Check out The Biz of Basketball
Maury Brown, who has written articles for several prominent publications--including the
New York Times,
Time Magazine and the
Boston Globe--is the founder of the
Business of Sports Network, which includes the well respected
The Biz of Baseball. The Biz of Baseball's coverage has been lauded by prominent baseball executives Stan Kasten and Peter Bavasi and veteran baseball scribes Ken Rosenthal and Rob Neyer.
Brown's newest venture is
The Biz of Basketball and I am very pleased to be on board as a weekly contributor. I encourage 20 Second Timeout readers to check out The Biz of Basketball. At the same time, I welcome readers who have just seen my work for the first time at The Biz of Basketball to explore 20 Second Timeout.
posted by David Friedman @ 5:34 AM
The Legacy Question
Perhaps there has been some kind of mild meld among sports reporters because the legacy question seems to be the theme of the day.
J.A. Adande writes that Paul Pierce is "worried about how, ultimately, the story of his career will be written." Pierce told Adande, "It's hanging in the balance. People don't know what to think. I think I have the potential to be a Hall of Fame player. I think I have the potential to be one of the best ever to play the game. It's right here for me. It's all on how hard I work and how far I want to take it."
Pierce has a straightforward plan designed to improve how is legacy is perceived: "Win more games. That's it. People know what I can do as an individual basketball player. The legacy is all about how many games you win, what you do as a team." Now that Pierce's Boston Celtics have acquired All-Stars Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen, Pierce will certainly have an opportunity to do that. Adande notes that Pierce "considers himself on a level with Kobe Bryant, Dwyane Wade and LeBron James." I suspect that every All-Star--and even some players who are not All-Stars--believes in his heart of hearts that he is as good as Bryant, Wade and James; you don't make it to the NBA, let alone excel there, without having a lot of self-confidence and pride. Of course, just because a player really believes something does not make it true. James has already made the All-NBA Second Team twice and the All-NBA First Team once in his first four seasons, along the way producing a playoff game for the ages last year versus Detroit and carrying his team to the NBA Finals. In his first four seasons, Wade has earned two All-NBA Second Team selections, one All-NBA Third Team selection and won a Finals MVP while leading his team to a championship. Bryant is widely recognized by knowledgeable observers as the game's best player. He has made the All-NBA Team eight times in 11 seasons, including four First Team selections and two Second Team selections. Bryant has also won two scoring titles, along the way accomplishing some scoring feats that have not been seen since Wilt Chamberlain played--and he has done all of this while making the All-Defensive Team seven times, including five selections to the First Team. Bryant was the leading playmaker on three championship teams. Pierce has never advanced past the Eastern Conference Finals in his eight year NBA career and has never been selected to the All-Defensive Team or to the First or Second All-NBA Teams; he did earn back to back All-NBA Third Team selections several years ago. Pierce will have to do a lot as his career winds down to match what Bryant, James and Wade have already accomplished.
If Bryant never played another NBA game he would easily be a first ballot Hall of Famer. That is why it is so funny when
someone suggests that his "place in history" is somehow hanging in the balance. There is no objective way to put Bryant in the same legacy boat as a guy like Pierce, who has never won anything and whose individual accomplishments don't hold a candle to Bryant's. It also makes no sense to compare Bryant's career arc to Pistol Pete Maravich's. Yes, Bryant could
enhance his legacy by being the primary star on a championship team but the reality is that Bryant has already won three championship rings. Do John Havlicek's six rings that he won alongside Bill Russell not count? Did anyone suggest that Havlicek had to win the two championships that he captured after Russell retired to "validate" the earlier ones? If Bryant had been a bit player on the Lakers' championship teams then it would make sense to say that Bryant needs to win a title on his own (so to speak, because no one really wins a championship by himself)--but Bryant was an All-NBA performer on those championship teams, putting up 40-point playoff games, playing great defense and being the primary ball handler/playmaker.
Maravich was a wonderful player, one of my all-time favorites. He was ahead of his time, often getting criticized for things that would be applauded today, and he never had the chance to play on a great team while he was in his prime. Isiah Thomas has called him the greatest showman of all-time. I believe that Maravich is very underrated and I have no doubt that he could have been a key contributor to a championship team if that opportunity had presented itself--but Bryant's career is already one year longer than Maravich's was. Bryant is a vastly superior defender, shoots a better percentage from the field and the free throw line, rebounds better, is much more durable and even is within one apg of Maravich's career assists average--in fact, if you take out Bryant's first two seasons, when he wasn't a starter, his apg in the next nine years is virtually the same as Maravich's ten year average. Bryant is already a greater NBA player than Maravich was, whether or not Bryant is able to win a fourth championship.
In 1999, an Associated Press panel voted for the Basketball Player of the Century. The top ten finishers--the players who comprise what I call pro basketball's
"pantheon"--were Michael Jordan, Oscar Robertson, Wilt Chamberlain, Bill Russell, Earvin Johnson, Larry Bird, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Elgin Baylor, Jerry West and Julius Erving. Robertson and West each won one title and each did so while playing alongside a center who is in the pantheon. Baylor never won a championship. Bryant already has more championship rings that those three players put together. Bird won three NBA championships, while Erving won three professional titles (one NBA, two ABA). So the question is not whether or not Bryant will surpass Maravich--he already has--but whether or not Bryant will do enough to earn admittance into the pantheon; it could be argued that Bryant already should be considered a member of this group, but one championship ring as the primary guy would absolutely clinch such status for Bryant. The only other active players who could even be considered for pantheon status are Shaquille O'Neal and Tim Duncan.
posted by David Friedman @ 6:47 PM
Ric Bucher Says that the NBA's Officiating Problems Go a Lot Deeper than Tim Donaghy
In an
article that appears both at ESPN.com and in the August 13 issue of
ESPN the Magazine, Ric Bucher says that some NBA referees hate their jobs so much that one told him, "Guys buy lottery tickets everywhere they go. If they win, they're just going to leave their shirt hanging in the locker." That is certainly an attention getting statement. What exactly has upset these referees? Bucher asserts that it goes well beyond any anticipated backlash next season because of the Tim Donaghy situation and cuts straight to the heart of how the league evaluates their work: "They are convinced that public or team perception of a call will ultimately dictate whether the league finds it correct." He also says that the league chooses "correctness" over "fairness," citing as an example the suspensions of Amare Stoudemire and Boris Diaw for leaving the area of the bench at the end of game four of the San Antonio-Phoenix series. These two charges are mutually exclusive, though: if the NBA is swayed by "public or team perception" then why did it suspend Stoudemire and Diaw, a move that was hardly popular? Some of the anonymous assertions by referees about how the league is being run are not much more credible than the conspiracy theories that have been uttered by fans who sound like they are wearing tin foil hats and communicating with aliens via transmitters hidden in their dental fillings. Conspiracy theorists believe that the draft and the playoffs are manipulated by the league but cannot explain why the NBA would want San Antonio in the Finals instead of Phoenix or why Greg Oden landed in Portland--or why LeBron James is in Cleveland instead of New York, Boston or Los Angeles; the great thing about being a conspiracy theorist is that no matter which team had gotten James there would be a sinister-sounding theory to explain it.
Bucher adds that the current referees do not respect director of officials Ronnie Nunn or his boss, NBA executive vice president of operations Stu Jackson. Bucher says that the referees view Nunn as someone who was a "competent" referee during his 19 years on the job but not "an authority or the ideal for how the job should be done," while Jackson is looked at with suspicion due to his "undistinguished record" as a coach and general manager. For their part, Bucher claims that Jackson and Nunn have insisted to Commissioner David Stern that the problem is that the referees are resisting the measures that Jackson and Nunn have attempted to implement to improve call accuracy.
Part of the problem in evaluating a story like this is that no one, not even a veteran NBA reporter like Bucher, can get anyone who is currently involved in these matters to speak on the record. Stern, Jackson and Nunn all declined to talk to Bucher for the article, while current referees will only talk to the press without attribution (except for special occasions when one game official will be permitted to talk to a pool reporter). So all of Bucher's quotes in this article come from anonymous sources. Anonymity gives one freedom to say all kinds of things, because your words cannot be traced back to you and your credibility cannot be challenged because no one knows who you are or what ax you might have to grind.
I'll admit that I have not comprehensively studied Nunn's work as a referee but I don't recall him egregiously blowing calls nor do I recall him issuing technical fouls left and right to prove that he is in charge; in my book, that puts him ahead of
Hue Hollins and Jake O'Donnell, two former referees who have recently come out of the woodwork to criticize Nunn's performance as director of officials. I cannot speak to what has been going on behind the scenes with Nunn and his employees but I do not understand why it is considered a bad thing that Jackson and Nunn are, in Bucher's words, "trying to develop a corps of interchangeable whistle-blowers, each one calling every minute of every game the exact same way." Didn't people used to complain about "superstar" calls, rampant traveling violations and other inconsistencies? Jackson and Nunn are being made out to be bad guys for trying to eliminate some of the very things that supposedly were turning off basketball purists.
Bucher says that Nunn's weekly show on NBA TV is not popular with the rank and file officials--but that show is one of the few instances of the NBA providing the kind of transparency that so many people have said that the league needs to have regarding its officiating. I think that his show is great because Nunn admits when referees have gotten calls wrong but also defends his referees when they got calls right but were incorrectly criticized by broadcasters or others. Any fan who watches the show gets a better understanding of what exactly referees are supposed to be looking at--and how difficult it is to make split second calls without the benefit of instant replay. The show is very educational and presents referees in a good light overall without sugarcoating the fact that sometimes calls are missed. Nunn repeatedly makes it clear that his goal is for fouls and violations to be called the same way no matter who is involved and regardless of how much or how little time is on the clock.
I realize that Jackson and Nunn are probably going to be made the fall guys for the Donaghy situation and perhaps to appease the apparent general unrest among the rank and file referees--but before heads roll I'd like for someone to explain exactly what Donaghy did and how he got away with it. Maybe there is something wrong with the grading and evaluation process. Maybe other referees were in on the scam or covered for Donaghy in some way. Maybe it is very hard to detect if a highly graded official decides to shade the outcome of a game by making a couple borderline calls while otherwise playing it straight. Based on Nunn's stated objectives and based on his explanations of calls during his TV show, I don't think that his concept of how a game should be officiated is bad. Perhaps some things about the evaluation process need to be tweaked but that cannot be fairly judged until we know what went wrong with Donaghy. Despite what some people may believe, I think that NBA referees do a better overall job than their counterparts in the NFL or MLB. The NFL has had some highly dubious officiating even in the Super Bowl (
Pittsburgh-Seattle quickly comes to mind as one example), while baseball's strike zone changes from day to day based on the whims of the plate umpire.
posted by David Friedman @ 7:47 AM
The Clippers: The NBA's Bermuda Triangle
The news that Clippers star forward Elton Brand ruptured his left Achilles tendon on Friday during a routine workout session--a potentially season-ending injury--reminded me of how the Clippers franchise has been the NBA's version of the Bermuda Triangle for the past 25 years or so: players sail in and then disappear. If you follow the NBA at all then you saw the gruesome knee injury that promising young point guard Shaun Livingston suffered last season but serious injuries are nothing new to the Clippers. For instance, when Marques Johnson joined the Clippers in 1984 he was a productive and durable 28 year old three-time All-Star; in 1986 he suffered a serious neck injury that ended his career (other than a brief stint with Golden State in 1989-90). Similarly, when Norm Nixon joined the Clippers in 1983 he was a productive and durable 28 year old, a 1982 All-Star who missed only seven games in his six seasons with the Lakers; in 1986 he suffered a serious knee injury and after he recovered from that he ruptured his right Achilles just before the 1987-88 season began. That basically ended his career, other than a brief return with the Clippers in 1988-89.
Perhaps Bill Walton should not be included on this list of woe because injuries dogged him throughout his NBA career but it is worth noting that he won a regular season MVP, a Finals MVP and a championship in Portland prior to becoming a Clipper; meanwhile, his six year Clippers' career--his longest stay with one club--included two seasons in which he did not play a game due to injury, a 14 game "season" and a 33 game "season." Then in 1985 the Clippers traded him to Boston for Cedric Maxwell (plus a draft pick and cash) and Walton promptly played in a career-high 80 games, shot a career-best .562 from the field and won the Sixth Man Award as the Celtics cruised to the 1986 championship.
Speaking of Maxwell, he won the 1981 Finals MVP as the Celtics captured the first of three championships in the Larry Bird era. Maxwell was also an important player on the 1984 championship team. He injured his knee during the 1984-85 season but when he joined the Clippers he was a reasonably healthy 30 year old who had played in at least 78 games in six of his eight NBA seasons; within two years after arriving in L.A. his career was over.
Michael Brooks of La Salle was honored as the national player of the year by the National Association of Basketball Coaches (NABC) after averaging 24.1 ppg and 11.5 rpg as a senior in 1980. The Clippers selected him ninth overall in that year's draft and he played in 293 straight games, including every game of his first three seasons. In 1982 he finished second on the team in scoring (15.6 ppg). For all intents and purposes his career ended when he tore an ACL in 1984.
In 1984-85, former Louisville star Derek Smith emerged as a fine replacement for Brooks, leading the Clippers in scoring with 22.1 ppg. He averaged 23.5 ppg in the first 11 games in 1985-86 before a suffering a season-ending knee injury. Smith was never the same player again.
Jamaal Wilkes was already 32 years old and slowing down when the Clippers signed him in 1985 but after playing 42 games in 1984, 75 games in 1983 and at least 80 games in each of the five seasons prior to that he played just 13 games with the Clippers before retiring; at least he did not tear his ACL or rupture his Achilles.
Danny Manning almost single-handedly led Kansas to the 1988 NCAA Championship, earning the honor (curse?) of being selected first overall by the Clippers in that year's draft. His rookie season was just 26 games old when he tore his ACL. Manning recovered and eventually made the All-Star team twice but he never became an elite, franchise-level player. Perhaps he would not have done so anyway, but it would have been interesting to see how his career would have progressed if he had had two healthy knees for more than 26 games.
Ron Harper finished second in Rookie of the Year voting as a Cleveland Cavalier in 1987. Three years later he was considered one of the league's rising stars when the Cavs traded him to the Clippers early in the 1989-90 season for the rights to Danny Ferry. Harper averaged 23.0 ppg in the next 28 games in L.A. before tearing his ACL. Harper never regained his trademark athleticism. He later escaped from L.A., remade himself as a defensive specialist and won five championship rings, three with Chicago and then two more with the Lakers.
Harper left the Clippers in time to salvage the second half of his career but the best move seems to be to get out as soon as possible. Terry Cummings won the 1983 Rookie of the Year award as a Clipper but was diagnosed with a heart arrhythmia that was potentially career-threatening; he went through periods when he was light-headed and even fainted on at least one occasion--but after his second season with the Clippers he was traded to Milwaukee and he ended up playing in the NBA until he was 39 years old.
Pro basketball is a grueling sport, so injuries are bound to happen, and I don't really believe in curses--but if you were a free agent player who had a choice of going to several different teams would your first choice be set sail into the NBA's Bermuda Triangle with the Clippers?
posted by David Friedman @ 6:15 AM
What is the Purpose of a Basketball Blog?
Information is easy to find but thoughtful analysis is very rare. As I suggested in one of my recent Kevin Garnett posts, the purpose of 20 Second Timeout is not to "break" stories but to break them down and explain their implications.
A comment about my initial post concerning the Tim Donaghy situation brings to mind some larger questions about the nature and purpose of the blogosphere. On Friday July 20, I saw a headline on ESPN.com that mentioned that Donaghy was under investigation. I quickly realized that it was in fact the
New York Post that actually broke the story, not ESPN.com, so I went to the
Post's site to read Murray Weiss' article. Weiss gave a broad outline of some of the allegations but did not mention Donaghy by name. Clearly, this was a big story and something that any NBA fan would want to know about, so I knew that I should post something on the subject but at that point the story consisted largely of speculation and it was not definitively known that Donaghy was in fact the referee in question. I hate speculation and have no interest in publishing a "breaking" story if I don't have a solid factual basis to say something. So I decided to simply post what I knew and let my readers evaluate the information for themselves. Clearly, if a referee fixed games this would be the darkest day in NBA history--a sentiment that Commissioner Stern himself essentially reaffirmed several days later during his press conference--so I began my post with that thought. Weiss is the person who actually investigated the story, so I cited his
Post article first, noting that Weiss did not mention the referee by name but that ESPN.com reported that it was Tim Donaghy. Honestly, I am still not sure that I did the right thing and at the time I wondered if I should wait to post anything until Donaghy's name was confirmed or else leave his name out of the post. By making it clear that ESPN.com had "outed" Donaghy, I felt that I placed the responsibility on their shoulders if that information turned out to be incorrect.
In the remainder of that brief post, I tried to put the story into some historical context by referencing some previous gambling scandals and reminding readers how adamant Commissioner Stern has been about not placing a team in Las Vegas as long as that city's casinos post betting lines for NBA games. On Saturday morning, I followed up that post by
listing five questions that I would like to see answered about this case (none of which have been answered to this point). I understand why everyone is going back and looking at film to try to find something suspicious that Donaghy may have done but, frankly, until the questions that I asked in my second post are answered that whole process may just be a waste of time (for the general public, not for the FBI or NBA of course); we don't know what exactly Donaghy is accused of doing or how he evaded detection while he did it, so we don't know which games to look at or what to look for in those games.
Anyway, when my initial Donaghy post went up on Yardbarker, the first (and only) comment it received was "A little late here bud. But it does not shock me. Officials are corrupt. From the airline scan a few years ago to this." The latter reference is to the scandal when some NBA referees exchanged first class tickets for coach tickets, pocketed the money and did not report this on their income taxes. The thing that struck me was the "A little late" remark. My post was up within hours of the story breaking, included links to the original
New York Post article and ESPN.com's subsequent report containing Donaghy's name and provided some historical context for the situation. What value is there to posting something earlier that would possibly be incomplete or, much worse, inaccurate? That is why I never waste space here with gossip or trade rumors. When Kevin Garnett was actually traded, then I made a post explaining exactly what the deal means for Boston, Minnesota and KG himself, followed by another post putting the seven for one swap in historical context.
The funny thing to me is that on Yardbarker and Ballhype, some people do nothing more than make brief posts with links to news stories on ESPN.com or other big mainstream sites. They provide no original analysis and often they don't even add one or two sentences expressing their own opinion--but these posts receive many "thumbs ups." Is it really that hard to find a story on ESPN.com and post a link to it? Does this provide some essential service to readers that they could not do for themselves? Generally, the only reason that I cite a story from ESPN.com (or anywhere else) is to post some analysis about it. I don't see the point of just mentioning that there is an article at ESPN.com. Does the "Worldwide Leader" really need the advertising? Do sports fans not know that the site exists and frequently posts articles, each of which is conveniently categorized by author and sport?
Even funnier to me is that ESPN's in house basketball blog spends a substantial amount of time linking to ESPN stories. Hey, maybe that is part of the job description, but I don't think that it is particularly hard to find the basketball articles at ESPN.com; by all means, cite an article once in a while if you have something unique to say about it or if it is really, really interesting but otherwise it seems like needless duplication to have staff writers producing original work and a blogger who is essentially advertising the writers' work.
What about when I place links in a post to earlier 20 Second Timeout posts or when I place links to a new article that I wrote for a different site? Isn't that the same thing? The difference is that 20 Second Timeout is newer than ESPN.com and not nearly as big. A new reader here might have no idea that a certain player or team has been extensively discussed in a previous post, so sometimes it is relevant to indicate that. Similarly, if I don't mention that I have written an article for another site, readers may not be aware of it--but anyone visiting ESPN's basketball blog presumably can very easily find the articles written by the site's various staff writers.
So why did I wait until nearly two weeks after my initial Donaghy post to make this post? My initial thought was that people who are posting nothing but links to ESPN.com and other big websites are not harming anyone, so why antagonize them. Also, sometimes I wonder if it would improve 20 Second Timeout's traffic even more to do the same thing; hey, posting nothing but a few links is a lot easier and faster than actually coming up with original commentary. I finally concluded that while doing nothing but posting such links does no harm I really, honestly do not understand what good it does, so maybe in response to this post someone will write a comment that will help me to understand why such posts are so popular. As for making such posts myself, I don't see that ever happening. I enjoy analyzing players, teams and events and would not be interested in just putting up some links to redirect people to stuff that they can easily find on their own.
posted by David Friedman @ 5:50 PM
Placing the Kevin Garnett Deal in Historical Context
Boston's seven for one (five players, two draft picks) trade for Kevin Garnett is unprecedented in NBA history but there have been several other occasions when one All-Star was dealt for multiple players. Often, the traded star eventually takes his new team to the NBA Finals at some point, while his old team understandably generally has to do some rebuilding. Here is a look at how some of the more famous of those transactions turned out for both teams:
Wilt Chamberlain was twice traded for three players. The first time it happened was on January 15, 1965, when the San Francisco Warriors sent him to the Philadelphia 76ers for Paul Neumann, Connie Dierking and Lee Shaffer (plus cash considerations). Chamberlain led the Sixers to the 1965 Eastern Division Finals, where they lost in seven games to Boston ("Havlicek stole the ball!"). Philadelphia went 55-25, 68-13 and 62-20 in the next three seasons. The 1967 team set a record for most regular season wins (since broken by Chamberlain's 1972 Lakers team and two Michael Jordan Bulls teams) and won a championship. Chamberlain won three of his four MVPs during that period, leading the league in rebounding each time while also claiming three field goal percentage titles, one assists crown (the only one ever won by a center) and the last of his then record seven scoring titles. Without Chamberlain to finish the 1965 season, the Warriors ended up with the worst record in the NBA (17-63). The addition of Rookie of the Year Rick Barry in 1966 helped the Warriors to improve to 35-45. Ironically, in 1967, the 44-37 Warriors lost to Chamberlain's 76ers in the NBA Finals. In 1968, Barry sat out his option year so that he could jump to the ABA the following season and the Warriors went 43-39.
After the 76ers lost in seven games to Boston in the 1968 Eastern Division Finals, Philadelphia traded Chamberlain to the L.A. Lakers for Jerry Chambers, Archie Clark and Darrall Imhoff. The Lakers went 55-25, 46-36 (Chamberlain missed 70 games with a knee injury), 48-34, 69-13 and 60-22 in Chamberlain's five years with the team. The 1972 squad won the championship and set a record for regular season victories that stood for 24 years. Three of the other teams lost in the NBA Finals, while the fourth fell in the 1971 Western Conference Finals to the eventual champion Milwaukee Bucks. In Chamberlain's four full seasons he won four rebounding titles, three field goal percentage titles and one Finals MVP. The 76ers went 55-27 in the first post-Chamberlain season but tumbled steadily after that as other great players also departed: the ledger reads 42-40, 47-35, 30-52 and 9-73, which is still the worst record in NBA history.
Technically, on June 16, 1975 Milwaukee traded Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Walt Wesley to the L.A. Lakers for Elmore Smith, Brian Winters, Dave Meyers and Junior Bridgeman but since Wesley only played one more NBA game this was effectively a four for one deal. Abdul-Jabbar played the remaining 14 years of his career in L.A. but for the purposes of this discussion we will just look at what happened in the four seasons after the trade, because prior to year five the Lakers drafted Magic Johnson. The Lakers missed the playoffs with a 30-52 record the year before they acquired Abdul-Jabbar and even an MVP performance by him in 1975-76 only lifted the team to a 40-42 record, still not good enough to qualify for postseason play. Abdul-Jabbar again won the MVP in 1977, leading the Lakers to the best record in the NBA (53-29), but L.A. lost to Bill Walton's Portland Trailblazers in the Western Conference Finals. L.A. went 45-37 and 47-35 the next two seasons. During those four seasons, Abdul-Jabbar won two MVPs while leading the league in blocked shots twice and rebounding and field goal percentage one time each. Meanwhile, Milwaukee went 38-44 in the team's first post-Abdul-Jabbar season, exactly the same record that the Bucks had in his final year with the team. The Bucks went 30-52, 44-38 and 38-44 the next three years.
Charles Barkley was twice traded for at least three players. On June 17, 1992, the Philadelphia 76ers traded him to the Phoenix Suns for Jeff Hornacek, Tim Perry and Andrew Lang. In 1992-93, Barkley won his only MVP and made the only NBA Finals appearance of his career as the Suns lost in six games to the Chicago Bulls. Phoenix had been a good team prior to Barkley's arrival (53-29 in 1991-92) and went 62-20, 56-26, 59-23 and 41-41 during his four seasons in the Valley of the Sun. Barkley made the All-NBA First Team in 1992-93 and followed that with two Second Team selections and one Third Team selection. The 76ers were a bad team in Barkley's last season (35-47) and got worse after he left, going 26-56, 25-57, 24-58 and 18-64 in the next four seasons. On August 19, 1996, Phoenix traded Barkley to Houston for Sam Cassell, Chucky Brown, Robert Horry and Mark Bryant. Barkley was 33 years old by then and clearly on the down side of his career, though he did average 23.2 ppg and 11.6 rpg in his final year in Phoenix. Barkley spent four injury-riddled seasons in Houston, teaming first with Hakeem Olajuwon and Clyde Drexler and then for one season with Olajuwon and Scottie Pippen. Those would have been formidable trios a few years prior to that but all of those players were past their primes by that time. Houston went 57-25, 41-41, 31-19 and 34-48 during Barkley's seasons with the team; Barkley only played 20 games in his final season. The 1997 squad lost to Utah in the Western Conference Finals but Houston failed to advance past the first round in each of the next two seasons and missed the playoffs altogether in 2000. Without Barkley, Phoenix went 40-42, 56-26, 27-23 and 53-29.
It will be interesting to look back in four or five years and see what the Kevin Garnett blockbuster deal looks like in comparison to these trades.
posted by David Friedman @ 6:10 PM
