If the Hawks didn’t move Smith in a rumored deal for Amar’e Stoudemire (it came up a couple of years ago and again last season around the trade deadline, when Stoudemire was the hottest name in the game), I can’t see any reasonable explanation for trying to move him now.
This Hawks’ team has yet to plateau, so trading anyone off this roster right now (even Crawford) makes little sense to us. Are they ready to challenge for a title right now? No. But Sund would be taking a huge gamble trying to find the right piece by the trade deadline by moving a piece as integral as Smith is to this team.
Now we’re not crazy. If you can leverage Smith for someone like Chris Paul or even Carmelo Anthony, then you have to explore your options. You never say never.
But unless you are talking about acquiring a player of that caliber in a package, this is a waste of time.
Someone has to go, but it needs to be someone other than Smith.
Tuesday, November 02, 2010
NBA.com: Smith: [Josh] Smith in the Trade Mix?
Sekou Smith agrees that it would be folly for the Atlanta Hawks to trade Josh Smith barring exceptional circumstances:
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3 comments:
What I don't understand, (I'm sure you can help me since you know about win shares and etc) is why if it comes down to a choice between trading Josh or Al in order to bring back the likes of a Carmelo or Chris Paul people seem to be so convinced that it should be Josh. Why is he so much more expendable than Al? I just don't understand why everyone leans toward getting rid of Josh. I know he has a shaky attitude, but from a basketball standpoint are we sure that Al is that much better than him? I'm not.
CoCo--
I believe it's some combination of Al being younger (even though it's only by 7 months), the difference in their defensive reputations being greater than the difference in their defensive performance, that Josh Smith yelled back at Mike Woodson a couple of times, shot selection, and the inherent understanding that Al Horford is one of the top 5 centers in the NBA even though he may not be the platonic ideal of an NBA center.
Lots of guys can be pretty good power forwards, hardly any can be pretty good centers.
Al's arguably the best center in the East not named Dwight Howard.
Josh Smith is a really good power forward, but its pretty clear at this point he's never going to be "the guy" at his position.
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