Brand?

[The Poster]

please be true....


Sixers trying to get in position to lure Brand from West Coast
By Marc Stein
ESPN.com(Archive)
Updated: July 8, 2008, 12:39 AM ET
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It's starting to look as though the biggest threat to the Los Angeles Clippers re-signing franchise forward Elton Brand can be found much further east than Oakland.

NBA front-office sources told ESPN.com on Monday night that the Philadelphia 76ers are again "actively involved" in the Brand hunt after initially fearing that they couldn't compete financially with the Clippers and Golden State Warriors.

Brand

Although the leaguewide consensus remains that Brand will return to Hollywood to form a new partnership with Clipper-to-be Baron Davis, sources said the Sixers are growing increasingly confident in their ability to create additional salary-cap space by finding a new home via trade for swingman Rodney Carney and then make a sufficiently rich offer to Brand.


Dealing away Carney -- with Memphis and Minnesota quickly emerging as possible destinations -- would shed nearly $1.7 million from the Sixers' payroll next season as long as the trade doesn't require new GM Ed Stefanski to take any salary back.




The Sixers are already expecting to have at least $11 million in salary-cap space to spend when the league announces next season's cap figure to all 30 teams Tuesday night. If the cap ceiling for the 2008-09 season comes in higher than the widely projected estimate of $58-to-59 million -- and if the Sixers can indeed move Carney and/or center Calvin Booth -- Philadelphia could have the flexibility to start a five-year offer to Brand at a first-year salary in the $14 million range.

Sources said that the Sixers remain highly interested in Atlanta Hawks restricted free agent Josh Smith, but it appears that Philly will give itself every chance to emerge as the unlikely winner of the Brand sweepstakes before deciding whether to sign Smith to an offer sheet that the Hawks would have seven days to match.

If Philadelphia can indeed manufacture a first-year salary of at least $14 million, that would be in the same ballpark as the Clippers, who must preserve enough cap space in retaining Brand to formally sign Davis to the five-year, $65 million deal which the former Golden State point guard verbally agreed to last week.

The Warriors can still outbid L.A. and Philadelphia for Brand thanks to Davis' defection. If next season's salary cap is announced at $59 million or thereabouts, as expected, Golden State should have the wherewithal to offer Brand a five-year deal worth just over $95 million.

Sources close to the process told ESPN.com on Monday that the Warriors continue to have dialogue with the Brand camp and have not abandoned hope of luring the 29-year-old to Northern California.

Yet separate sources suggested Monday that Brand -- if he's ultimately drawn away from his Face of the Franchise status with the Clippers -- would be more inclined to jump to Philadelphia than Golden State, given the Sixers' residence in a conference with far fewer contenders than the West and the opportunity to join a young Philly nucleus (Andre Miller, Andre Iguodala and the considerable wingspan of center Samuel Dalembert) that won many admirers as last season progressed.

Marc Stein is the senior NBA writer for ESPN.com. To e-mail him, click here.

[Pure Hatred]

Best news I've heard in a while, thanks for posting. I still put our chances at pretty low, although that's a significant improvement from zero.

[pointguard86]

this is the link:

http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/story?id=3477358

it may or may not be true at least we have something to discuss.

[Skates]

I was just checking the main free agency thread to see if anyone had posted this story, I thought it was an old one I had somehow missed.  I'm not sure moving Carney alone gives us enough space to make a difference with Brand, but what the hey let's try.

If Brand doesn't bite, then moving Carney would allow us to possibly make essentially the same offer we planned to Smith and to take back Jodan/Knight from the Clips to help them retain Brand from GS.  Maybe that is the real Carney/Clips connection to this story.

[sixersftw]

The article also mentions the possibility of moving booth.

[TheGuiltyParty]

It's sweet to read some new reports but I'm still confused... if we're offering $14MIL and the Clippers are offering $14MIL... why is Brand leaving LA when they just got the player he told management that he wanted to play with?

[Derek Bodner]

woah.  We might have a deal reached with Brand.  Apparently we've already agreed to trade away Carney + Booth:
http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/news;_ylt=Ash9ai1CMHgFGirTs74jP4O8vLYF?slug=aw-phillytrade070608&prov=yhoo&type=lgns

Philadelphia 76ers forwards Rodney Carney and Calvin Booth have been told that they?ve been traded to the Minnesota Timberwolves as part of a package that could free as much as $3 million in additional salary cap space for the Sixers to offer Elton Brand or Josh Smith, league sources said.

Philadelphia has reached an agreement in principle to send Carney, Booth and a future No. 1 draft pick to Minnesota for its $5-million plus trade exception born of a past Mark Blount deal, sources said.

Carney, 24, was told over the weekend by Philadelphia management that he had been sent to Minnesota, a source close to him said. Booth, 32, texted friends overnight on Monday telling them that he was on his way to the Wolves too.

...

One league executive believes Brand has delayed his decision on returning to Los Angeles with hopes that Stefanski could cut this deal and make him a comparable offer to that of the Clips. He was born and raised in upstate New York, and has been intrigued with returning to the East Coast. Should the Sixers lose out on Brand, they?ll still be in position to turn their attention back to Smith, a 22-year-old rising star.

[Derek Bodner]

It's sweet to read some new reports but I'm still confused... if we're offering $14MIL and the Clippers are offering $14MIL... why is Brand leaving LA when they just got the player he told management that he wanted to play with?

1) To go back east (where he's from)
2) To potentially play for a winner.

[Pure Hatred]

So the reported deal is essentially a low first, Carney, Calvin Booth and our cap-space for the chance at Elton Brand. As long as they have Brand's signature or something already, I guess. I hope this is what they were arranging when Brand came to Philly.

[Derek Bodner]

Yeah.  Overall, Kyle Korver, Carney and Booth for Brand/Smith.

If they don't have a deal with Brand worked out, it's extremely risky.  Atlanta could still match.  We'd also have a terribly unbalanced starting lineup.  We're going to waste a post presence if we have Andre Miller, Iguodala and Young on the wings.

[The Sixer Fixer]

It's sweet to read some new reports but I'm still confused... if we're offering $14MIL and the Clippers are offering $14MIL... why is Brand leaving LA when they just got the player he told management that he wanted to play with?

Well, if the report about Brand and his agent having a secret meeting with Stefanski last week was accurate (and that was rumored to have been them that initiated contact with Ed), then maybe the Sixers were Brand's #1 option all along.  He may have said if you can offer me 'X' then I will come there. 

Having said that, if Brand does leave LA, does anyone thing there is a chance that Baron Davis changes his mind about LA and pulls out of that verbal agreement with LA?  Would be a bold move, but what if his deal was contingent on them also signing Brand?

[Pure Hatred]

Dabods, I'm sure you're an expert (or more knowledgeable than most of us, at least) on the salary cap, do you know how the trade exception we would gain from Minnesota would work? Is the 5 million added onto our capspace, meaning we could sign Brand for 14m and then a FA shooter for 2-3m? If so, I'm beginning to like this deal, even though we have given up our best threat from long range (sad, I know :/)

[sixersftw]

dunno about baron.  that would be roughest on his agent though.  

Our lineup would be unbalanced but i think it would be fairly easy to go after a shooter with some combo of miller, evans, green, our first, and possibly lou.  I'd much rather have the big man and worry about the shooters later than vice versa.

[Derek Bodner]

I don't believe we'd get $5 million.  They'd use their $5 million exception, but you don't trade an exception.  The exception is worth the difference of the amount you send out vs the amount you get back in a trade.  We'd be sending out about 2.2 million, receiving 0, so we'd get a 2.2 million trade exception in return.

Can't use those to sign players, and can't combine those with other exceptions.  So we could only use that 2.2 million in a trade.

[Pure Hatred]

Right, understood. I'm guessing Brand isn't going to give us the contenders' or hometown discounts, so we're going to have to use max cap space to sign him. Which also means we're going to have to hope Mark Price is an amazing teacher and/or we can obtain shooters through trades.