Would you consider...

[BawLa]

trading Kevin Martin or John Salmons in order to move a bunch of our "icky" contracts???

Depending on the specific deal, I must say that I would. Clearing cap space, and physical room, will act as a catalyst for our rebuild. Obviously moving KMart gives us more contract-removing-ability than a John Salmons per-se, but I do think Salmons still has good value. An example of such a trade would look like this:


Chicago Bulls:

Outgoing:
Tyrus Thomas
Ben Wallace
Kirk Hinrich
Ben Gordon

Incoming:
Kobe Bryant
Shareef Abdur-Rahim
Kenny Thomas
Jordan Farmar

New Lineup:
Duhon/Farmar
Bryant/Sefolosha
Deng/Nocioni
Noah/Thomas
SAR/Smith

Anytime you make a trade, whoever gets the best player wins the trade. Therefore Chicago wins this trade everytime. In this particular version, Kobe and Deng are their 1-2 punch. SAR will make a solid 3rd option, especially if they can get him to start drawing double-teams. Nocioni continues to be the 6th man, and Duhon/Noah/etc. are defensive specialists. Of course losing Ty.Thomas hurts, but turning him/Hinrich/Gordon into Kobe works nicely. A team with Kobe in the East can compete yearly, and more importantly, Kobe is the finisher that Chicago needs. (Noah/SAR and Thomas/Smith or Brown seem like adequate pairings)

Los Angeles Lakers:

Outgoing:
Kobe Bryant
Kwame Brown
Jordan Farmar

Incoming:
Kirk Hinrich
John Salmons
Brad Miller
Ben Gordon

New Lineup:
Hinrich/Fisher/Critt
Salmons/Gordon
Walton/Radmanovic
Odom/Turiaf/Cook
Bynum/Miller/Mihm

Anytime you lose one of the best players in the league, you are going to be hurting. But all things considered, this trade is not too bad for LA. They have made it no secret that Bynum is the future, and turing a ME-ME guy in Kobe into TEAM players like Hinrich/Salmons/Gordon/Miller is not a bad way to go. Those 4 guys may not be as stellar as Kobe, but they would give this team some much needed depth. Hinrich is the new ball-controller, and Salmons has shown that he is capable of sharing those duties. Plus they can run their offense through Bynum and Miller as well. Maybe I'm not looking at it the right way, but this team seems pretty dangerous, considering they are losing Kobe. It will take time for them to get used to the triangle offense, but it is not like they were competing for anything other than the 8th spot in the West anyway.


Sacramento Kings:

Outgoing:
Brad Miller
John Salmons
Shareef Abdur-Rahim
Kenny Thomas

Incoming:
Tyrus Thomas
Ben Wallace
Kwame Brown

New Lineup:
Bibby/Udrich
Martin/Douby
Artest/Garcia
Ty.Thomas/Watkins/Moore
Wallace/Brown/Hawes

Anytime you can drop fugly contracts like Miller/Thomas/SAR and you only bleed one talented player, you have to consider it a win. We have plenty of depth at the 2-3 position, and a guy like Salmons is what pushes this trade through for LA. And it is no secret that Tyrus Thomas in Sac would make a bunch of us happy. But adding Wallace too is like icing on the cake. All of a sudden, we have turned our "skilled" big men into giant rebounding, defensive big guys, and we will have much more money to work with to complete the team. Hawes will have plenty of help around him to develop. This team looks much more competitive on so many levels. Now I know what you are going to say...Wallace and Artest on the same team??? Are you crazy!?!?... Yes I am. And if you don't like it then you can insert your favorite Artest trade (Like Balkman/1st rounder/expirings for example).

http://games.espn.go.com/nba/featur...2&teams=13~13~23~23~4~13~13~4~23~4~4&te=&cash=

 

[Gary]

I have always said that nobody on this team is safe from trade.

Martins new deal confirmed this. OK well kind of confirmed. You can argue either way on this one.

Take a look at his deal though. For a 4th year player who has been better and better every year who basically can give a team a slasher (I think every team needs a player like Martin whether or not he is the first option).
There are about 20 teams that would take Martin right now.

For starters he is signed to a long term deal at a pretty good deal if he were to be your 2nd option. This would insure you would not have to worry about his deal expiring, or signing him to a new contract. In the west alone you can make an argument that Martin is better than every other SG out there except McGrady, and maybe Manu.

These two things make his trade value pretty damn good.

 

[Bricklayer]

Well Salmons of course -- he;s not too far off being a crap contract himself.

But you don't trade away a young star player (Kevin) -- in fact your only star gong forward -- just to unload contracts. That's nutty.

 

[BawLa]

But you don't trade away a young star player (Kevin) -- in fact your only star gong forward -- just to unload contracts. That's nutty.

What if you could get rid of

Miller
Thomas
SAR
Bibby
Artest

in the process? And you get back a young talented player or two... Would you reconsider?

I would. Don't get me wrong. I love Kevin. He is everything you could ask out of a young SG and more (at the 26th pick). It just seems to me that we could reproduce another KMart relatively easy. But finding multiple trade partners for the likes of ^those fellas is basically impossible. Losing KMart would suck, but we would all of a sudden have enough money to go any direction we want (assuming that GP would spend the money wisely). Simultaneously we would be dumping our less than stellar players.

Next year's salaries would total less than $20M which would give us over $40M to work with. We could build an entirely new team and hopefully find an angle to sell to the fans.