Early Thoughts on Sixers and the Paul Non-trade

          A few thoughts on the Sixers and the NBA:

·       I’m not as convinced as the Sixers seem to be that it’s a good thing that they are returning with the same core group from last year. They are completely over blowing the idea that it gives them an advantage early on. By the time the playoff push comes around it won’t matter, and they won’t have enough to contend. That said, I like that Thaddeus Young was re-signed for a few years and that they only committed to one year with Spencer Hawes. Let’s see more of him without getting locked in to a potentially bad contract.

·       According to Kate Fagan, the Sixers are looking to move Marreese Speights. He’s in the last year of his contract per ESPN. Even though it’s a relatively small number, I’d rather see them take the cap relief next year unless they are going to get a real contributor this season which is hard to imagine for Speights.

·       The Sixers have through Friday to use the amnesty clause, according to ESPN. I guess it makes sense to wait as long as possible to see if they can work a trade or to see what happens with injuries, but with Young signed I’m still hoping Andre Iguodala is the player they let go. The two players are too much alike, and the Sixers need to do more than release a bench player to start to get some cap flexibility.

          As a minor point of a previous post I mentioned that teams didn’t have to pay the player that they waive. I was vigorously corrected on the Facebook page. Teams still have to pay the player, it just doesn’t count against the salary cap. I’m not sure what happens if a player is taken by another team, and don’t really care about the financial bottom lines of billionaire owners unless it impacts the team. However, I should have been more careful.

·       While most analysts on ESPN were acting as if the Chris Paul trade to the Lakers being blocked was an affront to the players and even reported possible legal action by the players union – gee, I guess they’re real card carrying union guys again – I thought it was the first thing the NBA did that made sense this off-season. The NBA cannot allow players to continue to force teams to trade them to their destination of choice. This isn’t supposed to be high school with a bunch of cliques known as New York, Miami, LA, and Boston. The lockout was actually supposed to partially be about solving that issue. Unfortunately, it was just about money.

·       All the reporters doing Chris Paul’s whining for him should be embarrassed. This had nothing to do with his rights. He has a contract. Just because he’s decided that it would be a good career move to play in L.A. doesn’t make it his right to do so.