First, Do No Harm: 3 Teams, 3 Moves, 1 Right Decision
by, Mike Mandlin

It's difficult to overstate the importance of patience and prudence to roster management in the NBA. In the NFL, teams can cut players to gain salary cap space, while in the MLB, having no salary cap, fiscal responsibility is managed through rampant collusion. In the NBA however, guaranteed player contracts and trade restrictions make poor free agent signings and ill-considered trades far more damaging. Stupid General Managers can be fired, but their failures devastate franchises for years after the first cathartic headline, with the mangled rosters of bad contracts they leave behind.

Is there anything in (men's) basketball more absurd than analysts reporting ecstatically about a team trading away talented players for little more than cap space? Shouldn't they also mention that it was having cap space that got those teams into trouble in the first place? Almost every summer, teams that took years to clean house, go out and immediately screw up their rosters again. Consider Kiki Vandeweghe, the new GM in New Jersey. As Denver's GM, Kiki's success clearing bad contracts from Denver's roster was unprecedented, and then he followed that by maxing-out an injury-prone 16/8 power-forward coming off a 62-start year-and paid three first round draft picks for the pleasure. Nets fans better hope Rod Thorn still has his hands on the wheel.

So far NBA Summer '08 is crazily dynamic, with a flurry of "it'll never happen" rumors that happen, including big domino-effect signings and balls-out trades across the league. Yeah, NBA Summer '08 is hot all right and it's hot all across the nation too. You can just think of the steadily increasing temperature as pre-heating the oven for the wholesome stew of buyer's remorse that dogs every NBA summer like a blind beagle following the scent of its owner's ass. Speaking of the Clippers…

This week LA and Golden State signed Baron Davis and Corey Maggette, respectively, to hilarious contracts, while the 76ers did every fan of basketball a service by cherry-picking Elton Brand and getting him the hell away from the Clippers. Nobody should have to watch a Clippers game to see Brand in action. Ironically, in the end, it was Davis who inadvertently convinced Brand to defect. After Davis agreed to join LA, Brand suggested they go out for a beer to celebrate, but Davis politely declined because his back was a little sore. The next day Brand was a 76er. But the columns that say the Clippers took a foolish risk by signing Davis with the expectation that Brand would follow, miss the point: with or without Brand, signing Davis to a five-year deal is a foolish risk.

"Baron moves real fast for a cripple," said Clippers GM Elgin Baylor at Davis' introductory press conference. Well, maybe he didn't say that, but he should have, because it would prepare Clippers fans for what they can expect out of Davis for the duration of his tenure in LA. There are numerous problems with this signing, but risk is the crux. Giving any 29-year-old point guard a big five-year contract is risky. When that point guard has an extensive history of injuries, like Davis does, it's an unthinkable risk. Baron Davis will take up about 27% of the Clippers' total allotted salary space for the next five years whether he's running a fast break or in traction. I love watching Davis play and hope he never misses another game. And I like to think it's a coincidence that he managed to play every game in his contract year after missing a third of all games the previous five years with a smorgasbord of injuries. Maybe he will be healthy and durable, but I wouldn't wager 27% of my resources on it.

I'm certainly not against long-term deals. You just better be really, really sure you want to make that commitment, because it's a marriage with no annulments, and severing the relationship by trade, buy-out, or murder is tricky and expensive (and painful for the kids). That said Elton Brand is a no-brainer for the max for five years. A big part of his value is that Brand is a prototypical power-forward: he scores in the paint, defends the paint, and rebounds exceptionally well. He has no weaknesses relative to one's expectations of a power-forward, and therefore doesn't require compensatory production from another position. That is, if your power-forward is a crappy rebounder, your other players need to compensate by being unusually good rebounders. Allen Iverson is awesome, but atypical, and it's difficult and expensive to find players that compliment him. Brand fits in with any team right out of the box.

Finding the right fit is so important and so frequently overlooked. Golden State's signing of Corey Maggette is a perfect example. For the next five years, Maggette will take up about 17% of Golden State's salary space and his value is based on a series of expectations of diminishing likelihood. If Maggette's career-best 38% three-point shooting is repeatable, he can manage to stay on the court for 75 games a year, and (most importantly) Monta Ellis is able to make a full transition to point guard, Maggette's worth the salary space. If any of those factors don't work out, the contract is lousy and could be a disaster. The three-point shooting might be true improvement, and he certainly took enough reps (203) to give GS hope. Still, after eight years making less than a third of his threes it's risky to count on his touch continuing.

As for endurance, well, he played 70 games this year, getting through shoulder, knee, tailbone, flu (yes, he missed four games with the flu) and his chronically touchy hamstrings. It was actually something of an accomplishment for Maggette though, as he's only made it through 70 games four out of nine years in the NBA. Maggette's one great talent is driving to the hoop and getting to the line. He finishes well and is regularly among the league leaders in free-throw attempts and makes (per game, of course). All that crashing to the hoop is partially why he gets so banged up. And we're not just talking bumps and bruises. A few years ago he separated "the ligament that lies between the bones midway in the foot." After months on the DL he came back strong, but do you want to invest heavily in an injury-prone 29-year old slasher for five years? Dumb, dumb, dumb.

If that weren't enough to make this contract stupid (it is) there's the Monta Ellis factor. Ellis is a terrific and unusual player. He's a short shooting-guard, but about 20 lbs underweight for a point guard, doesn't shoot well away from the basket or threes at all, doesn't handle the ball particularly well, doesn't pass much, and seems to have pretty limited court vision. But he goes at the rim as well as anyone in the game and scores at an unbelievably efficient rate. There's really no one like him in the game. To best utilize his unique talents and minimize his deficiencies, it's essential to pair him with a big point-guard who can guard shooting-guards, like Baron Davis, for instance. Instead Golden State picked up a player who can guard shooting-guards (poorly) but has even less interest in sharing the ball than Ellis does. The Warriors are going to sign Ellis to a long-term deal, and well they should, except they're going to try to make a point guard of him. Sure, maybe it's worth a try, since there aren't any big, starting-caliber point guards on the market this year. But signing Maggette long-term is committing (likely) five years of Ellis' prime to an experiment with no indications it'll be a success. Since the Warriors don't even have a backup point guard at this point, you can also expect a good bit of Stephen "Mayhem" Jackson bungling up the ball for Golden State-which is going to be awesome fun to watch, if you're not a Warrior's fan.

With Davis and Brand signed, the smart thing for Golden State to have done would be to take advantage of a strong buyer's market and offered Maggette a fat two-year contract and tried to sign Chris Duhon or (failing that) Tyron Lue as a backup point-guard. I can see Golden State is in a tough spot, so fine, experiment with Ellis at point. But five years? If they needed to up Maggette's dollars by a third or more for that two year offer-as much as they could offer and still sign Ellis and Andris Biedrins-it would be worth it to maintain the flexibility to throw out the experiment in two years if it didn't work. And if Maggette were to walk away from that deal, so be it. Golden State isn't going to compete for the West this year and instead they risk screwing themselves long-term.

Do No Harm should be the first tenet of a GM, followed by Maintain Flexibility. Teams are so often screwed because management feels they have to do something. But doing nothing, standing pat, is doing something, and it's a technique GMs would be wise to utilize more often. If a team has patience and plays the "don't be a sucker" game long enough, they'll be there with the dollars, with little competition, when the right players come along. Did the 76ers have to do any more than say, "Gee Elton, we're pretty flush too. Wanna swing by and chat?" With lots of cap space and no killer contracts on the books, that's all a team really has to do. And it's why the 76ers will be serious contenders in the next year or two.

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