Three, the old-fashioned way

Three events seem to have changed the way NBA GMs currently think about team management:

1. Summer of 2007: the Boston Celtics trade for Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett, who team up with lifetime Celtic Paul Pierce to create the original “Big 3.” They immediately won the 2008 “Anything is Possible” Championship and have been perennial contenders since.

2. February 1, 2008: the LA Lakers trade for Pau Gasol, who joins Kobe Bean Bryant and the inconsistently very good Lamar Odom to form, I suppose, “The Triangle” that has won the past two NBA Championships, including last season’s “I Want to Thank My Therapist” Championship.

3. July 8, 2010: LeBron James takes his talents to South Beach, where lifetime Heat Dwyane Wade and the newly acquired Chris Bosh were waiting to form what I’ve dubbed “Two Men and a Baby” and to win the latest “Championship Awarded Before the Season Starts” Championship.

One event that might reset the way NBA GMs think about team management:

1. Sometime today or maybe even tomorrow (still uncertain when): Carmelo Anthony is officially traded to the Knicks to join Amar’e Stoudemire and the potentially unfulfilled promise of Chris Paul/Deron Williams/Dwight Howard to win the “Might Reset the Way NBA GMs Think about Team Management” Championship.

To reiterate, Anthony isn’t even officially on the team yet, but rumors are already flying about who will join him in 2012 to form David Stern’s favorite trio of superstars in New York.

But, according to this (Insider) report from ESPN’s Chad Ford and this much more detailed but slightly less pessimistic column from New York Times’ Nate Silver, there may be a significant hurdle between Anthony’s first Knicks appearance and his second All-Star teammate.

That hurdle is the same one the NFL is facing with ‘round-the-clock coverage: the collective bargaining agreement.

According to Ford and Silver, the new NBA CBA, which is an awkward name, should lower the salary cap from this season’s $58 million. In 2012, again according to Ford and Silver, the Knicks will owe roughly $44 million to Stoudemire (at about $20 million), Anthony (at about $20 million), Renaldo Balkman, and Toney Douglas, which means they couldn’t afford another max contract at the current rate (about $20 million per year) without some of the cap loopholes that Silver can tell you more about (including the Lakers payroll of about $92 million).

(According to Wikipedia and my own calculations, which are a much worse sources than Ford or Silver, the Heat’s big three average $18.21 million per year, with Wade taking a little less and Bosh and LeBron earning a little more, for about $54.63 million.)

So, here’s why I think this Knicks drama will and/or should reset the way that NBA GMs put together teams:

1. We’re running out of superstars. Silver calculates that there are ten legitimate superstars in the NBA (including only four of the players mentioned above). But even with a more generous definition of superstar or star – say for example the 25 All-Stars from last weekend, the league’s a bit shy of the 150 it would take to populate all 30 teams with 3 stars each.

2. Spending your entire salary cap on just 25% of the roster is a bit absurd anyway. Obviously, this essentially happened with the Heat, and it could potentially happen with the Knicks, but that doesn’t necessarily make it a good idea. Some owners and GMs, I would imagine, would just balk at this idea outright.

3. Depending on how the CBA works out, the salary cap may not leave room for three max contracts (which technically isn’t possible now). Even though the players’ union is presumably about unity, I don’t necessarily think they will want to lower the max contract amount proportionately to the salary cap. So, let’s say the salary cap drops from $58 million to $45 million. Are the max contracts going to drop to $15 million? That’s a 25% drop, which might be a hard sell to players who probably think they’re worth more than $20 million anyway. It’s much easier to see the lowering of the salary cap as a dissipated, less personal, egalitarian concession.

4. Number 4: franchise tags, something the owners are evidently also asking for in the new CBA. This would immediately and almost absolutely prevent the kind of free agent ship-jumping that lead to The Heatles, as Wikipedia calls them. I guess, maybe – and it’s a long shot, the NBA might not franchise tag Paul if they still own the Hornets by 2012, but it’s hard to imagine Howard or Williams being freed to go if the franchise tag is an option.

Of course, GMs could form their triumvirates the old-fashioned way: by drafting and cultivating talent, like the Spurs did (Tim Duncan, #1 overall in 1997; Manu Ginobli, 57^th in 1999; Tony Parker, 28^th in 2001). That only led to three NBA Championships (the first with retiring David Robinson) in 6 years, including 2007’s “Even LeBron Isn’t Good Enough to Win a Championship on His Own” Championship.

Question of the Day:

If the NBA does allow the franchise tag option, which team will have the toughest decision to make?

My take: For a lot of teams (Cleveland and Toronto come to mind), the toughest decision might be: should we even use the franchise tag? So, I thought about picking one of those teams, but I’m going Golden State. David Lee seems to be settling into a good-but-not-great production scale, but Monta Ellis and Steph Curry present a veritable (hypothetical) conundrum.

Re-sign, don't resign

Many pitchers and catchers reported for MLB Spring Training yesterday, which means that Matthew will start demanding the fantasy baseball draft soon. But it also means Albert Pujols’ self-imposed get-an-extension-signed-or-else-I’ll-become-a-free-agent deadline is about a day away.

While it seems almost impossible that a deal will be finalized before that deadline, the sentiment seems to be that Pujols will eventually re-sign (and resign) with the Cardinals, so they don’t necessarily need to hurry.

There’s a similar situation in the NBA with Carmelo Anthony right now, except the house money – so to speak – has him eventually leaving his Nuggets to join the Knicks, which leads to the suggestion that the Knicks don’t necessarily need to offer the Nuggets an adequately appealing trade.

In both situations, there is just a lot of hope, good feelings, half-guarantees, and – frankly – sound reasoning supporting the evident foregone conclusions.

With Pujols, the rhetoric goes: “He’s too good of a guy to leave St. Louis,” “He’s not in it for the money,” “Nobody else could pay him anyway,” etc.

With Melo, the reasoning is: “He wants to play on a big stage,” “He’ll sign with the Knicks in free agency if a deal isn’t done by the deadline,” “He won't sign an extension with any other team,” etc.

But, considering I want to see Melo in NY (for some reason) and I really want to see Pujols stay in St. Louis, this apparent laidback, let’s-go-ahead-and-count-our-chickens attitude of the two clubs concerns me.

And, like everything in sports this year, that concern stems from The Decision.

While the sports culture at large learned a lot of (often disappointing) things about LeBron during the 2010 free agent period, it also (should have) learned a very important lesson about free agency decisions: there are a lot of moving parts involved in those decisions.

Here is a by no means exhaustive list: money, winning, location, family, friends, ownership, players unions, other players, werewolf attacks, nightlife, coaches. All of these different factors complicate things like presumed hometown discounts, honor-before-money decisions, or personal guarantees.

So, in light of that, here is what I would tell my favorite team if they had any sliver of an opportunity to lock up an elite player like Pujols or Melo: do it. Now. Don’t wait.

Cleveland’s record: 9-46 (16.4%).

Quote of the Day:

While typing this blog, I’ve intermittently been listening to the “B.S. Report” from yesterday, in which Bill Simmons talked with David Stern. Of course, Carmelo came up, and Stern said:

“You think you know what he’s thinking, but there’s this thing called the media that will help you and tell you what he’s thinking even though they don’t know what he’s thinking.”

So, does Carmelo really want to go to New York? Yes. I think the answer would still be yes, but a good warning nonetheless.

Assistatistics

On the biggest sports day of the year, the biggest sports story of the day (from my perspective) was Kendall Marshall’s 16 assists in UNC’s 20-point win over Florida State.

Adam Lucas put up an awesome piece detailing every single assist on the official site. One of the most telling facts from that article is that no other UNC player had ever recorded that many assists in an ACC game.

But, like most things in my life, I think this story would be better if it involved the NBA. So I painstakingly documented every game this year in which an NBA player dished out 16 or more dimes.

Keep in mind that regulation NBA games last 8 minutes longer than regulation NCAA games, and the average NBA team scores 99.3 points per game while the top 30 scoring teams in NCAA only score 80.7 PPG. (UNC is 17^th in the nation at 79.1.)

Even so, there are only 12 different players who have reached the 16-assist plateau this year in the NBA:

• Andre Iguodala: Feb. 4 vs. Knicks (16)
• Jose Calderon: Feb. 4 vs. Timberwolves (19); Jan. 5 vs. Cavs (17)
• Devin Harris: Jan. 31 vs. Nuggets (18); Jan. 29 vs. Bucks (16)
• Rajon Rondo: Jan. 30 vs. Lakers (16); Jan. 5 vs. Spurs (23); Jan. 3 vs. Timberwolves (16); Dec. 3 vs. Bulls (19); Nov. 13 vs. Grizzlies (17); Nov. 11 vs. Heat (16); Nov. 2 vs. Pistons (17); Oct. 29 vs. Knicks (24) (league high); Oct. 26 vs. Heat (17)
• Chris Paul: Jan. 26 vs. Warriors (17); Nov. 5 vs. Heat (19); Oct. 27 vs. Bucks (16)
• Steve Nash: Jan. 12 vs. Nets (16); Jan. 9 vs. Cavs (17); Dec. 23 vs. Heat (18); Dec. 15 vs. Timberwolves (19); Dec. 5 vs. Wizards (17); Dec. 2 vs. Warriors (16); Nov. 24 vs. Bulls (16)
• Hedo Turkoglu: Jan. 8 vs. Mavericks (17)
• Kyle Lowry: Dec. 17 vs. Grizzlies (18)
• Raymond Felton: Dec. 12 vs. Nuggets (17)
• Deron Williams: Dec. 1 vs. Pacers (16)
• Gilbert Arenas: Nov. 21 vs. Pistons (16)
• Jason Kidd: Oct. 27 vs. Bobcats (18)

To bring this back to the NCAA, only 24 teams are averaging 16 or more assists per game this year. The nation’s leading player (Ohio’s D.J. Cooper) is averaging less than half of that (7.7 assists per game).

All of this comes, of course, on the heels (no pun intended) of the departure of former starting PG Larry Drew II, who left the team and evidently campus on Friday. So, not a terrible time for Marshall to fully assert himself as the UNC point guard of the future.

Question of the Moment:

Most important story of Super Bowl XLV?

1. Steelers’ turnovers
2. Packers’ dropped passes
3. The commercials
4. Something else

My take: I’d say the dropped passes. If the WRs reeled in some of those drops, Aaron Rodgers could have put up some of the gaudiest QB numbers in Super Bowl history.