wright
Justin Williams
Jason Hart
Vitaly Potapenko
Mo Taylor


That's actually a very strong post -- do not know why I didn't think of that myself in past threads.

Dahntay Jones was in there too. Not sure if Ron Artest or Mo Evans would make the window. Or Sergei. Anyway, Hilton fits right in. ;)
 
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Why do we have to make a trade? Honestly you are a little too antsy to think clearly sometimes. Must we win a championship this season or bust? I mean, come on! Whats the hurry? Our superstar is ONLY 20!!!! We have time to build a solid foundation, our window is wide open for the next 10-15 years.

granted the trade doesnt hurt us, if there are no other moves... but we gain nothing by trading for a stiff like armstrong...

i know that we arent going to win a championship but i would like to see us make a move that could actually help us this season. do you honestly believe that hilton is that guy? he averages 2.4 fouls in 13 minutes of play thats a higher foul rate than thompson... he would foul out every night if he played 30 minutes a game... he'll have more fouls than thompson if he plays 20 minutes per game... complete waste of roster and cap space...
 
What does cap space have to do with the trading deadline? I can see your argument for the offseason but the trading deadline? Here's a straw, quick, grasp it.

I don't know if you realize it but, quite a few teams are losing money right now. Secondly almost 1/2 the teams in the NBA are going to be paying the luxury tax, creating quite a windfall for the other teams.

See Item 6:
http://espn.go.com/nba/dailydime/_/page/dime-100108-09/houston-rockets-join-chris-bosh-chase

Teams have before February 18th to get below the luxury tax limit. Therefore in this scenario our number 1 trade asset was our cap space. We should have gotten their first or made then take Nocioni and now that opportunity is gone.
 
A Roll of the Dice

Here is how I see this "trade":

-Kings get $$ (how is that bad?)

-Kings can save more money by waiving May (also, I don't see how that hurts the team... seems pretty useful)

-The Kings get a roll of the dice: here is a guy, in Hilton Armstrong, like May, Mason, and Udoka, (and Udrih for that matter) who never quite made the grade and the Kings are giving him a chance. Why not roll the dice on Armstrong? May isn't getting it done. It's not like he will be taking time away from a developing star... can he contribute more than May? maybe... let's roll the dice and find out.
 
Teams have before February 18th to get below the luxury tax limit. Therefore in this scenario our number 1 trade asset was our cap space. We should have gotten their first or made then take Nocioni and now that opportunity is gone.
Why would they have taken Noc if they are trying to get their salary down?

The only way I see us getting rid of Noc is if we give someone away to accommodate it (ie, K-Mart in a salary dump), at which point we'd all complain that we didn't get a better player in return.
 
I only went 4-5 years back. Basically since the "rebuild" started.


2010 is only 11 days old and he was traded for back in 2006... we could technically go all of the way back to the webber trade(feb 2005) if its 4-5 years back. which doesnt help geoff.... wow.... it really hasnt been that long. you could count all of geoffs good moves from that same time on one hand... and not use all of your fingers.... martin, evans, casspi, something else, something else... i wont know about donte until the end of the season because he was just so bad last year. im still not sure if he is a legit starter in this league yet. he's played well this season but so has beno, anything is possible...
 
Here is a list of players Petrie has signed or traded for in the last 4-5 years. I may be missing someone but this isn't exactly a stellar record. Let's be honest, the man is a terrific drafter and besides that he's not bringing much to the table recently.

Hilton Armstrong
Sean May
Sergio Rodriguez
Andres Nocioni
Ime Uodoka
Beno Udrih
Desmond Mason
Calvin Booth
Bobby Brown
Ike Diogu
Drew Gooden
Rashad McCants
Mikki Moore
John Salmons
Cedric Simmons
Wil Solomon
Shelden Williams
Orien Greene
Lorenzen Wright
Justin Williams
Jason Hart
Vitaly Potapenko
Mo Taylor
You forgot Ron Artest, Bonzi Wells, Cuttino Mobley, Shareef Abdur Rahim. Focusing on only the negative will cause a loss of credibility.
 
Why would they have taken Noc if they are trying to get their salary down?

The only way I see us getting rid of Noc is if we give someone away to accommodate it (ie, K-Mart in a salary dump), at which point we'd all complain that we didn't get a better player in return.

remember that Noc has a declining salary, so in the end there might be a small advanatge there that we could peddle to teams looking to lkimit future expenses -- your guy with the escalating contract for outr guy with the declining contract. Won't help this year, but could help teams near the cap in future years.
 
You forgot Ron Artest, Bonzi Wells, Cuttino Mobley, Shareef Abdur Rahim. Focusing on only the negative will cause a loss of credibility.


Were those posiitves? Well, I liked Bonzi, or at least what he did for us.

Also outside the window I thnk. If those guys are in, so are Kenny Thomas, Brian Skinner and Corliss Williamson.
 
Ok, many on this site know I am also a hornet fan (since Charlotte). I have seen quite a bit of Hilton, and I have said before that he is a smaller, weaker version of Kwame Brown. He has ZERO offensive ability. He's got bad hands. He has very, very questionable defense, and is often undersized at center (where have we seen this before?). He is essentially a taller version of KT as far as offense. This move provides NO help at the center position, because Brockman or JT could play center better than Hilton.

Despite playing 4 years at a quality program at UCONN (behind Okafor), and 4 years in the league, he hasn't improved one bit, and more importantly, HE HASN'T EVEN PUT ON WEIGHT AND DEVELOPED HIS BODY to match the strength of centers he matches up with. I'm telling you, the kings are getting a waste of a roster spot. This guy shouldn't even be in the league, and the only reason the hornets kept him was because they had one of the weakest frontlines in the league the past few years.

And this trade DOES hurt the team because a conditional pick is included, and if Hilton takes away minutes from Brockman or Hawes. He, every once in a blue moon has a highlight block or putback dunk, but the 99% of the rest of the time doesn't compensate for that.
 
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granted the trade doesnt hurt us, if there are no other moves... but we gain nothing by trading for a stiff like armstrong...

i know that we arent going to win a championship but i would like to see us make a move that could actually help us this season. do you honestly believe that hilton is that guy? he averages 2.4 fouls in 13 minutes of play thats a higher foul rate than thompson... he would foul out every night if he played 30 minutes a game... he'll have more fouls than thompson if he plays 20 minutes per game... complete waste of roster and cap space...
That which doesn't hurt you only makes you stronger, right?

And anyway, who cares if he fouls a lot, we aren't depending on anything from him anyway. I just don't get why everyone is so up in arms, like we just traded Tyreke for the rights to some scrub who won't come play in the NBA or something. It's just a lateral move that has 0% chance of failing and could actually help plug a hole for a couple minutes a game. I don't get it.
 
You're right. Johnson. Liked that guy. Bibby trade, right? Man, imagine Bibby next to Tyreke......

The thing is, we may not have Tyreke if we wouldn't have traded Bibby. We made the decision to rebuild. We weren't going to win a championship with Mike Bibby at PG. He might have gotten us 5 more wins and less ping pong balls. We would have ended up with a pick in the 5-8 range and probably ended up with Rubio or Curry.
 
That which doesn't hurt you only makes you stronger, right?

And anyway, who cares if he fouls a lot, we aren't depending on anything from him anyway. I just don't get why everyone is so up in arms, like we just traded Tyreke for the rights to some scrub who won't come play in the NBA or something. It's just a lateral move that has 0% chance of failing and could actually help plug a hole for a couple minutes a game. I don't get it.

Have you not read anything in this thread about how this could affect us at the trading deadline? This takes away a lot of flexibility that we had be previously being under the cap.
 
I don't get the move. We have someone to come off the bench to help JT and Hawes: Jon Brockman. If this guy isn't a solid starter, I don't know how can he really improve our holes in the paint.

However, as long as this isn't a trade and it only means one more man in the roster, no one less, I agree it's 0% risky. So I'll wait what he does on the court to call him anything.
 
Capspace has a lot to do with making any trade. We are under the cap. Means that we had the flexibility in trades to take on extra salary to make to work. Now we gave almost all fo that away. Does not make a trade impossible, but it negates the advantage we had over all the teams over the cap having to strictly match dollar for dollar (with the 25% window of course).


$2.8 millions is a rounding error in the NBA. Unlikely to make or break a deal if one is to go down.

.
 
I don't get the move. We have someone to come off the bench to help JT and Hawes: Jon Brockman. If this guy isn't a solid starter, I don't know how can he really improve our holes in the paint.

However, as long as this isn't a trade and it only means one more man in the roster, no one less, I agree it's 0% risky. So I'll wait what he does on the court to call him anything.
The only way I could understand this is if they feel Brockman can't play against taller centers. Westy has said as much. But the problem with this logic is that Armstrong can't either. Despite his height, he's weak. He doesn't defend well. He can't score. He gets pushed around by the bigger centers, and hasn't developed his body to compensate. So really, this move makes no sense, unless the kings scouting is just really, really poor.
 
I don't get the move. We have someone to come off the bench to help JT and Hawes: Jon Brockman. If this guy isn't a solid starter, I don't know how can he really improve our holes in the paint.

However, as long as this isn't a trade and it only means one more man in the roster, no one less, I agree it's 0% risky. So I'll wait what he does on the court to call him anything.
Interior defense.
 
I don't get the move. We have someone to come off the bench to help JT and Hawes: Jon Brockman. If this guy isn't a solid starter, I don't know how can he really improve our holes in the paint.

However, as long as this isn't a trade and it only means one more man in the roster, no one less, I agree it's 0% risky. So I'll wait what he does on the court to call him anything.


We've been looking for a third player with any height for a while now (Donte does not count), and its been a season long thorn for Westphal -- he's talked about it repeatedly. One bit of foul trouble, one injury, and we are midgets. And yes Brockman is a fun hustle guy, but he's still a midget. When Cisco gets back we'll have three SFs taller than he is.

But if the height can't really play it doesn't really matter if its on your roster. Who knows, mayube the team spirit infects Armstrong too and he picks his game up, but he's just doesn't seem like a great candidate for an inspirational turnaround. Not sure he either gets it or particularly wants it.
 
I can't believe that this trade has already generated 8 pages of posts...

I actually like this trade.

If someone could say, "I will give you some cash and a big man - and Sean May will never even be considered in touching the court again"... I will say, "thank you very much"...

Kings need a back up big man that can act like he is 6'11". Kings also need someone else other than Sean May. Kings also need cash.

No one says Petrie is done, so relax and be happy this trade isn't a BIG one that is horrible salary dump (like the 3x ones we have had over the last 2 years)...
 
I haven't perused all the posts on this thread (I will later :D) but here's basically a thumbnail scouting report on Armstrong:

Armstrong is a center through and through--he lacks versatility and only plays that one position. Offensively he isn't totally involved in the offense, and looking at his game you can see why. Let me just put it this way--that Kwame comparison is apt--he's very turnover prone historically, he has an uncanny ability to get a lot of his own shots blocked, and he also lacks that short mid-range game from 5-10 feet to optimize his paint game. If he gets some form of playing time with us (thankfully, I doubt he's not talented enough to really cut into Thompson's minutes), you can expect some of that clumsiness to unleash itself every now and then. Moreover, he appears to lack range on his shot, so he can't circumvent this problem and as a result has to play much more around the basket. I guess the only two semi-good things he does around here is that he dunks frequently and gets to the line at an okay clip, but the latter is negated by poor free throw shooting. There's certainly a basketball IQ issue related to his clumsiness, I think. So overall Armstrong is a fairly useless on offense--no range and clumsy around the paint when he's not dunking; in fact, the Hornets have been significantly worse on offense whenever he was on the floor, like playing 4-on-5.

It really doesn't get any better in other areas of his game--he's a below average rebounder, particularly on defensive rebounds, and he is completely nonexistent as a passer and won't work well in any motion offense, so there's not even an all-around game to mitigate his atrociousness offensively.

Defensively I guess it's slightly better, but there's still holes. The primary problem is that he's just very foul prone--the last two seasons, if you scaled it to 40 minutes, he would foul out every game :eek:, and this once again illustrates his lack of discipline/fundamentals. His individual defense is pretty poor--opposing bigs tend to shoot, score, and rebound well against him--but he makes up for it somewhat by making defensive plays. He's an adequate enough stealer and shotblocker with his mobility and length, but it appears in recent years that he's starting to draw charges. That makes him a decent team defender, so there's some tradeoff here.

Overall Armstrong's just a very, very fringe NBA player. It tells you something when Armstrong--a former lottery pick--is basically traded for a bag of chips. He hasn't improved one iota since entering the league, and he's soon to be punching his ticket out of the league. The problem with him, in particular, is that there's no one particular skill he can bank on at all, so he's basically, sad to say, almost just a "body" out there. Team defense is something that's just an added dimension to bankable skills, so it's not something a player can rely on. Just in summary: no versatility, clumsy paint offense, no range, turnover prone, bad rebounder, nonexistent passer, poor individual defense, decent team defense. Only one in eight elements of his game is even decent. He's soon to be out of the league.
 
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