There is a lot of incentive to actually have this deal done now. One logical reason is that we saw what happened last year with the New York Knick and the Denver Nuggets and how distracting everything was wondering if your star player was going to be traded or not. It wasn’t good for the Knicks last year, they were playing very poorly up until the Anthony trade and it certainly wasn’t good for the Nuggets. And once again it will not be good for the Knicks this season and will not be good for the Hornets as well. If you’re going to have Chauncey Billups as your point guard for this season then let’s go. Let’s go to battle with this guy. He is good enough to be a reliable starter, and I don’t want him to wonder if he’s going to be a part of this team or not. That’s a huge distraction for a player. How often did we hear Mike D’Antoni complain about switching the roster every single day not knowing who will be around or not? If the Knicks want to go all in and not have a single distraction then go forward without the trade drama during the season and either go forward with Billups or make a trade now.
If we assume Chris Paul wants to be in New York the pieces may fall into place for everyone. We have all heard that he may need to take a pay cut. Not true. What will have to happen for him to get the max money that he may want is for him to be traded to the Knicks. After he is traded he must opt out of his deal and become a free agent. Or opt into his option for next year and become a free agent after the next season. If either of those scenarios happens he would enter free agency as a Knick meaning they would have his “Bird Rights” and he can still get the six year $100 million dollar contract he is going after. So the money issue isn’t really a big deal for the Knicks going forward. A lot of people thought he would need to take a %50 pay cut and just play for $8 million a year. Doesn’t have to happen.
We all know the Knicks went all in on Carmelo and traded away their talent in order to get Carmelo. There is still one bargaining point the Knicks have that they can sell to the Hornets for this coming season. The Knicks really don’t have a lot to trade and that’s not really the worst thing for the Hornets. Chris Paul was there for six years and the Hornets did not surround him with good enough players to be a championship team. They were poorly managed and a dysfunctional organization. The one thing that is awful to be in the NBA is mediocre. You can have one of the best players in the league like Chris Paul and be mediocre. You don’t go up and you don’t go down. You get the same draft pick year in and year out and don’t necessarily upgrade at all. It’s better to be either great or awful. What the Knicks have to offer for the Hornets is a chance to be terrible this coming season. Starting from the Christmas day tip off the Hornets can be terrible immediately. The Knicks can offer a couple of young players that could be mediocre in the future and they can also take back all the Hornets bad salary so they have flexibility in the future. The Knicks can also give a first round draft pick either this season or the next or whenever. The Hornets might be able to swing in a third team to get a late first round draft pick this year as well.
What the Hornets can get right now is an awful team. What they don’t want to be is a team that has Chris Paul for half a season and win some games and then trade him away and maybe make the payoffs like the Nuggets did last year. The Nuggets made the playoffs and lost out on the chance to have a high draft pick and start rebuilding the team via the draft. What the Hornets have is a chance to bottom out and be one of the worst teams in the league. But at the end of the rainbow is the pot of gold. How do you get good in the NBA? You get a stud in the draft and you build around that person. The Hornets get a chance to start fresh and get a re-do and can get that chance to do what they should have done with Chris Paul. This coming draft is a heavy draft with all the players that did not go into the draft because of the lockout. The Hornets can get a top three pick and can start surrounding him with players that fall place. The Hornets need to realize that Paul is leaving and they won’t get any value from a trade this season. They cannot go through this season and hope that Chris Paul stays. Then they wind up with a mediocre record and a mediocre draft pick. The best thing to do is bottom out and start fresh. Look what happened to the Cavaliers this season. They hit rock bottom but they wound up with two of the top four draft picks this past draft. The Knicks can offer Landry Field and Tony Douglas and a first round draft pick in a couple of years, maybe even two. They can also take away the salary and give the Hornets space to go out and get a player through free agency. It also gives the Hornets a chance to start over and draft the next Chris Paul. It’s obviously not a trade of equal value but it pays off in the future. There you go hornets. Do the right thing.