I get annoyed at some sportswriters who think that every team except for the NBA Champion (and sometimes even the NBA Champions themselves) needs to make high profile trades and acquisitions in order to improve their team.

They grade a team on what they did to shake up their team in the off-season, including giving some teams poor grades for ONLY re-signing their free agents and a couple of draft picks.

There are teams that make frequent trades and/or bring on good free agents and they never seem to improve much. There are teams that never seem to make any trades and they are good to great year after year.

That’s not to say that teams shouldn’t EVER make some moves to get markedly better, but I think two things need to be taken into account by every General Manager in the league. (I actually think most of them do, much to the dismay of their local sportswriters and/or fans.)

At the risk of repeating myself, I explain yet again why the boring teams in the offseason are usually the teams playing in the NBA Finals.

Read the rest of this entry »

The free agents available were good, but not really great. Most teams didn’t have more than the mid-level exception to spend on free agents in any case. Most top players were expected to re-sign with their current team.

Big trades break GMs much more often than they make them, so they are not often willing to pull the trigger on them.

The draft was so deep that most GMs wanted to see how well their draft picks did, and hope that they might be better than any possible player they can get in Free Agency. It’s rare indeed when the biggest talk after the trade moratorium is lifted is how well your rookies are playing in the Summer Leagues.

All of this provided for a rather bland off-season acquisition and trade season thus far, but lets look at the highlights as of early today, July 18.

Read the rest of this entry »

Veterans, who in their prime were a force to be reckoned with, are going to contenders simply to get a ring.

I don’t fault them much for that. But is the ring really that important if it doesn’t have your team’s name written on it? Some might argue that if they are a help to their team then, yes, it means something.

I don’t know.

It seems weird the Gary Payton and Antoine Walker got Miami rings. And that Brent Barry and Michael Finley got Spurs rings.

You also wonder, though, if it is in the best interests of the team to take on these veterans who have lost a step.

This is where I am REALLY going with this article.

Read the rest of this entry »

Losing the veteran leadership of Derek Fisher, who was released by the Utah Jazz at the guard’s own request in order to care for his daughter and her much publicized bout with eye cancer, is going to be a great loss for the Utah Jazz. The Utah Jazz succeeded where the other young but very talented team, the Toronto Raptors, failed. It is likely that Fisher’s leadership was key to their success in their first post-season experience in the last four years.

You have to wonder, though, how long the Jazz have known that this was going to happen — most likely far in advance of the draft.

Let’s look at the facts and where the Jazz find themselves now.

Read the rest of this entry »

With Kobe Bryant’s rants making the headlines, everybody has to be asking themselves if Kobe was happy, sad, or indifferent that Luke Walton will be his running mate for the 2007-2008 NBA Season.

Read the rest of this entry »