Quote:
Originally Posted by
Bricklayer
You do??? 
Good lord -- when we talk about being too soft, we are talking first and foremost about Peja. He is at the heart of it. If the intangible is being unassuming, then maybe. Maybe I say, because I'm still not sure how much Peja pouted a former teammate out of town. But anything else? Hustle, desire, toughness, leadership...these are all intangibles too. And I'm sorry, but Peja's not even on the map as a competitor.
As for Boston fans being glad -- you are quite mistaken. Go check out a Boston board sometime and see what they think of a Pierce/Peja swap. Its not pretty. Actually since the various Peja trade rumors first started popping up last summer, to the best of my knowledge there has not been a single fanbase that has WANTED Peja for their players, no matter whether it be Pierce, Artest, Odom, KG or whoever. The bizarre Peja love affair is strictly a one town phenomenon, and the players that they WOULD offer back in exchange I would never consider. I think even those of us Kings fans not enamored of the myth of Peja still have a considerably higher opionion of him than fans of the rest of the NBA do.
starks said:
for some fans Peja is superstar (better than Kobe)...on the other hand for some of king's fans (brick) he worth nothing (getting Hoiberg for Peja will be great deal) but the truth is somewhere in the middle.....I'll be happy if we can get Brand, Radmanovic and Jaric through trade(s) for Peja, Mobley and Corlls (Thomas) .....somehow...btw I don't like Pierce's game...not proven in play-off, expensive and low percentage scorer but that's just my opinion....also I'd like to see Oberto from Spain on King's roster for next season
It's not that Peja is a superstar. Well at least I don't think that. I think at best he's a good number two option. A kind of "roleplayer +" with a lot of good basketball skills and experience and a killer jumpshot. He doesn't have the size or the toughness or the speed to put a team on his shoulders and lead them like the superstars in this league do. If he's got the right team to set him up and he isn't the sole focus of the opponents defensive he'll score a lot of points. But he's never going to be
the guy for any team.
What I object to is the notion that you can just swap out players arbitrarily for "better" ones and put them together and that adds up to a better team. The Kings had a kind of magical chemistry going the past few years where they were better than the sum of their parts. That kind of chemistry is hard to create and I think finding the right guys and putting them together is Geoff Petrie's greatest credit. You have to consider personalities and playing styles if you want to create an actual team. That's the difference between teams that underperform (like say, the Clippers who should be winning a lot more games with the talent they have - or the Suns last year - or the TWolves this year) and teams that overperform.
So while Kobe Bryant is a great individual player, Peja is a better team player -at least for this team - and if you make that trade (just speaking hypothetically right now) you're probably going to get more scoring and rebounds from that one player, but they'll be a corresponding negative affect on the overall team efficiency and the two might cancel each other out. With someone like Kobe Bryant maybe the talent level is high enough that you still come out a winner, but we're not talking about Kobe Bryant here we're talking about Paul Pierce, who could generously be described as a "poor man's Kobe Bryant". And maybe Paul Pierce is that much better that it's a good deal. And maybe somehow he finds his happy place in Sacramento and establishes a new team chemistry. But ultimately it's not as simple as exchanging players for better players, even if you accept that Paul Pierce is by some measure "better" than Peja Stojakovic.
Looking in terms of improving the team, you've got those three big guys to trade if you're hoping to bring in a new top player. PG and C spots are a lot harder to replace than wing players who can shoot three's. Add to that the uncertainty of Peja's contract situation and he's clearly the best option to trade of those three. I don't dislike the idea of trading Peja all-together. I just think his qualities as a teammate are being underrated in most of these trade talks (which tend to focus on stats). And I don't think moving Peja for Paul Pierce instantly makes us measurably better - because of the team chemistry factor. I can even give you a few examples.
(1) The Doug Christie for Cuttino Mobley trade. Most people would have looked at Mobley as the "better" player. Did the team get any better with Mobley replacing Doug? Technically you got another "initiator" (to borrow your term Brick). But if you looked at that trade and thought it made the Kings better, you probably didn't account for just how important Doug was to the team chemistry. I think Mobley's scoring was cancelled out by the drop in team efficiency and we might have even come out worse in that situation. I think the trade was more about contracts or trying to shake things up while a championship was still a possibility, but if you just look at the players, that's a good example of how important team chemistry is to winning games.
(2) I've used this example before, but I'll use it again because I think it's a good one. The US Olympic basketball team. That's what happens when you build a team based on the idea of getting the "best" players you can and expecting them to play together. And the organizers have even admitted as much, saying that next time they'll have tryouts and put much more emphasis on roles when building the team. The role players are just as important as the superstars. The US Olympic team overall had way more talent than any other team in the world, and they got the bronze medal. They lost to teams with players that were "worse" if you want to take them in a gym and have them demonstrate their skills - but they had team chemistry. And chemistry counts for a lot. That's what Detroit and San Antonio had this year more than any other teams in the league. And the year we made it to the conference finals was with a core of players who had been to the playoffs several years in a row as a team and learned how to win together. That doesn't just happen overnight.
About Boston fans, I bet they don't like a Peja/Pierce swap. Because they're looking at stats quite obviously or maybe the one or two games they saw with him so they don't know what he brings as a teammate. And his value to any other team is going to be less than it is to the Kings because he's already established that chemistry here. Boston fans, or at least a good portion of them, want Pierce out. And it's not because of his skills on the basketball court. It's because he's never lived up to the leadership role they expect out of him. He's a skilled basketball player, no doubt. But he's a big attitude problem. That's not to say he'll always be an attitude problem, but it's definately a factor we should consider. Remember how Boston won a whole string of games when Antoine Walker came back? That's what team chemistry will do for you. They went from underperformers to overperformers just like that and it isn't because Walker is such a great player. It's because they were motivated to win again. And you have to ask yourself if you're trading for Pierce why they couldn't win before Walker got there if he's such a great leader and a star and all of that.
And yes, I think Peja is a solid competitor. I don't always see hustle and leadership from him, but I've seen it enough to know he has it in him. And I like how unselfish he is. He doesn't have the Ray Allen killer instinct where he knows his shot is going to go down and he'll kill you with it. That's what people want in a shooter and it's disappointing to see that he hasn't developed that yet, but then again he's always been playing second or more often third banana so he hasn't had much of a chance to develop that killer instinct. He came up as a rookie on a team with Vlade Divac and Chris Webber and Jason Williams. Is it that surprising he isn't creating his shot and calling for the ball all the time? His job was to hit threes. Last year he proved that he could be more when given the opportunity. I'd like to see what he can do this year when he'll need to be a scoring leader again.
