The Sports Guy has his annual NBA Trade Value column up, finally. It is my favorite Sports Guy column every year. In it, he ranks the top players in the NBA according to these rules:
1. Salaries matter. Over this season and the next two, would you rather pay David West $27 million or Amare Stoudemire $43 million?
2. Age matters. Would you rather have Chauncey Billups for the next five seasons or Rajon Rondo for the next 12?
3. Pretend the league passed the following rule: For 24 hours, any player can be traded without cap ramifications but with luxury-tax ramifications. So if Team A tells Team B, “We’ll trade you Player X for Player Y,” would Team B make the deal?
4. Concentrate on degrees.Neither San Antonio nor Orlando would make a Howard-Duncan trade, but the Spurs would at least say, “Wow, Dwight Howard’s available?” and have a meeting about it while the Magic would say, “There’s no frickin’ way we’re trading Dwight Howard.” That counts in the big scheme of things.
5. The list runs in reverse order (Nos. 40 to 1). So if Carmelo comes in at No. 16, players 1 through 15 are all players about whom the Nuggets would probably say, “We hate giving up ‘Melo, but we definitely have to consider this deal.” And they wouldn’t trade him straight-up for any player listed between Nos. 17 and 50.
Personally, I think he has David West, Tony Parker and Ginobili way too high. Take West away from CP3 or Parker/Ginobili away from Big Fundamentals and they would all be shells of their former selves.
Pre-ACL he had Al Jefferson @ #9.
:(
But there is tons of discussion fodder NBA fans.