If I'm DA there is no way I'm trading Bradley for Gortat, Varejao or pretty much any other player that has any chance of being available to us.
Why?
1. Bradley is an elite (and game changing) player on defense. He had the potential to becomes a Payton/Rodman type player in terms of the way he could one day impact the game defensively. When you have a guy who can dominate a game without needing the ball in his hands (like Rondo) teams are typically very hessitant to give those guys up.
2. Rondo is the future of this team, and he LOVES playing with Bradley. The two have exceptionally good chemistry together already - Rondo knows exactly where to Bradley's sweet spot is, and Avery's defensive ability covers nicely for Rondo's tendancy to cheat on defense. With Boston already starting to transition into the new generation they will want guys who are young and who can play alongside Rondo once our 'big two' retire - Bradley is perfect.
3. We are currently somewhat inside a transition period. Danny wants guys who are capable of helping this team compete for a title, but at the same time he doesn't really want to 'rent' old guys who may only stick around for a year. This is made obvious by the number of long term contracts Ainge handed out this season (Terry, Lee, Green, etc). Bradley is only 21 years old and has massive potential, but aside from that he has already proven his ability to be a major contributer on a chapionship contender. Plus we all know Danny and Doc love guys who are warriors, who play with 110% effort every night, and who are willing to sacrifice their body for the greater good of the team. Bradley is the purest example of the type of player Doc and DA want on this team right now.
4. Bradley is on a very small rookie contract. On the one hand this means we have him on a major bargain, because his contribution to the team FAR outweighs what we are paying him. On the other hand his contract is too small to match salaries with any other (useful) player in a trade, so any trade involving Bradley would also require us to give up other key players too. Bradley on his own is such a valuable player to us, so giving him AND another key player up is giving up a lot...
5. He's coming off major surgery on both shoulders. For us that is practically zero risk due to his small contract, but for any other team it's a major risk because they would need to give up a Josh Smith / Marcin Gortat calibre player in order to convince Doc to part with him.
Also the claim about Bradley not having the size to play SG - absolutely false. Does anyone remember the classic Detroit combination of Isiah Thomas and Joe Dumars? Was probably one of the most dominant guard combo's of all time, and it reminds me a LOT of what we have in Rondo + Bradley.
Look at Bradley's age along with his defensive ability and his already solid offensive game. He'll never be a Michael Jordan, Tracy McGrady or even an Allen Iverson calibre player on offense, but he's very capable of becoming a Joe Dumars calibre player on both ends of the floor.
If Doc does do a trade, then (as I've been saying for a while now) our most redundant players are:
1. Lee
2. Bass / Sullinger (either one of the two)
Bradley will be back in our lineup well before the Jan 15 (that date at which we can trade our new guys) and once he is we have the following players / roles in our guard rotation:
1. Rondo - Pure playmaker and distributer
2. Terry - Perimeter shooter and clutch scorer
3. Bradley - Lock down defender
4. Barbosa - Slasher / volume scorer
5. Lee - jack of all trades guy
The only guys you could argue redundancy with are Lee and Barbosa, but so far Barbosa has done a pretty decent job as a backup PG (4 Assists/TO) and has kept us in a lot of games with his ability to put points on the board in a REAL hurry. His min contact salary also makes him not very useful in any potential trade deals.
Lee on the other hand has quietly done a very small amount of everything, and a large amount of nothing. His most valuable asset right now is his defense, but that becomes a moot point once Bradley returns. His solid contract ($5M/year) will contribute well to any 'salary match', while he is relatively young and there are a lot of teams who would have interest in him.
Bass and Sully are both undersized PF's who can only play one position (both suck and C and are too slow for SF). You could argue that Bass is of greater value due to his stronger mobility and defense, but you could also argue Sully is more valuable becuase he's very young (20), a very good rebounder, and a capable inside scorer. Plus he's shown us over the last couple of games that he's very capable of hitting the midrange jumper...and like Barbosa/Bradley his small rookie contact wouldn't do much for salary matching.
Actually, in our current situation Lee + Sully probably works the best. That adds up to right on about $7M which is pretty much a dead match for Gortat's contract. Throw in a 1st round pick and Phoenix are getting a pretty good deal. They get a fairly young and athletic starting calibre SG who can do a bit of everything. They get a very young PF with great skills and solid upside. They get a 1st round pick that they can use to draft more talent.
For us, we get Gortat, a legitimate double-double on a nightly basis and a guy who's got the potential to be an All-Star if put in the right situation.
Our lineup then looks like this:
PG: Rajon Rondo / Leandro Barbosa
SG: Avery Bradley / Jason Terry
SF: Paul Pierce / Jeff Green / Kris Joseph
PF: Kevin Garnett / Brandon Bass
C: Marcin Gortat / Chris Wilcox / Jason Collins
Gortat is also young enough to be our center of the future, and our future lineup could look like this:
PG: Rajon Rondo
SG: Avery Bradley
SF: Jeff Green
PF: Brandon Bass
C: Marcin Gortat
Pretty nice ballance between scoring, defense and rebounding on that team there and it would also be a very athletic lineup.
I like the Gortat idea - he's a VERY good center who (due to his small contact) we could potentially give up relatively little to get.
Phoenix may even take Darko as part of the deal - they may like the ability to buy him out for an extra Roster spot and a bit of extra cap space, and if he's not going to stick around ere it's a benefit to us as well.
I actually really think this deal benefits both teams. Sullinger and Lee are both good enough to start for Phoenix (Sullinger ironically is probably better then Beasley already, and Lee could either start or play the sixth man behind Shannon Brown) while they could easilly play Scola at center.
For us we'd get Gortat who - even in his limited offensive role - is still practically averaging a double double. He's at 11 points, 9 rebounds and 3 blocks right now in 33 minutes, which is exactly what we need.
Topic: Boston Very Interested in Gortat (Read 41012 times)