Bill Simmons has been my favorite sports columnist for at least two years and he just chimed in on the recent NBA trade deadline. I totally agree with his assessment of the Bricks, but I don't think Webber will pan out as well as he feels
KNICKS GET TWO MORE UNDERSIZED POWER FORWARDSSad, but true.
I have a couple of thoughts here ...
1. When Isiah called the Spurs and said, "We'll give you Nazr Mohammed, you give us Malik Rose and a crap No. 1, and we don't care about the $20 million difference in salaries," do you think Gregg Popovich said, "Lemme call you right back," then pretended he was deliberating about it for 30 secondsw before speed-dialing Isiah back? Was there laughter in the Spurs offices? High-fiving? Was Popovich the guy who called Isiah under the "Maybe Isiah will be dumb enough to give us a center" premise? How did this go down?
2. Am I crazy or do the Knicks have a 10-man rotation made up of 3 shooting guards, 5 power forwards and 2 small forwards?
3. Could Isiah make a trade that surprised you anymore at this point? For instance, if you read that he traded Stephon Marbury to the Lakers for Brian Grant, Tierre Brown, a lottery-protected first-rounder and the rights to Magic Johnson's next comeback, would you even bat an eyelash? Me neither.
WEBBER TO THE SIXERSHey, stranger things have happened.
When my buddy Gus called from ESPN to tell me that Webber was headed to Philly, I said, "Lemme guess, Kenny Thomas, Dalembert and Big Dog?"
Nope. Way off. And that's the thing that amazes me about the deal -- how could the Kings not get some cap flexibility with this trade? Sixty million worth of Thomas, Skinner and Corliss ... that's the best you could do? You're telling me Isiah wouldn't have traded Kurt Thomas and Penny Hardaway (done in 2006) for him? Just an awful trade for them. I know that the Ewing Theory potential with the Kings is off the chart -- remember, they still have Miller, Bibby and Peja, all of whom always looked better whenever C-Webb was hurt -- and I know they needed to make a 3-for-1 since they had no bench. But this trade was horrendous. If it happened in my roto league, I would have protested it.
Watching Webber in person against the Clippers last month, I couldn't believe how he was dragging that bum leg around -- it was actually sad to watch. No lift, no explosiveness, nothing. I thought it looked like he had a giant fork in his back. And then he kept getting to the line and grabbing rebounds, and he made a couple of threes, and then he took over the game down the stretch. He ended up with a 23-14-6. On one leg. Basically, because of his knee problems, he's turned into That Annoying Guy from pickup hoops -- the guy with the ugly game and the giant knee brace, the one who doesn't seem even remotely threatening, the one who looks laughably bad at least five or six times over the course of an hour, and somehow, he ends up killing you in the end. That's Chris Webber. And yeah, he was never quite good enough to carry a team to the title as the best guy, and the C-Webb Crunch-Time Face goes down in the Pantheon of Faces. But as the Tubbs to Iverson's Crockett? I think he's going to be fantastic.
how do I email bill simmons to respond to an article?
Posted by: Aaron | April 28, 2005 at 05:25 PM