what will end up happening is they will trade Artest along with one of their bad contracts to make the salaries work
<cough> Croshere <cough>
If only Croshere could play against the Lakers in every game, he'd be an all-star. It seems like that can be said for a lot of NBA journeymen over the years ... doesn't it?
I wouldnt consider Croshere a journeymen because I believe hes played all (if not most) of his career on the Pacers. He was a real solid player back when the Pacers went to the finals in 2001.
Artest and Croshere for who though? No one has a site that lists everyones salary? I thought Ziggy had one a while ago.
Journeyman was the wrong choice in words, at least with Croshere. I'm just thinking of guys that have been around the league a long time who are relatively average NBA players who seem to have career nights against the Lakers. Sam Mitchell comes to mind off the top my head ...
Anyway, I googled NBA salaries and quite a few pages came up. Here's a link from Insidehoops.com.
http://www.dfw.net/%7Epatricia/contracts Croshere makes $51 mil over 7 years thru 2007, so roughly $7.3/yr. Couple that with Artests $6mil and I would think Indiana would have some options in terms of getting a player close to equal value in return. Besides the difficulty of matching the salaries within 20% or whatever it is ... I still think Indiana is going to get jammed because everyone knows they have to get rid of Artest at this point.
Even if Artest didn't publicly ask for a trade, everyone knows he is damaged goods. As a result, who's to say that $6mil isn't market value? Knowing what the entire market knows, which is that this guy has single-handedly sabotaged at least two seasons for the Indiana Pacers, I'm not sure his market value isn't $6mil or maybe less. Who’s to say that a couple of roll players aren’t fair value for Artest? The market is the market. Of course there’s always Danny Ainge, Isiah Thomas or Donald Sterling to go and do something stupid, but for the most part the market should dictate what this moron is really worth.
As a Laker fan, I've been going back and forth on this for weeks now. Artest would provide us with two extremely valuable pieces to our team’s puzzle. 1) A consistent second scorer and 2) Excellent defense to bolster an already improved defensive team. If Artest can come in and play nice, the Lakers could easily become the 2nd or 3rd best team in a wide open Western Conference behind SA. As a fan, dang, that is enticing. But the guy is such a loose cannon, that I know it could very easily go the other way and destroy what little team chemistry we've started to develop this season. I literally change my opinion game to game on this question of would I want Artest on the Lakers (I usually want him after a loss, and don’t after a win … go figure?). At the end of the day, what do the Lakers have to lose? It's not like they're going to win, or even compete for a championship with their current roster. One thing I wouldn't do is include Bynum in the trade. Even though I think the odds of him becoming a dominant big man are probably less than 20%. Just the possibility is enough to keep him around for a while as good big men, especially centers, are hard to come by in the NBA.
