The Chicago Bulls and Sacramento Kings have reached tentative agreement on a trade sending Andres Nocioni, Drew Gooden, Michael Ruffin and Cedric Simmons to the Kings for Brad Miller and John Salmons, front-office sources said on Wednesday.
The Kings would then turn around and ship Ruffin to the Portland Trail Blazers for forward Ike Diogu and cash considerations, sources told ESPN's Chris Broussard.
One source told ESPN.com that the Bulls players were pulled off the team bus Wednesday afternoon and were told they had been traded. [emph me]
OK, sorry--let me pause a moment while I remove my tongue from my cheek. Obviously this is not the deal fans and observers were looking for or expecting...but then again, how many people were banking on the big Taurean Green - Von Wafer deal at the deadline last year?
One truly has to hope that KP isn't done here, although the buzz at Blazer's Edge seems to strongly indicate this was a move made for salary purposes rather than to clear rotation space (Diogu's rookie contract expires after this season, meaning a likely salary upgrade to keep that penultimate roster slot filled next year). The expiring contract of Raef LaFrenz (known these days simply as RLEC) is pretty much the Shining Star of trade targets, not for his remaining talent and career, but because it drops about $5mil cash into the receiving owner's hands, direct from insurance payments on Raef's injury. So it's hard to believe Pritchard would just sit on that as the deadling expires.
So look for something else to happen in the next 24 hrs, something a touch bigger than this. As for Ike--we're gonna miss ya, buddy. Sure, we barely even got time to meet you or watch you play when the games counted, but you're a Blazer and you didn't beat the crap out of your significant other or turn the trunk of your car into a drug mule, so we part company as friends. I'd like to wish Ike well in Sacramento, but I'm not sure that's possible--either from a team or a city standpoint.
Finally. It was somewhat of a strange game for the Blazers tonight. They did things they don't usually do well, very well, and stunk at some of the things they had been known favorably for. In the end they put together all the right pieces, showed high energy and good teamwork, and smothered a clearly exhausted Kings team at the Rose Garden, 109-77. (And I'm sure you all want to know this before anything else: Ike Diogu was Chalupa Man with his second made free throw in garbage time, perhaps his first CM as a Blazerballer.)
If it seemed like an oddly played win, I hate to say it--but maybe that's because for the first game in a long while, Portland's young squad did all the little things right. Sometimes in a blowout you can afford to be sloppy and still just overpower a cold shooting team with a hot streak. But the Blazers were not shooting at all well from the field tonight, until the Kings got behind and were simply too tired to chase or care after that.
Instead of sweet but fickle three point shooting and the cost of O-reebs for transition D, the Blazers went old school and did the basic things. That has to excite you as a fan, especially as they address the very problems we'd been discussing the last few games, and really the whole season even as the Blazers have done such a great job so far.
{What went right, which is pretty much everything except shooting, below}
I hope you did as the Blazers hopefully did, and cleared your mind this weekend of the ugliest part of the 2008-09 season, now safely past. Given that it's the first three-day break between games in eons, this is really the first chance we've all had to catch our collective breath, review what's happened so far with a more retrospective eye, and look forward towards the easier part of the season and the building playoff race in the West.
To that end, who better than the boys at Blazer's Edge to get us back up to speed? It's a special night tonight; more on that in a bit. First and foremost however, you should know that Brandon Roy, Travis Outlaw and Nic Batum are all probable tonight from their various injuries, and should play.
With half of Sacramento's scoring punch out the team should be easy pickings for the Blazers. The first time the two teams met they were, as the Blazers won 117-96 behind impressive efforts from Steve Blake and Lamarcus Aldridge. The second time the Blazers were not so dominant, eking out a 91-90 victory due to awesome rebounding and the combined scoring of Roy, Blake, Outlaw, and Fernandez. If you're noticing most of those scoring names come from the smaller positions you're correct. Despite the Kings' big-man defenders all but inviting to be dominated the Blazers have yet to put together a stellar frontcourt showing against Sacramento. Instead we've depending on outplaying their backcourt while their centers get free for jumpers. This is exactly what the Kings want you to do. Our superior talent, top to bottom, has yielded victories, but the Kings aren't just going to roll over and let us take the game. We need to impose our will in the paint instead of getting into a shoddy-defense shootout with Sacramento.
{two more strong and topical columns to talk about, below}
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