The Quick Shot 02.18.09: The Tyson Chandler Trade

Posted by Andrew Tobolowsky on 02.18.2009

Say whatttttt?

The biggest problem in sports, in my opinion, is no salary cap in baseball. I'm supposed to give a crap, and cry, about what A-Rod or Barry Bonds did or didn't do when, thanks to the rules, a totally of maybe six teams have a chance to win the whole thing every year? It's cheating when a player on the Texas Rangers or San Francisco Giants, neither of which team has made any kind of difference in like thirty years, does something that affects some of his at-bats, some of the time, but it isn't when the Yankees are the only possible suitors for a quarter of a billion dollars worth of baseball players?

Right. "Oh no! Did you hear about that one guy on the Pirates who's juicing? We're going to have to use one of our real pitchers against them instead of just bringing someone down from the stands like we usually do".

(I know the Giants made the World Series within the last half decade, based largely on Barry's bat and Jason Schmidt's roided up arm. I'm just saying.)

The second biggest problem, apparently, is no trade commissioner in Basketball.

Dear New Orleans Hornets—it is probably a bad sign when you trade one of your best players and the headline on ESPN doesn't even mention who he was traded for.

Dear New Orleans Hornets—it is probably a bad sign when you trade one of your best players and the headline takes pains to note "it's not for basketball reasons."

I'm not overly concerned that the Hornets did something dumb. What pisses you off as a fan is why they didn't decide to be dumb in your direction. Last year's trade of Pau Gasol for Kwame Brown is an excellent, excellent example of what I'm talking about.

It's not REALLY that the Grizz gifted the Lakers with perennial title relevance that gets you. It's the question: why the Lakers?

What, your team didn't have somebody who sucks as bad as Kwame Brown to trade for an annual All-Star? There's no way Chris Wallace made more than one phone call to make that deal happen. Unless of course the deal was so dumb it made everyone paranoid.

Wallace: "Hi, I'd like to trade you my best player for one of your worst. Your pick!"
Any other GM: "…Really? Did you…did you cover him in cholera as part of a plot to wipe out my entire team? YOU DID, DIDN'T YOU? I'M ON TO YOU."
*click*.

Admit it Chris, you just threw a dart at the wall and went with it.

And now this year.

Tyson Chandler is not quite the player Pau Gasol is. But he is younger, cheaper, and has one commodity that all teams need. He's a major, all-world rebounding power and a pretty good interior defender. And this was a straight, no-conscience salary dump—both Chris Wilcox and Joe Smith, the players he was traded for, come off the books after this year and unless they want to work for what passes in the NBA as free, it's unlikely that they'll stay. So, Tyson Chandler for nothing.

In all fairness, this trade is more defensible than the Gasol-Nothing trade for several other reasons besides the fact that T-Chan isn't quite as good. For one thing, the Hornets were smart and dumped him on the farthest thing from a contender they could find so he won't bother the rest of us for at least a couple years. And in this economy their owner probably really did need the money, not just would have been happy to have it.

But you couldn't get a couple draft picks out of it from somebody, New Orleans? Nobody would have traded two scrubs AND a pick to you for interior help? You do know that even though everyone talks about how great Chris Paul is—and he is—he still needs SOMEONE to pass to right?

Oh well. These things do happen. Congrats to OKC, big ol' raspberry to the New Orelans front office which apparently didn't feel like working very hard.